CHAPTER II
"PLEASED TO MEET YOU"
No one had ever known Miss Keren-happuch Bradbury to miss an appointment.
The four girls were ready for her betimes, for she never kept any one waiting and had the strongest objection to unpunctuality in another.
She rang the bell of the small apartment ten minutes earlier than the Scollards had looked for her, and appeared erect and brisk as ever, with that combination of thorough breeding and disregard for externals which was peculiar to herself.
This time, however, it seemed that Miss Bradbury had passed her own limit of garments which, however fine and costly in their day, were stamped with the fact that their day had been marked on a calendar long superseded.
"My children, I'm a frump!" she announced on entering, without other greeting. "I am sure that you will be ashamed to be seen with me. I should have made our investigating day a later one, and got myself clad in the garments of the present year of grace first of all things. Do look at this coat! Its sleeves cry aloud, like the great-mouthed trombones they resemble, that they were made two years ago. One's sleeves always turn traitor and betray one! My coat is not so bad, except the sleeves. Will you mind seriously? And will you promise to walk one on each side of me, pressed close every minute, so no one can see how disgraceful I am? I look as though I had indeed come out of the Ark yesterday!"
"You always look like a dear, old-fashioned gentlewoman, Aunt Keren," said Margery, sincerely and affectionately.
"It's beautiful cloth, Auntie Keren; it hasn't lost its gloss one bit," Happie added consolingly. The Scollards were under the impression that Miss Bradbury's obsolete effect was not a matter of choice, that she had too little money to discard good garments merely because they were out of fashion.
"There's one thing: you don't outgrow your things now!"