I had not been so snubbed since I had been long-frocked, and to think that it should have been by Philip's mother! I fancy that I blushed in a perfectly preposterous manner, and I know that I went hot and cold all over, and I tried to wriggle out of the mess into which I had got myself. "I only wish I could do things, but I can't. I never have been among clever people, and I'm so dreadfully stupid. Hasn't Philip told you?" "Philip has told us nothing, except--you know what. But Philip himself is a past-master of all sorts of parlour tricks. Don't you know so much of him as that?" Of course I did. I resented the suggestion that I did not. I was commencing to get almost cross with Philip's mother. I was perfectly aware that there was nothing which Philip could not do, and do well, better than anyone else. But it had not occurred to me that therefore his relations, and even his acquaintances, were all-round experts also. And I was not by any means sure that I appreciated the fact now--if it was a fact. It was not pleasant to feel that in what were here plainly regarded as essentials, I should show to such hideous disadvantage. I should practically be out of everything, and no girl likes to be that, especially when her lover's about. Before long Philip would be comparing me to everybody else, and thinking nothing of me at all. It is possible that my doleful visage--I am convinced that it had become doleful--moved Margaret to sympathy. Anyhow she all at once jumped up and, I have no doubt with the best will in the world by way of making things easier for me promptly proceeded to make them worse. "Come along, Molly, let's have some tennis. Run upstairs and put your shoes on." "My shoes? What shoes?" "Why, your tennis shoes." "My tennis shoes? I--I'm afraid I haven't brought any tennis shoes." "Not brought any tennis shoes? But, of course, you do play tennis?" The question was put in such a way as to infer that if I did not, then I must be a sorry specimen of humanity indeed. But, as it happened, I did play tennis, at least, after a fashion. We had what was called a tennis lawn at home, the condition of which may be deduced from the fact that I had never imagined that it would be inadvisable to play on it in hobnailed boots if anyone so desired. "Of course I play; but--I haven't brought any particular shoes. Won't these do?" I protruded one of those which I had on. Margaret could not have seemed more startled if I had shown her a bare foot. "Those! why, they've got heels." Miss Reeves went a good deal further. "And such heels! My dear girl"--fancy her calling me her "dear girl," such impertinence!--"sane people don't wear those royal roads to deformity nowadays--they wear shoes like these." She displayed a pair of huge, square-toed, shapeless, heelless, thick-soled monstrosities, into which nothing would ever have induced me to put my feet. I said so plainly.