"Oh, I'm so sorry. Blow these hobble skirts. Blow the things!" says a girl's voice.
Kitty Harrington, a big, clumsy maiden, freckles powdering her clear skin. "A badly-dressed touzled young woman," is the verdict passed on her.
Kitty is having her season without any clever, youthful mother; she is under the charge of her aunt, Lady Harrington, who does not take much notice of her, and thinks the girl a foolish tomboy.
"Snap was running out to where the motors are," says Kitty, guilelessly, "and he might get hurt. We were doing a scamper on the grass."
Snap is a rough terrier of uncertain pedigree, unwillingly confined in London.
"He ties his lead round people's legs if I drag him through the crowd," Kitty goes on. "So we keep away and make believe it's country. Oh! if it was! And then this skirt tripped me."
Young Golderly looks at her. A big, rather clumsy girl, but open-eyed, fresh from eighteen years of country life; a girl who has learnt to swim in the open sea; whose gymnastics have been practised up trees.
"They are rotten things to try to run in," he says, smiling boyishly, "those skirts. Haven't I met you somewhere? I'm Lord Golderly." Here he pursues his hat, which Snap is treating as if it were a rat.
"Oh! goodness! Oh! I have been clumsy." Kitty is all pink cheeks and tearful eyes; she dabs them surreptitiously. "Oh! your poor best hat—all torn! Oh! I am a clumsy girl—never meant for London. No, I haven't met you. I'm Miss Harrington—Lady Harrington's niece."
"I know her!" Jossy, master of eighty thousand a year, grins as he examines his hat brim. "Are you going to the match to-day—to Hurlingham?"