Olive laughed affectionately at her friend's little joke, and they decided to reap the full advantage of a quiet Sunday by going to bed early.
"He's a great dear, isn't he?" said Olive by the door of her room.
"Oh, a great dear. How horrid it is that a man like that would be so misjudged by the world that he has to keep his name a secret. But, of course, I understand his point of view. I've had some experience of family pride, and it's a tremendous thing to be up against. However, it will be all the same a hundred years hence. Good night, darling. Your great man is a great, great success."
"I'm so glad you like him, Dorothy dear."
Just before Dorothy got into bed she called out to her friend, who in a dressing-gown of amber silk hurried to know what she wanted.
"I only wanted to tell you that you simply must get this new tooth-paste. I like it immensely."
"Oh, I'm glad it's a success," Olive exclaimed.
Dorothy wondered when she was fading into sleep how long it would be before she should be able to recommend a tooth-paste to the world at large, recommend it in glowing words with a photograph of herself smiling at the delicious tube.
Soon after Dorothy and Olive were established in Halfmoon Street Birdie Underhill and Maisie Yorke, by getting married on the same day at the same church to bridegrooms in the same profession, obtained as much publicity in the newspapers as was possible for two Vanity girls who had failed to acquire a title on abandoning the stage. The service in a double sense was fully choral, and the two queens had a train of bridesmaids from the Vanity, all looking as demure as Quakeresses in their dove-gray frocks, and certainly holding their own in the mere externals of maidenhood with the sisters of the bridegrooms, who were as fresh and rural as if Bayswater, their home, was in the Lake district and had been immortalized by Wordsworth in a sonnet. One reporter was so much impressed by the ceremony that his account of it was headed "Dignified Wedding of Two Vanity Girls."
"Yes," said Dorothy, when with Olive she was driving away from the reception, "it was charmingly done, of course; but, poor dears, it is rather a come-down."
"But I thought their men were awfully twee," said Olive.