'The woman who had the effrontery to sing that song last night,' pursues Peggy, her voice gathering indignation as it goes along, 'has now the impudence to invite a respectable girl like you to stay with her! Oh, Prue!' her tone changing suddenly to one of eager, tender pain, 'just think what I felt last night when I saw you standing among all those men in fits of laughter at her stupid indecencies! Oh! how could you laugh? What was there to laugh at?' Prue has begun to whimper. 'They all laughed. I--I--laughed be--be--cause they laughed!' 'And now you want to go and stay with her!' says Margaret, touched and yet annoyed by her sister's easy tears, and letting her long arms fall to her side with a dispirited gesture, as if life were growing too hard for her. 'I am sure it would be no great wonder if I did,' says Prue, still snivelling. 'I, who never go anywhere. She--Lady Betty I mean--could not believe it when I told her I had only been to London twice in my life; and He says that the Harboroughs' is the pleasantest house in England!' 'What does He say?' inquires a soft, gay voice, coming up behind them. 'Why, Prue, what is this? Why are the waterworks turned on? It is early in the day for the fountains to begin playing!' and Freddy Ducane--the flower-like Freddy--with his charming complexion, his laughing eyes, and his beautifully-fitting clothes, stands between the agitated girls. He has taken Prue's hands, both the one that contains the small damp ball of her pocket-handkerchief and the other. But she snatches them away and runs off. 'You seem to have been having rather a quick thing,' says the young man, bringing back his eyes from the flying to the stationary figure. The latter has risen. 'Did you know of this invitation?' asks she abruptly, without any attempt at a preliminary salutation. 'I do not much like that dagger-and-bowl way of being asked questions,' returns Freddy, sinking pleasantly into the chair Margaret has just quitted. 'What invitation?' 'You know perfectly well what invitation!' retorts she, her breast beginning to heave and her nostril to quiver, while her pendent right hand unconsciously clenches itself. Freddy has thrown back his curly head, and is regarding her luxuriously from under his tilted hat, and between his half-closed lids. 'I wish you would stay exactly as you are for just two minutes,' he says rapturously; 'I never saw you look better in my life! What a pose! And you fell into it so naturally, too! I declare, Peg, though we have our little differences, there is no one that at heart appreciates you half as much as I do!' 'I suppose that you suggested it?' says Margaret sternly, passing by with the most absolute silent contempt her companion's gallantries, and abandoning in the twinkling of an eye the admired posture which she had been invited to retain.