"O! that was Honor's doing, not mine," says Doris promptly. "She would have me rigged out all complete, as Dick would say."
"_Doris!_" exclaims Mrs. Merivale as she sails out of the room followed by that young lady, "_pray_ do not always be using those expressions which Dick seems to delight in,--troublesome boy! You are always down upon him for these Americanisms which he has picked up (at school, I suppose), but it seems to me you are ready enough to make use of them too. I do hope you will be careful to behave nicely altogether to-night, and not like a hoydenish school-girl as you do more often, I fear, especially when Miss Denison is not by."
"O don't be anxious about me, mother; _I_ shall pull through somehow, and conduct myself with such propriety as even to satisfy Aunt Sophia. If you _should_ see me doing anything dreadful at the dinner-table, and I am too far away for a stage-whisper, you might 'hail' like Mary Ann the scholar in _Our Mutual Friend_, you know, then I shall understand and pull myself together."
"You incorrigible girl," says Mrs. Merivale with something between a laugh and a sigh; "but now run back, dear, and get my fan off the dressing-table in my room. O, and look in and tell Honor that she can come down for an hour or so to-night if she likes. Tell her to wear her white nun's veiling with the moiré sash and ribbons."
Charmed with this message Doris is soon back in her own room, where she finds Honor still helping Lane to put things a little straight, in Lucy's prolonged absence, which is irritating the older maid not a little.
"Honor, my girl, you are to come down into the drawing-room to-night; mother says so. O, and you are to wear your nun's veiling, &c. Now _don't_ say you don't want to!"
"I don't, truly," says Honor, looking from Doris to Lane and back again. "I am tired and sleepy now, and it is a bother to have to change one's dress just for an hour, when I'd _far_ rather be in bed."
"Well, I call it downright spiteful of you, Honor. Just the evening of all others that I want you. I was looking forward to telling you all about the dinner, and we could have had a jolly time in a secluded corner with Hugh. And oh, I forgot, Regy is coming in after dinner; so we four might have some rare fun. _Do_ come, there's a dear!" And Doris looks at Honor so beseechingly that she sacrifices her own feelings in the matter and says, "Very well, dear, I'll come. Now run away, there's mother calling you."