“Yess, sir. They are heavenly be-ootiful.”
“Very well. Tell Aristocrates to lay out my clothes after you have dressed Miss Dulcie. There will be two extra people to dinner. Tell Aristocrates. Is Miss Dulcie still asleep?”
“Yess, sir.”
“All right. Wake her in time to dress her so she can come out here and give me a chance——” He glanced at the clock “Better wake her now, Selinda. It’s time for her to dress and evacuate my quarters. I’ll take forty winks here until she’s ready.”
Barres lay dozing on the sofa when Dulcie came in.
Selinda, enraptured by her own efficiency in grooming and attiring the girl, marched behind her, unable to detach herself from her own handiwork.
From crown to heel the transfiguration was absolute—from the point of her silk slipper to the topmost curl on the head which Selinda had dressed to perfection.
For Selinda had been a lady’s maid in great houses, and also had a mania for grooming herself with the minute and thorough devotion of a pedigreed cat. And Dulcie emerged from her hands like some youthful sea-nymph 127 out of a bath of foam, snowy-sweet as some fresh and slender flower.
With a shy courage born with her own transfiguration, she went to Barres, where he lay on the sofa, and bent over him.