"Which do you admire most, Worth or Felix?" she asked, after a graphic description of some marvellous gown which fitted the fortunate owner "as if she had been poured into it. Absolutely poured, Miss Grahame!"
"I—I really don't know," Hildegarde confessed meekly. "I never can tell one dressmaker's style from another. If a gown is pretty, that is all I think about it."
"Oh! if you have never studied these things, of course!" said the fair Leonie indulgently. "I went to Madame Vivien's school, you see, and we had a regular hour for studying fashions. I can tell a Worth or a Felix or a Donovan gown as far as I can see it."
"Did you like Madame Vivien's school?" asked Hildegarde.
"She ought to!" exclaimed Mr. Loftus. "It cost enough, I can tell you."
"Oh, it is the best school in the city, of course," said Leonie complacently. "We had a very good time, a set of us that were there. They called us the Highflyers, and I suppose we had rather top-lofty notions. Anyway, we were Madame's favourites, because we had the air, she always said. She couldn't endure a dowdy girl, and she dressed beautifully herself. There were two or three girls that were regular digs, with their noses always in their books, and Madame couldn't bear them. 'Miss Antrim,' she was always saving to one of them, 'it is true that you know your lesson, but your gown is buttoned awry, and it fits as if the miller had made it.' He! he!"
"And—and did you care for study?" Hildegarde asked, mentally sympathising with Miss Antrim, though conscious that she would never have been allowed to go to school with a gown buttoned awry.
"Oh! I liked French," said Miss Loftus, "and history pretty well, when it wasn't too poky. But you didn't have to study at Madame Vivien's unless you wanted to."
"What Leonie went most for was manners," explained Mrs. Loftus, taking a large mouthful of mayonnaise, and continuing her remarks while eating it. "Elegant manners they teach at Madame Vivien's."
"How to enter a room well,"—Leonie enumerated the points on her taper fingers,—"how to salute and take leave of a hostess, how to order a dinner,—those were some of the most important things. We took turns in making up menus, and prizes were given for the best."