"How should we be?" exclaimed Mopsy, whom the languid influences of a sultry August had made ill-humoured and cynical. "She was not brought up in the gutter."
"Mopsy," cried her sister, with a gasp of surprise and delight, "it's an invitation!"
"What?"
"Listen—
"'Dear Miss Vandeleur,—
"'We have just received a telegram from Buenos Ayres. Mr. Tregonell and Captain Vandeleur leave that port for Plymouth this afternoon, and will come straight from Plymouth here. I think you would both wish to meet your brother on his arrival; and I know Mr. Tregonell is likely to want to keep him here for some time. Will you, therefore, come to us early next week, so as to be here to welcome the travellers?
"'Very sincerely yours,
"'Christabel Tregonell.'"
"This is too delicious," exclaimed Dopsy. "But however are we to find the money for the journey? And our clothes—what a lot we shall have to do to our clothes. If we only had credit at a good draper's."
"Suppose we were to try our landlady's plan, for once in a way," suggested Mopsy, faintly, "and get a few things from that man near Drury Lane who takes weekly instalments."
"What, the Tallyman?" screamed Dopsy. "No, I would rather be dressed like a South Sea Islander. It's not only the utter lowness of the thing; but the man's goods are never like anybody else's. The colours and materials seem invented on purpose for him."
"That might pass for high art."
"Well, they're ugly enough even for that; but it's not the right kind of ugliness."