The next evening, Thursday, the girl she knew drove for Dorothea.
When Frances was dressing for dinner her daughter came to her with two frocks over her arm.
"Mummy ducky," she said, "I think my head's going. I can't tell whether to wear the white thing or the blue thing. And I feel as if it mattered more than anything. More than anything on earth."
Frances considered it--Dorothea in her uniform, and the white frock and the blue frock.
"It doesn't matter a little bit," she said. "If he could propose to you in that get-up--"
"Can't you see that I want to make up for that and for all the things he's missed, the things I haven't given him. If only I was as beautiful as you, Mummy, it wouldn't matter."
"My dear--my dear--"
Dorothy had never been a pathetic child--not half so pathetic as Nicky with his recklessness and his earache--but this grown-up Dorothy in khaki breeches, with her talk about white frocks and blue frocks, made Frances want to cry.