They skirted Bexley Hill, they passed by sleeping villages and wind-swept commons.
“Are we nearly there?” asked Hilda Champernowne.
“Hardly halfway,” answered Lady Hartley. “I told you it was a long drive.”
There was a bright lamp inside the omnibus, a lamp which lit up the three Miss Champernownes in a cloud of gauze and satin, white as the snow-drifts in the valleys, a lamp which shone on three heads of glittering gold-brown hair, and three pairs of fine eyes, and three cherry mouths, and three swanlike throats rising out of ostrich plumage. It shone on Maud Hartley’s cloak of scarlet and gold and blue-fox fur, and sparkled on the diamond solitaires in her ears, clear and white as dewdrops on a sunny morning.
They were a very merry party. Major Baddington and Sir Hubert were outside, wrapped to the ears in fur coats and caps, and enjoying their smoke in the frosty air. Vansittart and two other young men rode inside with the feminine contingent, who were glad of this leaven of masculine society, though they pretended to be in alarm at the crushing of their draperies.
“I feel a dark foreboding that all the dancing men will have engaged themselves for the evening before we arrive,” said Claudia Champernowne.
“Not if they know the Miss Champernownes are going to be there,” said Mr. Tivett, a young man with a small voice and a reputation for all the social talents.
“Who cares anything about us?” cried Claudia. “We are strangers in the land.”
“I think that some of the dancing men will wait for my party,” said Maud. “I am famous for taking pretty girls to our local dances.”
They were steadily ascending the worst hill they had to climb; the omnibus was on an inclined plane, and Hilda Champernowne in her place at the back of the vehicle looked down upon Jack Vansittart seated in a hollow by the door. They were near the top, when the brake was put on suddenly, and the horses were pulled up. A ripple of silvery laughter rang out upon the frosty air.