“Breakfast is ready and the letters have come,” he said.
“Nothing for me?” said Ermine; “what are yours, Maddie?”
“One from Flora at Cannes,” said Miss St Quentin, “two or three answers to the advertisement for a laundry-maid, and—oh, here’s something more interesting. The Belvoirs are giving a dance—on the 20th. Here’s the card,” and she tossed it over to Ermine, “and there’s a note from Mrs Belvoir, too, ‘to make sure of us,’ she says.”
“Colonel and the Misses St Quentin,” murmured Ermine, “that means—I suppose—” and she looked up hesitatingly at Madelene.
“Oh,” said Madelene, “it means what you choose, in the country. It isn’t like London, where one has to calculate the inches of standing and breathing space for each guest.”
“It means of course,” said her father, “such of the Misses St Quentin as are—‘out.’” He pronounced the last word with a good deal of emphasis, then turned to his coffee and his own letters as if the question were settled.
Ella had not lost a word. A flush of colour had come to her cheeks and a brightness to her eyes on first hearing her sister’s announcement.
“They can’t mean not to take me,” she said to herself. “Just at Christmas too—why, girls who aren’t a bit out go to Christmas dances.”
And Madelene, for her part, was wishing more devoutly than she had ever wished concerning a thing of the kind in her life, that she had not been so impulsive as to mention the invitation in her younger sister’s hearing.
“I only long for her to go,” she said to Ermine when they were alone. “I’d give anything if papa would let her. And I don’t see that it could do any harm—a Christmas dance is different, and really she has been good about her lessons, especially about her practising. Three wouldn’t be too many, to such old friends.”