CHAPTER VIII
AUNT JULIA AND ELSIE
"Elsie, my dear child, do you know what time it is? Nearly half past five, and you haven't started to dress. Your father will be so annoyed if you are not ready when he arrives."
Mrs. Carleton, a small, fair woman, with a rather worried, fretful expression, paused in the doorway of her daughter's room, and regarded the delinquent with anxiety not unmixed with dismay. Elsie, arrayed in a pink kimono, was lying comfortably on the sofa, deep in the pages of an interesting story-book. At her mother's words she threw down her book, and rose with a yawn. She was a tall girl with dark eyes and hair, and she would have been decidedly pretty if she too had not looked rather cross.
"Is it really so late?" she said, indifferently. "Why didn't Hortense call me? I had no idea what time it was."
"But you ought to have known, dear," Mrs. Carleton protested gently. "I don't suppose Hortense knew you wanted to be called, but I will ring for her at once. You will hurry, won't you, darling? What excuse can I possibly make to your father if he asks for you and finds you are not ready?"
"Oh, don't worry, Mamma. You know papa only scolds because he thinks it his duty; he doesn't really care. Besides, the train will probably be late; those Western trains always are."
Mrs. Carleton rang the bell for the maid, whose room was in a different part of the hotel, and went to the closet in quest of her daughter's evening dress.
"I will help you till Hortense comes," she said. "You really must hurry, Elsie. It is not as if your father were coming alone; he will expect you to be ready to greet Marjorie."
Elsie shrugged her shoulders indifferently.