"I would, very much," said Elizabeth heartily. "Bring it, won't you, some afternoon? I am in most afternoons about half-past four."
"Thanks very much—I would like to.... Well, good night."
It seemed to strike everyone at the same moment that it was time to depart. There was a general exodus, and a filing upstairs by the ladies to the best bedroom for wraps, and to the parlour on the part of the men, for overcoats and goloshes, or snow-boots as the case might be.
Elizabeth stood in the lobby waiting for her cab, and watched the scene.
As Miss Waterston tripped downstairs in a blue cashmere cloak with a rabbit fur collar Mr. Inverarity emerged from the parlour, with his music sticking out of his coat-pocket.
Together they said good night to Mr. and Mrs. Thomson and told Jessie how much they had enjoyed the party. "We've just had a lovely evening, Jessie," said Miss Waterston.
"Awfully jolly, Miss Thomson," said Mr. Inverarity.
"Not at all," was Jessie's reply; and the couple departed together, having discovered that they both lived "West."
The Simpsons, clad in the smartest of evening cloaks, were addressing a few parting remarks to Jessie, when Mr. and Mrs. Taylor took, so to speak, the middle of the stage. Mrs. Taylor had turned up her olive-green silk skirt and pinned it in a bunch round her waist. Over this she wore a black circular waterproof from which emerged a pair of remarkably thin legs ending in snow-boots. An aged black bonnet—"my prayer-meeting bonnet" she would have described it—crowned her head.
They advanced arm in arm till they stood right in front of their host and hostess, then Mr. Taylor made a speech.