Aunt Gerty nearly knocked me over in her rush to the window. We were all three sitting in the front bedroom, which is George's, when he is at home, and Mother had been washing my hair. It was a dreadfully hot day--a dog-day, only we haven't any dogs, but the kittens were tastefully arranged in the spare wash-basin all round the jug for coolness. They had put themselves there. We humans had got very little clothes on, partly for heat and also having got out of the habit of dressing in the afternoons, for no callers ever came to The Magnolias. But there were some now. There was a big, two-horsed thing at the door such as I have often seen driving out to Hampton Court, but never, never had I seen one stop at our gate before. It was most exciting. I hoped Jessie Hitchings and her mother saw. There were two ladies inside, one of them old and frumpy, the other was Lady Scilly, whom I knew, though Mother didn't. I haven't got to her yet in my story. A footman was taking their orders, and Sarah was standing at the door holding on to her cap that she'd forgotten to put a pin in. Lucky she had a cap on at all! Mother doesn't like her to leave her caps off to go to the door, even when George isn't here, out of principle, and for once it told. "For goodness sake get your head in, Gerty, you have got the shade a bit too strong to-day," cried Mother, pulling my aunt in by her petticoats, and nearly upsetting the mirror on the dressing-table. Aunt Gerty came in with a cross grunt, and we all sat well inside till we heard the carriage drive away and Sarah mounting the stairs all of a hop, skip and a jump. "Please m'm!" she cried almost before she got into the room, "there's a carriage-and-pair just called----" "Anything in it?" Mother said. "Two ladies, m'm, and here's their cards." I took one and Aunt Gerty the other. "Dowager Countess of Fylingdales!" Aunt Gerty read, as if she was Lady Macbeth saying, "Out, dammed spot!" The card I held was for Lady Scilly, and there was one for Lord Scilly, but it had got under the drawers. "I said you wasn't dressed, ma'am," Sarah said, looking at Mother's apron all over egg, and her rolled-up sleeves. "No more I am," said Mother, laughing. "Don't look so disappointed, Gerty. I couldn't have seen them." "But you shouldn't have said your mistress wasn't dressed, Sarah," said Aunt Gerty. "It isn't done like that in good houses. You should have said, 'My mistress is gone out in _the_ carriage.'" "But that would have been a lie!" argued Sarah, "and I'm sure I don't want to go to hell even for a carriage-and-pair." "Oh, where have you been before, Sarah," Aunt Gerty sighed, "not to know that a society lie can't let any one in for hell fire? Well, it is too late now; they have gone. And it was rather a shabby turnout for aristocratic swells like that, after all."