"I'll take your character from yourself," answers Pauline, who finds herself taking a sudden fancy to this outspoken young person.
"Thank you. Then you must learn that my bark is worse than my bite, and that, though I'm fast and speak out plainly, I'm not a bad person at bottom, and not a bit of a sneak. What I have to say I say to your face, and you know the worst of me at once. Will you take me as you find me and strike up a friendship with me? Half the men and all the old women of the place will swear that I shall hate you like poison for being younger and handsomer and fresher than myself. Suppose you and I strike up a defensive alliance in the cause of common womanhood, and refute their slanders with an eternal friendship?"
"Don't, Miss Lefroy, don't!" puts in Everard aggravatingly. "You don't know what her bark is when she's in full cry. Her style is as bad—"
"Be quiet, Jack, do! I'm not speaking to you."
"And I'm not listening to him in the least, Miss Wynyard," says Pauline quickly; "and I'm quite ready to enter an alliance with you on the spot."
"Done! We'll never let a man or the pattern of a frock come between us—never."
"Certainly not."
"The last friend I had—for whom I'd have sacrificed my very life—broke from me because I happened to copy her Ascot dress and look better in it than she did."
"You may copy every article of clothing I wear," says Pauline warmly.
"Thank you; you are thorough. I'll send over my maid to-morrow to take off the cut of that train—it was the best-setting one in the room. And now nearest and dearest must part. You'll see me soon—before the end of the week. By the bye, what's your name?"