"How was the bodice made?" Pixie reflected deeply. "I can't exactly _say_! But it was years ago. It would be quite _demode_. For a wedding, of course, you must be up to date. Weddings make a fuss for months, and are so _soon_ over--I mean for the guests. They are not _much_ fun." "Where did you meet the Duchess?" "Oh, at my sister's--the one I am going to now. In her town house, at a reception one afternoon. She had a purple dress with lace, and a Queen Victoria sort of bonnet with strings, and little white feathers sticking up in the front; and she had a--" Pixie smiled into space with reminiscent enjoyment--"_beautiful_ sense of humour!" The large lady looked deeply impressed, and, beginning at the topmost ribbon on Pixie's hat, stared steadily downward to the tip of the little patent-leather shoe, evidently expecting to find points of unusual interest in the costume of a girl whose sister entertained a duchess in her town house. The train had rattled through a small hamlet and come out again into the open before she spoke again. "Do you see many of them?" "Which? What? Bonnets? Feathers? I don't think I quite--" "Duchesses!" said the large lady deeply. And Pixie, who still preserved her childish love of cutting a dash, fought with, and overcame an unworthy temptation to invent several such titles on the spot. "Not--many," she confessed humbly, "But, you see, I'm so young--I'm hardly `out.' The sister with whom I've been living has not been able to entertain. Where I'm going it is different. I expect to be very gay." The large lady nodded brightly. "Quite right! Quite right! Only young once. Laugh while you may. I like to see young things enjoying themselves. ... And then you'll be getting engaged, and marrying." "Oh, of course," assented Pixie, with an alacrity in such sharp contrast with the protests with which the modern girl sees fit to meet such prophecies, that the hearer was smitten not only with surprise but anxiety. An expression of real motherly kindliness shone in her eyes as she fixed them upon the girl's small, radiant face. "I hope it will be `of course,' dear, and that you may be very, very happy; but it's a serious question. I'm an old-fashioned body, who believes in love. If it's the real thing it _lasts_, and it's about the only thing upon which you can count. Health comes and goes, and riches take wing. When I married Papa he was in tin-plates, and doing well, but owing to American treaties (you wouldn't understand!) we had to put down servants and move into a smaller house. Now, if I'd married him for money, how should I have felt _then_?" Pixie wagged her head with an air of the deepest dejection. She was speculating as to the significance of tin-plates, but thought it tactful not to inquire.