"`Don't you care,' said she softly, `a mite _how_--I--look?' "`Not a mite,' says he coolly. `I care how you _feel_!' "There was a look in his eyes which was not carpet slippers, far from it, and Honor leaped up and swept to the door with what was intended to be a haughty `sweep,' but the slippers pad-padded at each step in a sort of shuffle, which was the unhaughtiest thing you could possibly imagine. Then Mr Carr gathered up the two tiny brown shoes and dusted them carefully with his handkerchief, and slipped one into each pocket of his Norfolk coat. Honor never bothered about her shoes: I suppose you don't when you own factories, but Mr Carr walked all the way with his hands in his pockets as if he had got something there that he liked to hold. "The children of the village followed us as we went, and called out, `Hi, look at her feet! Hi, Miss, is there room for me in them slippers?' as of course they would, bless them! And I will say for her she took it smiling. "Two miles along the road the car met us, poor Dawson apoplectic with distress and confusion. The engine had gone wrong, and he had had a terrible time getting it put right, and was distracted because he could find no way of sending on the hampers. We tumbled in and whirled home in peace and safety, but some of us were glad it had not come before. "Don't you wonder how I've accomplished this mammoth letter? There are so many times a day in this house when one has to dress in something different, to do the next thing on the programme, and experience has proved that I change in about a quarter the time taken by the others, so down I sit and fill up the wait by scribbling a page or two more, and I hope, my dear, the result will amuse you. "I wear my best clothes all day long, eat indigestible food, go to bed late, get up later, and have Esmeralda's maid to do my hair. You'd think it would need an effort to change into a fine lady all at once, but it doesn't; you just slip in, and feel like a sleek, stroked cat. My dear, I was born to be a Society Belle! "Pixie." CHAPTER NINE. A RIFT. "Let me break it to you tenderly," said Mrs Hilliard to her guests at breakfast on the morning after the picnic, "that on Thursday there is a bazaar, and that it's no use any of you making plans for that day or the morning before. The real reason why I invited you all just at this particular time is that you might assist, and be bright and pleasant and make my stall a success." She smiled beguilingly as she spoke, and no one could be more beguiling than Joan when it suited her own purpose. But her blandishments failed to propitiate her hearers, who one and all laid down knives and forks and fell back in their seats in attitudes expressive of dismay. "A bazaar. _Assist_? What bazaar? Where? What for? This is too sudden! Why were we not warned?" Joan twinkled mischievously.