“Indeed! You brought your dress with you, I presume. Still I think, Miss Mildred, that you might have honoured your hostess by making the same preparation for yourself which she thinks it necessary to make for her own daughters.”
“Why, dear me,” cried Mildred, still too much swallowed up with amazement at the extraordinary suggestion to have room for indignation. “Why, dear me, I’d be only too delighted to order a dozen if I could; but where on earth should I get the money to pay for them? I never had a dress like that in my life. I don’t suppose I ever shall have one!”
“Then what are you going to wear, if one may ask?”
Poor Mildred smoothed down the folds of the blue crepe dress. The romp in the garden had not improved its condition; it was looking sadly crumpled and out of condition, but it had been washed a dozen times, and had a delightful knack of issuing from the ordeal a softer and more becoming shade than before. With certain little accessories, already planned, she did not despair of a satisfactory result.
“Well, I thought Mrs Faucit would be so kind as to allow the laundress to get up this dress. It is the only suitable thing I have, and I was going to—”
“Suitable! That thing! Do you mean to say that you seriously intend to wear the dress you have on to a picnic given by Mrs Newland?”
Lois bit her lip and turned aside. Bertha began hastily to cover up the dainty white folds which showed the crumpled blue in such unfavourable contrast. Mildred drooped her eyelids, and answered with that smouldering calm which precedes a storm.
“I am. That is certainly my intention.”
“And you mean to say you have no better dress than that in your possession?”
“This is my best dress. Yes! I have no better.”