“Don’t you wonder how I’ve accomplished this mammoth letter? There are so many times a day in this house when one has to dress in something different, to do the next thing on the programme, and experience has proved that I change in about a quarter the time taken by the others, so down I sit and fill up the wait by scribbling a page or two more, and I hope, my dear, the result will amuse you.
“I wear my best clothes all day long, eat indigestible food, go to bed late, get up later, and have Esmeralda’s maid to do my hair. You’d think it would need an effort to change into a fine lady all at once, but it doesn’t; you just slip in, and feel like a sleek, stroked cat. My dear, I was born to be a Society Belle!
“Pixie.”
Chapter Nine.
A Rift.
“Let me break it to you tenderly,” said Mrs Hilliard to her guests at breakfast on the morning after the picnic, “that on Thursday there is a bazaar, and that it’s no use any of you making plans for that day or the morning before. The real reason why I invited you all just at this particular time is that you might assist, and be bright and pleasant and make my stall a success.”
She smiled beguilingly as she spoke, and no one could be more beguiling than Joan when it suited her own purpose. But her blandishments failed to propitiate her hearers, who one and all laid down knives and forks and fell back in their seats in attitudes expressive of dismay.
“A bazaar. Assist? What bazaar? Where? What for? This is too sudden! Why were we not warned?”