Chapter Twenty.
Undergraduate Friends.
Hannah strolled into Darsie’s study, open letter in hand. “Here’s games!” she announced. “An invitation from Mrs Hoare for myself and friend—that’s you—to go to tea on Sunday afternoon. That’s because I’m Dan’s sister, of course. He’ll be there, too, I expect, and the handsome Percival, and lots more men. The question is, shall we go?”
Now Mrs Hoare was the wife of the head of that well-known college of which Dan and Ralph were members, and the invitation was therefore the fulfilment of one of Darsie’s dreams.
“Of course we’ll go!” she cried ardently. “Sunday tea at a man’s college is part of the Cambridge programme, and we want to see all that we can. Personally, I consider that they might have asked us before.” She lay back in her seat, and stared dreamily at the wall, puckering her brow in thought, the while Hannah chuckled in the background.
“I know what you are thinking about!”
“You don’t!” cried Darsie, and blushed, a deep guilty blush.
“I do! Costume for Sunday, and the question of possibly squeezing out three or four shillings to buy an extra bit of frippery to add to your charms!”
“Boo!” cried Darsie impatiently; then with a sudden change of front: “And if I was, I was perfectly right! Newnham girls are not half careful enough about their appearance, and it tells against the cause. A perfect woman, nobly planned, ought to be as clever as she is—er—dainty, and as dainty as she is clever.”
“Thank you for the concession! Very considerate of you, I’m sure. If you had stuck to ‘beautiful,’ I should have been hopelessly left out. Even ‘dainty’ is beyond me, I’m afraid; but I’ll promise you to be neat and tidy, and saints can do no more—if they happen to have been born plain saints, that’s to say!”