Annelisa kissed me at parting, and asked if she might soon come to see me. But she shall not come when Kelly is at home. That is certain.

And now they have invited me to a grand dinner-party.

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Kelly must have a tail-coat, there is no question of that.

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No, Kelly shall not have a dress suit. Kelly won’t come with me to the dinner-party at Richard’s. I am going alone.

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Pah! I am positively excited! It was a grand occasion. And it did me good to hear pretty speeches made about my appearance. The orchids certainly did go well with my mauve silk. They couldn’t have come from anywhere but Paris, of course.

Annelisa and I became great friends. She took me up to her room and confided in me that she and her mother don’t get on.

You were afraid to move almost for fear of being told you were making things in a mess. And the child betrayed, by the way, the little domestic secret that her mother now had a bedroom to herself, because her father was so untidy in shaving. When no one was looking her mother went about with a duster and wiped away the marks left by the soles of your boots. Wasn’t it too awful? But it didn’t seem so dreadful to me, for all at once I saw plainly what it meant, and I consoled the child by telling her that in a year or two the scouring demon would be cleaned away.