It was six months later, and about as broiling a Sunday afternoon as London can produce. Virginia and I were reading in the coolest spot in the garden, when Abigail came out and announced, with slight acidity, “That young person wants to know if she can see you, madam. I told her you were engaged, but she said she would wait.”

“What is her name?” I queried; there are so many young persons in the world.

“That Eileen!” she answered, this time with a definite sniff.

“She can come out here,” I said, and forthwith there sailed across the lawn a vision such as never before had graced my garden.

Eileen was wearing a white Jap silk skirt; a transparent rose pink blouse, that revealed the satin ribbon and lace camisole beneath; pink cotton open-work stockings; white shoes; one of those long stoles made of metallic-looking, lustre-brown fur, so beloved of the laundry girl; a big white hat, trimmed with the most violent of tangerine-coloured velvet, said velvet hanging in festoons down the back, and loops of it caught round the front and fastened to the fur stole—on one side with a large would-be-diamond lizard, about four inches long, and on the other with a crescent of similar make. Her hair, which was done in a wild imitation of the latest eccentricity of fashion, was radiant with more crescents and a sparkling three-tiered back comb. A string of large pearls adorned her neck.

To say I was taken aback at the sight, is to put it mildly; I was fairly dumb with astonishment. Where in the world had that demure, mouse-like orphan been to pick up such ideas! Even though I knew she had gone to work in a munition factory, I wasn’t prepared for such developments. She soon enlightened us.

After mutual polite inquiries about each other’s health, and a few more relative to the grandmother, she folded her hands in her lap, sat as though posing for a photograph, and then said: “And please, how do you think I look?”

“You are certainly very bright,” I stammered, striving valiantly after truth.

“Yes, I look very nice, don’t I?” she went on; “and I felt I ought to come round and show you, because, as I tell everybody, it’s all entirely due to you, ma’am, that I’m so stylish. I shouldn’t never have thought to dress like this, if you hadn’t taught me how. And now I’m going round to show myself to Mrs. Griggles.”