“Oh, they’re all right. The cottage is awfully stuffy, and always in a mess. I should think she might keep it cleaner, with a little perseverance and carbolic soap. Perhaps she doesn’t because Miss Harris is always jawing to her about it. I wouldn’t tidy up, I must say, if Miss Harris was on to me about my room. What do you think, she’s gone and made mother promise I shall take the doll stall at the Assistant Curates’ Bazaar. It’s too bad. I’d have dressed any number of dolls, but I do bar selling them. It’s a hunting day, too. It’s an awful fate to be a parson’s daughter. It’s all right for you; parsons’ sons don’t have to sell dolls.” “Look here,” said Eddy, “are we having people to stay after Christmas?” “Don’t think so. Only casual droppers-in here and there; Aunt Maimie and so on. Why?” “Because, if we’ve room, I want to ask some people; friends of mine in London. Denison’s one.” Daphne, who knew Denison slightly, and did not like him, received this without joy. They had met last year at Cambridge, and he had annoyed her in several ways. One was his clothes; Daphne liked men to be neat. Another was, that at the dance given by the college which he and Eddy adorned, he had not asked her to dance, though introduced for that purpose, but had stood at her side while she sat partnerless through her favourite waltz, apparently under the delusion that what was required of him was interesting conversation. Even that had failed before long, as Daphne had neither found it interesting nor pretended to do so, and they remained in silence together, she indignant and he unperturbed, watching the festivities with an indulgent, if cynical, eye. A disagreeable, useless, superfluous person, Daphne considered him. He gathered this; it required no great subtlety to gather things from Daphne; and accommodated himself to her idea of him, laying himself out to provoke and tease. He was one of the few people who could sting Daphne to real temper. So she said, “Oh.” “The others,” went on Eddy, hastily, “are two girls I know; they’ve been over-working rather and are run down, and I thought it might be rather good for them to come here. Besides, they’re great friends of mine, and of Denison’s--(one of them’s his cousin)--and awfully nice. I’ve written about them sometimes, I expect--Jane Dawn and Eileen Le Moine. Jane draws extraordinarily nice things in pen and ink, and is altogether rather a refreshing person. Eileen plays the violin--you must have heard her name--Mrs. Le Moine. Everyone’s going to hear her just now; she’s wonderful.” “She’d better play at the bazaar, I should think,” suggested Daphne, who didn’t see why parsons’ daughters should be the only ones involved in this bazaar business. She wasn’t very fond of artists and musicians and literary people, for the most part; so often their conversation was about things that bored one.