"Well, my dear, you went to a Court Ball, and to all the best houses. The boys don't do more than that. I shouldn't do as much if I went to London in the season." "Yes, I went. And I went because Cousin Humphrey took the trouble to get cards for us. He is an old darling. Do you suppose father would have taken the smallest trouble about it--for me and mother?" "He knows all the great people. I suppose a Clinton is as good as anybody." "Yes, a _man_ Clinton. That is just it. Dick and Humphrey go everywhere as a matter of course. I saw enough of it to know what society in London means. It is like a big family; you meet the same people night after night, and everybody knows everybody else--that is in the houses that Cousin Humphrey got us invited to. Dick and Humphrey know everybody like that; they were part of the family; and mother and I were just country cousins who knew nobody." "Well, of course, they are there all the time and you were only up for a fortnight. Didn't they introduce you to people?" "O yes. Dick and Humphrey are kind enough. They wanted me to have a good time. But you are not supposed to want introductions in London. You are supposed to know enough men to dance with, or you wouldn't be there. And the men don't like it. I often heard Dick and Humphrey apologising to their friends for asking them to dance with me. You know the sort of thing, Muriel: 'You might take a turn with my little sister, old man, if you've nobody better. She's up here on the spree and she don't know anybody.'" "O Cicely, they wouldn't give you away like that." "Perhaps not quite as bad as that. Dick and Humphrey are nice enough as brothers, and I believe they're proud of me too, in a way. They always danced with me themselves, and they always noticed what I was wearing, and said I looked a topper. I know I looked all right, but directly I opened my mouth I gave myself away, just like a maid in her mistress's clothes." "O Cicely!" "Well, it was like that. I had nothing to talk about. I don't know London; I can't talk scandal about people I don't know. Of course I had to tell them I had always lived in the country, and then they began to talk about hunting at once. Then I had to say that I didn't hunt, and then they used to look at me through their eyeglasses, and wonder what the deuce I did do with myself. The fact is, that I can't do anything. Even the ones with brains--there _were_ a few of them--who tried me with things besides hunting, couldn't get anything out of me, because there is nothing to get. I've never been anywhere or seen anything. I don't know anything--nothing about books or pictures or music or plays. Why on earth _should_ they want to talk to me? Hardly any of them did twice, unless it was those who thought I was pretty and wanted to flirt with me. I felt such a _fool_!" She was almost in tears. Her pretty face under its white motor-cap was flushed; she twisted her gloves in her slender hands.