After thoroughly reassuring themselves that she really meant it, Miss Jane stepped forward, and Miss Mary timidly followed suit, and then began a general criticising and admiring all round, in which Jack joined in his usual lively fashion.
“Aunties, don’t you think Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother must have been here with her magic wand!” he exclaimed, “and turned Paddy into as much of a beauty as she could possibly get her? I shall take care not to be dancing with her at twelve o’clock, because I feel quite certain on the first stroke of the hour she will become herself again, and her hair will be coming down, her dress torn, and she will look just like she does in ordinary life.”
“Then we shall only be better paired than we were before,” retorted Paddy, “because you do not look in the least like a prince. Aunt Mary, you are lovely!” running on with eager warmth. “Oh! I should like to know what you looked like at my age.”
“She was very beautiful, my dear,” said Aunt Jane proudly. “I always dressed her for balls myself.”
“Oh; no, not quite that, sister,” murmured Miss Mary, in anxious self-deprecation; “just pretty, perhaps, sister, but that was all.”
“No; beautiful,” asserted Miss Jane again, in a voice that allowed no contradiction.
“And you the same, Aunt Jane, I expect!” said Eileen, smiling.
“No, I was more like Paddy here. I knew that my chief charm lay in my expression and spirits, and so I did not worry any more than she about my appearance and clothes.”
“Do I understand you to say you didn’t bother to wear clothes, Aunt Jane?” asked Jack in solemn surprise, at which the two little ladies looked horrified and Paddy and Eileen laughed, and just then the General, who had at last managed to get into his extra-special best dress suit, bustled into the room.
“Jack, my boy,” he said, taking the younger man’s arm, “take my advice and don’t let yourself get stout. If you only knew what I have gone through, trying to get into these clothes!—I wonder I didn’t have a fit of apoplexy! There! I do indeed! And five years ago they fitted me perfectly. Bedad! I’m not sure now the coat won’t split all up the back before the evening is half over, and I’m afraid to see if I can sit down for fear it might result in my not being able to go to the ball at all.”