"Now indeed I can't tell you!" returned Pixie regretfully. She was proudly conscious of having made a sensation, and it did seem hard to be obliged to dispel it as soon as it was made! "There's nothing settled, for, to tell you the truth, he has never so much as seen her yet, but she was visiting old Biddy Gallagher when he drove past to the meet, and at lunch says she, `He's the elegant creature, that duke! I'm thinking of marrying him myself!' and took Bridgie's advice on the trousseau that very afternoon. She says she won't be engaged until she is twenty-one, and that it's a pity to unsettle him about it yet awhile, as there's over two years to wait. He wouldn't want to wait if he saw her, for she's more beautiful than anyone you ever saw out of a picture, though it's himself I pity when the tantrums is on her. We often talk about it, and plan how we will spend his money, and if you want to put her in a good temper you've nothing to do but call her `Your Grace!'" "I never heard anything so silly!" cried Ethel scornfully. Kate gave a mild "He, he!" as she watched the process of hair-dressing in the mirror, and reflected pensively that spectacles seemed strangely out of keeping with evening dress. There was no doubt about it, she was astonishingly plain, and oh, how nice it must be to be beautiful like Esmeralda--so beautiful that even your own brothers and sisters admired you! It was a natural longing, for every girl wishes to be attractive to others, and feels a pang if obliged to realise that the tribute of admiration can never be hers; but Kate was too sensible to grieve long over impossibilities. "I shall have to be extra amiable to make up for it, that's all!" she told herself philosophically, as she lifted the hand-glass, and wriggled about before the glass to view the effect of the new coiffure. It was most elaborate and hairdresser-windowish in effect, and if it were not exactly becoming, that was perhaps more her own misfortune than the fault of the operator, who had bestowed such pains upon the erection. So she declared truthfully enough that she had never felt so fine in her life, and threatened to sit at the piano the whole of the evening, so that all beholders might have an opportunity of admiring her "back hair." Her toilet was now finished, but Ethel's bows were waiting to be tied and smoothed out, and Flora had to be laced into her dress, and to be consoled when again visited with the dread of finishing her career as the fat woman in a show. Finally, the first bell for tea was heard pealing downstairs, and away ran the three girls, leaving poor Cinderella to tidy the cubicles, and almost forgetting to thank her for her services; for in truth they had been so cheerfully rendered as to appear a favour given, rather than received.