"Aren't you going to invite Katie Grainger?" asked Ethel Wilson, the girl to whom Connie was talking.
"No," was the reply. "It's a great nuisance, because she really has been very useful to us. They're awfully poor, you know, and so I suppose she's used to doing a servant's work. Mamma says she shall make her a present some day as a return. But we can't ask her to our party. Sir Edwin Osmond's two nieces are coming, and lots of swell people, and we can't have them see anybody at our house in such a shabby, old-fashioned dress as Katie would be sure to wear."
"But she has been to your parties, hasn't she?"
"She came to one in the winter, and I never saw such a dress as she wore in all my life. It looked as if it was made in Noah's Ark. And she couldn't dance—had never learnt, she said; and she actually came without gloves. I suppose she had never been to a dress party before, and didn't know they were necessary."
And Connie went off into a peal of laughter, while Katie, on the other side of the curtain, shook with anger and mortification.
"You are ready to go now. Good-bye, dears," she said in a whisper, and the two little girls trotted away, leaving her still concealed behind the curtain.
She stayed till Connie and Ethel Wilson had taken their departure; then she hastily put on her own hat and jacket, and went home with hot tears running down her cheeks. Arrived at No. 99, she went straight to her room, and throwing herself on the bed, sobbed with wounded pride and indignation.
Presently she heard cries of "Katie! Katie! Where are you, Katie?"
"I am coming," she called out, and having bathed her eyes and smoothed her hair, she stepped outside.
On the landing was Robert.