“I can get new ones when you are a learned professor,” I told her, laughing. “And you’ll be that in a year or two, if you leave off slang. Gloves are an item—thank goodness we take the same size, and I can borrow from you!”
Madge echoed my gratitude. She hated gloves.
“And you may have my big hat,” she said—“it’s just the sort of hat you may need in the country. And my dressing-jacket; I’ll bet that will impress the three maids!”
“My dear, I’m not going to rob you in that wholesale fashion,” I said. “Also, I don’t contemplate parading before the staff in my dressing-jacket—in the servants’ hall, I suppose. Possibly there is a chauffeur, too!”
“Well, he’d love it,” Madge grinned. “All chauffeurs have an eye for clothes; and it’s such a pretty blue. I wish you could wear it in to dinner. What will you wear for dinner, by the way, my child?”
“I’ll have to get out my old lace frock. It’s quite good, and I can make it look all right with a little touching-up. Then there’s my black crêpe de Chine: so suitable and dowagerish. Mrs. McNab will approve of it, I’m sure. I know I could control the children well in black crêpe de Chine!”
In which I spoke without knowing the Towers children. The words were to come back to me later.
“What a mercy we’ve got decent luggage!” said Madge. “I’d hate you to face battlemented Towers and proud chauffeurs with shabby suitcases.”
I echoed her thankfulness. Father had brought us up to think that there was nothing like leather; our trunks, even as the Bechstein piano, were among the few relics of a past in which money had never seemed to be a consideration. It was comforting to think that one need not face the unknown McNabs with a dress-basket.
Then Colin spoke.