"Mrs. Saxham, let me introduce my sister Brenda. Brenda admires you frightfully!"
Brenda, staring with wide bright eyes at the object of her alleged admiration, offered a pink, moist, recently washed hand to Lynette. At Rhona's indignant exclamation she started and pulled away the hand, stammering:
"They wouldn't let me! ..."
"Wouldn't let you change into decent clothes when I'd 'phoned Home to have some sent here? Tell me another!"
"Well, then, the things hadn't come!"
"And if they haven't, why not have stayed upstairs until they do come?"
"All alone.... Oh! I couldn't! Anything awful might happen up there...." The peach-face of sixteen winced and the eyebrows puckered. "And Doda and Sissi simply love me in these things. They said I must come down and be seen!"
Doda and Sissi and the guilty six exchanged rapturous winks and grimaces. Certainly a damsel of sixteen, whose superb crimson tresses are crowned with the squashed ruin of a muslin "Trouville" hat, and whose slender form is draped in the wilted wraith of a light green aquascutum, is more than likely to create a succès fou, on her appearance in a London drawing-room.
"'Seen!'" Rhona snorted. "Well, you are a sight, there's no denying. From your head to your feet—My merry Christmas! what have you got on your feet?"
Brenda tittered nervously, poking out a slim foot in a huge golosh lined with wearied red flannel.