“This is rippin’!” cried the occupant of the brougham, who occasionally borrowed a word of slang from the little young men who frequented her. “How long have you been up? and why have not you been to see me?”
“I came up only the day before yesterday,” replied Bonnybell, in a tone which implied that the lateness of her arrival was the only reason why she had not already sought out so chosen and valued a friend. One must not make an enemy of Flora; but what a piece of ill-luck!
As she spoke she stepped quickly across the pavement, to hinder, by greater proximity, the sharing by other ears of the unavoidable impending dialogue; and tried to put her head so far inside the carriage window as to hide from passers-by the identity of her flamboyant friend.
“Where are you staying?”
“In Hill Street.”
“Come back to luncheon with me.”
“Oh, how I should love it! but I am staying with—people.”
“What people?”
At this query a horrifying vision passed before Miss Ransome’s eyes, of Flora, champagne-headed, low-necked, whitened and sealing-waxed, sweeping into Felicity’s drawing-room and falling on her own neck under that lady’s nose.
“Oh, nobody very interesting; not your sort.”