They were very well dressed, and altogether
non-committal, as far as speech and manners were concerned, but our
vocabulary of drawing-room chat very soon became exhausted, and with a
quiet "good afternoon" they arose and passed out.
As they left the drawing-room they were met at the door by two other
young misses who, at sight of them, raised their chins considerably
above their natural level, and swept in without condescending to
bestow even an accidental glance upon them. From where I sat I
observed all this quietly, and with an effort to suppress a smile of
bland amusement, I arose and greeted my new-comers--the Merivales!
Alice glided towards me with an air of imposing consciousness, and
thrust a tiny, gloved hand into mine, and then with a graceful gesture
she turned towards her companion and murmured faintly, "my cousin,
Miss Holgate--Miss Hampden."
I bowed and smiled, and directed them to convenient seats, the
situation was becoming more and more trying to my inclination to laugh
outright. When we were all three comfortably deposited in our chairs,
Alice Merivale turned her beaming countenance languidly towards me and
remarked that "it was a perfectly lovely aufternoon," and while I
smiled my eager corroboration, her cousin surreptitiously observed,
that it was "fairly delicious."
Then followed exclamations over my long absence, and questions too
numerous ever to require answers, they were much more finished talkers
than their predecessors, and when I thought we had touched upon every
subject which could interest us mutually, Alice asked in a most
insinuating tone if I had "known Florrie Grant before I went away to
to school?"
Florrie and Carrie Grant were the slighted heroines who had just gone
out.
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