"Hullo, Jill, old thing. Nobody here yet?"
"Well, I'm here—the petite figure seated on the fender. But perhaps I don't count."
"Oh, I didn't mean that, you know."
"I should hope not, when I've bought a special new dress just to fascinate you. A creation I mean. When they cost as much as this one did, you have to call them names. What do you think of it?"
Freddie seated himself on another section of the fender, and regarded her with the eye of an expert. A snappy dresser, as the technical term is, himself, he appreciated snap in the outer covering of the other sex.
"Topping!" he said spaciously. "No other word for it. All wool and a yard wide. Precisely as mother makes it. You look like a thingummy."
"How splendid. All my life I've wanted to look like a thingummy, but somehow I've never been able to manage it."
"A wood-nymph!" exclaimed Freddie, in a burst of unwonted imagery. He looked at her with honest admiration. "Dash it, Jill, you know, there's something about you! You're—what's the word?—you've got such small bones."
"Ugh! I suppose it's a compliment, but how horrible it sounds! It makes me feel like a skeleton."
"I mean to say, you're—you're dainty!"