‘I think that something ought to be done,’ said May.  ’Just look at these limp curtains!  Did you ever see anything so dreary?  Are they brown, or red, or chocolate?’

‘They satisfied your betters,’ said Mrs. Gould, as she lighted her bedroom candle.  ‘Goodness me!’ she added, glancing at the gilt clock that stood on the high, stucco, white-painted chimney-piece, amid a profusion of jingling glass candelabra, ’it is really half-past twelve o’clock!’

’Gracious me! there’s another evening wasted; we must really try and be more industrious.  It is too late to do anything further to-night,’ said May.  ‘Come on, Alice, it is time to go to bed.’

X

During the whole of the next week, until the very night of the ball, the girls hadn’t a moment they could call their own.  It was impossible to say how time went.  There were so many things to think of—­to remind each other of.  Nobody knew what they had done last, or what they should do next.  The principle on which the ball had been arranged was this:  the forty-five spinsters who had agreed to bear the expense, which it was guaranteed would not exceed L3 10s. apiece, were supplied each with five tickets to be distributed among their friends.  To save money, the supper had been provided by the Goulds and Manlys, and day after day the rich smells of roast beef and the salt vapours of boiling hams trailed along the passages, and ascended through the banisters of the staircases in Beech Grove and Manly Park.  Fifty chickens had been killed; presents of woodcock and snipe were received from all sides; salmon had arrived from Galway; cases of champagne from Dublin.  As a wit said, ’Circe has prepared a banquet and is calling us in.’

After much hesitation, a grammar-school, built by an enterprising landlord for an inappreciative population that had declined to support it, was selected as the most suitable location for the festivities.  It lay about a mile from the town, and this was in itself an advantage.  To the decoration of the rooms May and Fred diligently applied themselves.  Away they went every morning, the carriage filled with yards of red cloth, branches of evergreen, oak and holly, flags and Chinese lanterns.  You see them:  Fred mounted on a high ladder, May and the maid striving to hand him a long garland which is to be hung between the windows.  You see them leaning over the counter of a hardware shop, explaining how oblong and semicircular pieces of tin are to be provided with places for candles (the illumination of the room had remained an unsolved problem until ingenious Fred had hit upon this plan); you see them running up the narrow staircases, losing themselves in the twisty passages, calling for the housekeeper; you see them trying to decide which is the gentlemen’s cloakroom, which the ladies’, and wondering if they will be able to hire enough furniture in the town to arrange a sitting-room for the chaperons.