“She thinks I like sitting shivering here! I slave, and slave, from morning till night, and then people think I am sulky! I am not working for myself. I don't want the wretched old ten pounds; I could have ten pounds to-morrow if I needed it. Mother said I could. I am working to help Rob, and now I shall have to sit up later, and get up earlier than ever, as I mayn't work during the day, Mellicent said I was never with them, did she! I don't see that it matters whether I am there or not! They don't want me; nobody wants me now that Rosalind has come! I hate Rosalind--nasty, smirking, conceited thing!” and Peggy jerked the towel off the writing-table and flicked it violently to and fro in the air, just as a little relief to her over-charged feelings. She was crossing the hall with unwilling steps when the postman's knock sounded at the door, and three letters in long, narrow envelopes fell to the ground. Each envelope was of a pale pink tint with a crest and monogram in white relief; one was addressed to the Misses Asplin, another to Oswald Elliston, and a third to Miss Mariquita Saville. “Invitations!” cried Peggy, with a caper of delight. “Invitations! How scrumptious!” Her face clouded for a moment as the sight of the letters, “R.D.,” suggested the sender of the letters, but the natural girlish delight in an unexpected festivity was stronger even than her prejudices, and it was the old, bright Peggy who bounced into the schoolroom holding up the three letters, and crying gleefully, “Quis, Quis, something nice for somebody! An invitation!” “Ego, Ego!” came the eager replies, and the envelopes were seized and torn open in breathless haste. “From Rosalind! Oh, how very funny! ‘Requests the pleasure--company--to a pink luncheon.’ What in the world is a ‘pink luncheon?’--‘on Tuesday next, the 20th inst....’” “A p-p-pink luncheon? How wewwy stwange!” echoed Mellicent, who had been suddenly affected with an incapacity to pronounce the letter “r” since the arrival of Rosalind Darcy on the scene, a peculiarity which happened regularly every autumn, and passed off again with the advent of spring. “How can a luncheon possibly be pink?” “That's more than I can tell you, my dear! Ask Rob. What does it mean, Rob!” asked Peggy curiously, and Robert scowled, and shook back his shock of hair. “Some American fad, I believe. The idea is to have everything of one colour--flowers, drapery, and food, china--everything that is on the table. It's a fag and an awful handicap, for you can't have half the things you want. But let us be modern or die, that's the motto nowadays. Mother is always trying to get hold of new-fangled notions.”