“Well!” Emily Duncan looked at her sister Susan. Susan raised her brows. Hammond took a photograph from a table which stood near, and pretended to examine it.
“Shall I tell you about the auction?” asked Maggie.
“Oh, please, if you would be so kind. I suppose, as you were present, such a thing could not really lower the standard of the college?” These words came from Susan Duncan, who looked at Hammond as she spoke. She was his cousin, and very fond of him.
“Please tell us about the auction,” he said, looking full at Maggie.
“I will,” she replied, answering his gaze with a flash of repressed irritation. “The auction was splendid fun! One of our girls was in debt, and she had to sell her things. Oh, it was capital! I wish you could have seen her acting as her own auctioneer. Some of us were greedy, and wanted her best things. I was one of those. She sold a sealskin jacket, an expensive one, quite new. There is a legend in the college that eighty guineas were expended on it. Well, I bid for the sealskin, and it was knocked down to me for ten. It is a little too big for me, of course, but when it is cut to my figure, it will make a superb winter garment.”
Maggie was clothed now in velvet and sable; nothing could be richer than her attire; nothing more mocking than her words.
“You were fortunate,” said Susan Duncan. “You got your sealskin a great bargain. Didn’t she, Geoffrey?”
“I don’t think so,” replied Hammond.
“Why not? Oh, do tell us why not,” cried the sisters, eagerly.
He bowed to them, laughed as lightly as Maggie would have done, and said, in a careless tone: “My reasons are complex, and too many to mention. I will only say now that what is objectionable to possess can never be a bargain to obtain. In my opinion, sealskin jackets are detestable.”