"Yes; that put it into my head," said Dollie, brightly. "Bazaars are so paying; this is my friend and sister secretary, Mrs Carteret. I've got every big name in London, Canon, or half of them. Oh, it will be a great success. We've taken the hall. We're all going to be summer flowers. 'The Summer Flower Bazaar,' such a good name, isn't it?"
Mr Lucy nursed his hat. "You won't let the expenses mount, Mrs Gresham," he said, "will you? Once they begin to swell our cripples would lose. You'll let me help you with the accounts. It's my métier, you see, and I could help you."
Dollie chilled visibly. She preferred to do it all herself, she said. "We really want to work," she went on, smiling again. "After all, it's quite simple. We have all our cheques paid in and we pay the exes and hand you the balance. We'll work it up like anything. You get all your people to come, Canon—all your charitable friends. The dear little cripples," cooed Dolly—"so nice to help them."
"Tiresome, muddling pair," she snapped when the two men had left. "Come to Claire's, Esmé. I owe her two hundred, but these flower dresses will cool her rage, and she'll know we'll pay for this lot all right."
Claire received them dubiously, then thawed to the order for the bazaar. If Mrs Gresham could get her the carnation order also, Lady Louisa's stall, and the roses. Forget-me-nots, by the way, were spring flowers.
Oh, it didn't matter. Clouds of gauze, blue satin, wreaths of flowers stiffened with turquoises, shoes, stockings. Dollie ordered lavishly.
"That Estelle girl shall help," Esmé said. "She is the kind of person who'll open boxes and get dusty and save us trouble. By the way, what shall we sell? Not tea. One has to run about. Sweets, I should think, and buttonholes."
"We are not distinguished enough for buttonholes," said Dollie, decidedly. "When Adolfus or Gargie buys a white pink for five shillings he likes to tell mamma and his lady friend that the Countess of 'Ighlife pinned it in with her own fingers, Vilet, her very own. Dolfus does not seem to realize that the use of other people's would be confusing. No, let it be sweets. Chocolates will show off our blue frocks."
Bertie Carteret found himself left more and more alone. Esmé was always feverishly busy, always just going on somewhere, chasing pleasure, growing thinner in the pursuit, using just a little more rose bloom, a little extra powder to hide jaded lines and fading colour.
At the end of May Bertie paid his household bills again and knew that they were far too large. No extravagance seemed to have been curtailed; if they had not lunched or dined so often at home, he had paid for a score of meals at fashionable restaurants. Esmé's careless demands for a few pounds for cabs were endless.