Winnie Childs | Page 5

Rags'll change his mind about the
dress. Nadine's dresses are too heavenly. I've never seen any except on
the stage, worn by wonderful, thin giantesses. All her gowns are named,
you know, Rags: 'Dawn,' or 'Sunset,' or 'Love in Spring,' or 'Passion in
Twilight,' and poetic things like that."
"Can't be very poetic bein' sick in 'em, by Jove! for those girls in the
nursery," remarked Rags, "especially if they've got a sense of humour."
(One of them had. The shimmering sheath of silver and chiffon she
wore to-day, as it happened, rejoiced in the name of "First Love." It
was all white. She was being very careful of its virginal purity; but it
occurred to her that unless the sea's passion died, the frock would soon
have to be renamed "Second Love," or even "Slighted Affection," if not
"Rejected Addresses.")
Urged by Eileen, who would think her a "pig" if she refused, Ena
reluctantly uncurled herself from a safe and graceful position on a
cushioned sofa. The result was alarming. Her swimming head warned
her that if she did not instantly sit down again something too awful to
think of in the presence of an earl would happen.
"You'd better go without me. I'm not very keen," she faintly explained,
appealing to Peter with her eyes.
He contrived to understand without asking stupid questions, as some
brothers would, and hurried the others off to the room of the mirrors.
No longer was it a room of mystery; yet romance, once awakened,

cannot be put to sleep in a minute, and Peter Rolls's heart beat with
excitement or shyness, he was not sure which, as Lady Eileen O'Neill
knocked at the dryad door.
CHAPTER II
BALM OF GILEAD
It was the worst possible moment for the dryads. But when their
tear-wet eyes beheld a girl and two men, some deep-down primordial
pride of womanhood rushed to their rescue and, flowing through their
veins, performed a miracle beyond the power of any patent remedy.
The five forlorn girls became at need the five stately goddesses Mme.
Nadine paid them to be. (Winifred Child, by the way, was not paid, for
she was not a goddess by profession. But she got her passage free. It
was for that she was goddessing.)
Miss Devereux was the leader, by virtue, not of extra age, no indeed!
but of height, manner, and experience. She apologized, with the most
refined accent, for Mme. Nadine, who was "quite prostrated"; for Mme.
Nadine's manageress, who was even worse; and for themselves. "I'm
afraid we must do the best we can alone," she finished with
unconscious pathos.
"It's a shame to disturb you," said Peter Rolls.
Miss Devereux and her attendant dryads turned their eyes to him. They
had fancied that he was the man who had burst in before and burst out
again; now they were sure. If he had been a woman, they would have
borne him a grudge for coming back and bringing companions worse
than himself; but as he was a man, young, and not bad looking, they
forgave him meekly.
They forgave the other man for the same reason, and forgave the girl
because she was with the men. If only they could behave themselves as
young ladies should through this ordeal! That was the effort on which
they must concentrate their minds and other organs.

"Not at all," returned Miss Devereux, every inch a princess. "We are
here to be disturbed." (Alas, how true!)
She smiled at Lady Eileen, but not patronizingly, because a mysterious
instinct told her that the plain, pleasant young girl in Irish tweed was a
"swell." The men, too, were swells, or important in some way or other.
One exerted one's self to be charming to such people and to keep the
male members of the party from looking at the other girls. "Would you
like to see something else, different from what we are showing?
Evening cloaks? Day dresses? We have a number of smart little
afternoon frocks---"
"I think that white dress is the meltingest thing I ever saw," said Lady
Eileen, who had walked into the room without waiting for Miss
Devereux's answer to Peter Rolls's objection.
She was a kind-hearted girl, but, after all, living models were living
models until they were dead, and she wasn't going to lose the chance of
getting a dreamy frock out of Rags! All the goddesses were on their
mettle and their feet now, though swaying like tall lilies in a high wind
and occasionally bracing themselves against mirrors, while Lady Eileen
was in the biggest chair, with Raygan and Peter Rolls standing behind
her. The men also were offered chairs by Miss Vedrine with a lovely
play of eyelashes, but refused them: the chairs, not the eyelashes, which
no man