“My dear Isabel!”

“Or words to that effect.  Oh! it’s perfectly fair, I’m not grown up, or only by fits and starts.  Some of me is a weary forty-five but the rest is still in pigtails.  It’s curious, isn’t it? considering that I’m nearly twenty.  Let’s go through the wood, my stockings are coming down.”  Out of sight of the house in a clearing of the loosely planted alder-coppice by the bridge, she pulled them up, slowly and candidly:  white cotton stockings supported by garters of black elastic.  “After all,” she continued, “I’m housekeeper, and in common politeness we shall have to dine you back, so I really did want to see what sort of things Captain Hyde likes.  But it’s no use, he won’t like anything we give him.  Not though we strain our resources to the uttermost.  Laura! would Mrs. Fryar give me the receipt for that vol-au-vent?  I don’t suppose we could run to it, but I should love to try.”

“Mrs. Fryar would be flattered,” said Laura, finding a chair in the forked stem of a wild apple-tree, while Isabel sat plump down on the net of moss-fronds and fine ivy and grey wood-violets at her feet.  “But, my darling, you’re not to worry your small head over vol-au-vents!  Lawrence will like one of your own roast chickens just as well, or any simple thing—­”

“Oh no, Lawrence won’t!” Isabel gave a little laugh.  “Excuse my contradicting you, but Lawrence isn’t a bit fond of simple things.  That’s why he doesn’t like me, because I’m simple, simple as a daisy.  I don’t mind—­much,” she added truthfully.  “I can survive his most extended want of interest.  After all what can you expect if you go out to dinner in the same nun’s veiling frock you wore when you were confirmed, with the tucks let down and the collar taken out?  O!  Laura, I wish someone would give me twenty pounds on condition that I spent it all on dress!  I’d buy—­I’d buy—­oh,—­silk stockings, and long gloves, and French cambric underclothes, and chiffon nightgowns like those Yvonne wears (but they aren’t decent:  still that doesn’t matter so long as you’re not married, and they are so pretty)!  And a homespun tailor-made suit with a seam down the back and open tails:  and—­and—­one of those real Panamas that you can pull through a wedding ring:  and—­oh! dear, I am greedy!  It must be because I never have any clothes at all that I’m always wanting some.  I ache all over when I look at catalogues.  Isn’t it silly?”

If so it was a form of silliness with which Mrs. Clowes was in full sympathy.  In her world, to be young and pretty gave a woman a claim on Fate to provide her with pretty dresses and the admiration of men.  As for Yvonne, till she married Jack Bendish she had never been out of debt in her life.  “No, it’s the most natural thing on earth,” said Laura.  “How I wish—!”

“No, no,” said Isabel hastily.  “It’s very, very sweet of you, but even Jimmy wouldn’t like it:  and as for Val I don’t know what he’d say!  Poor old Val, he wants some new evening clothes himself, and it’s worse for him than for me because men do so hate to look shabby and out at elbows.  He’s worn that suit for ten years.  My one consolation is that Captain Hyde couldn’t wear a suit he wore ten years ago.  It would burst.”