The boy looks at her again. She is so fresh and natural and friendly. The skin under her freckles is singularly fine; her eyes are bright, her active figure at its worst in a ridiculous hobble skirt.
"Say! I can't go back there," he nods towards the strolling crowd, "in Snap's handiwork. Let's walk across the grass."
"I want to get to Lancaster Gate. Right!" says Kitty, "we live there, you know."
As they go they talk of ponies and horses and terriers and otters and tennis, and when they part young Golderly takes a brown, shapely, gloveless hand in his and shakes it warmly.
"Come to the match; come to see me play," he says. "I'll take you over to the ponies and show you my beauties. You ought to come."
Kitty rushes in to her aunt. "Auntie! get Hurlingham tickets somewhere. You must!" And Kitty tells of her adventure.
When a year later big Kitty marches sedately down the aisle of a country church on the arm of her husband, a Marquis, she manages her trailing skirts cleverly enough.
A rank outsider, a creature not even mentioned in the betting; but a letter from Kitty's dearest friend might prove that she need not have tripped so grievously over her hobble skirt; while further experience proved that she was lazy about otter hunting, and that behind the ingenuous face lay a shrewd and far-seeing brain. The letter was to "Dearest Kit."
"Shame of Auntie May not to bother about you," it ran. "I met young Lord Golderly at Marches Hall last week-end. He's just your sort—all sport. Get to meet him somehow and talk horses—polo ponies and otter hunting; he's sick of Society."
The future Lady Golderly carefully tore up that letter.