"Bless me!" good-natured Lady Alicia exclaimed. "The poor bodies! I'd have left a whole card-case of cards if I'd remembered. But they fluttered round me so as I was leaving, and were so civil and obliging and desperately fussy, that I got myself out as quickly as ever I could."
"You'd make them very happy if you'd leave a card even yet, any time you are passing," Miss Esperance suggested. "They are such good, meek creatures."
So it came to pass that next day, when Lady Alicia went out to drive, the carriage stopped at Rowan Lodge, and she, in a voice that could be heard all down the street, instructed her footman to leave cards, explaining that she had forgotten to leave them the day before.
The front door of Rowan Lodge was separated from the footpath by about three feet of gravel, and the Misses Moffat, seated behind the curtains that Lady Alicia had admired, heard her every word.
"One for each of us!" exclaimed Miss Jeanie rapturously, gloating over the little white cards, for them so packed with meaning. "I hope it's not wicked, but I can't help feeling rather glad poor Mr. Carruthers is no more—though it would have been pleasant enough to have him calling, too—for then, if that book is right, we should only have had his card, and he hadn't a title or anything."
"He was an advocate, I'm told," Miss Maggie said solemnly, "but whether they put that on cards I'm not very sure, never having been called upon by anyone connected with the legal profession except yon wee auctioneer, who came about the fittings at the South-side, and I very much doubt if he had a card at all."
"The Macdougals 'll rather open their eyes when they see these," Miss Jeanie chuckled. "I'll put one on each side the Benares bowl in the lobby, lest they shouldn't look inside. I hope it'll be a nice bright day, for it's a wee thing dark there when the door's shut, and if it's left open there's a terrible draught, and they might blow away."
"If it's a mirk day," Miss Maggie said firmly, "I'll stand them up against the parlour clock, just careless-like. You may depend the Macdougal's will spy them out."
CHAPTER XIII
A MEETING