Oh, dear no. Her temper and her face were the unerring barometer by which you might judge of the number of the men at a party. If there was a respectable muster, and one of these had singled her out for special attention, had walked with her, talked with her, and made love to her, she was all smiles and sprightliness on her way home. If, on the other hand, she had had no cavalier, she made herself conspicuously disagreeable; sat aloof and sulked, refused to sing, refused to play tennis, presently announced an agonising headache, and withdrew at an early hour, carrying poor Betty in her train. “The idea!” she would grumble, as they jolted homeward in a local cover-car. “I call it an insult for people to ask us to drive nine miles, and to wear our best dresses, in order to walk round a weedy old garden, with a pack of giggling girls, and to play tennis in grass that is nearly up to one’s knees! I shall never go again, _never_!” This was her frequent threat, but the next invitation was invariably accepted, and the excitement of looking over her dresses, speculating on her chances of amusement, and fighting with her mother for the money for new gloves and the fare of a car, occupied her until the event (possibly another insult) came off! Betty had always enjoyed herself, and said so frankly, and stood up for the company, the hosts, and the garden. “Of course _you_ think it very fine,” Belle would rejoin scornfully, “because you know no better--walking arm in arm through cabbages with Katie Moore is the height of bliss to _you_--you don’t know what pleasure is!”