She might have been discussing the colour of a parasol, so impersonal and frank was her tone. Evidently it never occurred to her that these were what is called in ladies’ papers, “secrets of the toilet-table.”
Fay turned to the girl, who was adjusting the trimming on another hat, equally large and covered with roses of a nightmare shade of pink.
“You remember my hair when it was red, don’t you, Vera?” She chuckled. “I remember you didn’t know me when I came into the shop, and you was so polite”—she gave Claudia a wink—“that I knew you hadn’t spotted me. I’d run up the devil of a bill, and Madame Rose was giving me the frozen eye just then. I think I shall keep to black now. It does suit me, doesn’t it?”
“Admirably,” returned her sister-in-law, controlling a desire to laugh.
“I like your hair,” commented Fay; “there are sort of coloury bits in it. I thought at first you must dye it, only Jack told me you didn’t, and that it was like that when you were a kid. It’s real pretty. Darling, try on this hat. I want to see it on someone else. There’s no doubt it’s stylish. I hate the sort of hats nobody notices. When I pay big money I like to get the goods.”
Claudia good-naturedly removed her own smart little toque of white brocade and skunk, and placed the top-heavy confection upon her head.
Fay’s face was a study in astonishment and dismay as she looked at the other woman.
“Well, I’m blowed! It looks—oh! sort of funny—and”—she shook her head—“Vera, are you sure it’s good style? All right, keep your hair on, I didn’t say it wasn’t, only—— Crickey Bill, does it look like that on me?”
The girl from the shop eyed Claudia with no great favour. Her small, beady eyes looked sourly and enviously at the perfectly-cut, black velvet gown and elegant skunk and ermine furs. She was cute enough to realize that Claudia’s clothes were the “real thing” and spelt not only money—her own wares were absurdly overpriced—but taste. She was accustomed to serving “ladies” in the profession, who familiarly called her “Vera, my dear,” and asked, and generally took her advice, as well as swallowed her fulsome flattery.
“Take it off,” said Fay almost sharply. “I hate it now. It’s too large, it’s too——” Then, with a sudden change to wistfulness, she added, “but it’s you that makes it wrong. You’re good style, and I’m not. I’m common, dead common. I don’t wonder you didn’t want me in the family.”