"Mind her funnybone--all together--up with her! Oh, pursue me, wenches, I've got my muscle up, first time since the second housemaid ran away with the dustman! Don't tickle her parson's nose, Archi-bald, or she'll sneeze when I sing, key in the usual place--and mind the stair above the top, it isn't there. This way--excuse my shirt-sleeves, Miss Windus, I'm in mourning." And so the piano was trundled to its place in the corner by the big blackboard. Mr. Mackie was of service, too, in the French-chalking of the floor, for the men hauled him about by the arms and legs on a piece of sacking in order to give it its final polish for dancing. Half the students, male and female, helped to wind the blackened old brackets and chandeliers with red and green tissue paper, to set evergreens on the tops of the cupboards, and to affix the trophies of little Christmas tree flags on the cabbagey old walls; and Louie helped with the refreshments. Three women had been got in, one to make coffee and the others to preside in the cloakrooms, and Miss Levey had won half-a-crown from Kitty Windus. For Mr. Jeffries was coming to the party after all. More, it had been Louie herself who had asked him, though it had been Miss Levey's cunning that had made her do so. On no grounds at all save that it appeared to annoy, the Jewess had once or twice twitted Louie that Mr. Jeffries favoured _her_ and, when Mr. Jeffries had declined her own invitation, had nudged Louie. "_You_ ask him, and see whether he doesn't come!" the nudge had meant. Louie entered into no contest with Miss Levey. She had turned at once to Mr. Jeffries and repeated the invitation. He had accepted it. Louie doubted her own wisdom in going to that social at all. Even when she had reached Sutherland Place and spread out her frocks on her bed she still doubted. But suddenly she gave a short laugh. Of course she was going! It was her first "social," and it might be her last; she was going, and she was going to wear the oyster-grey satin that, ever since she had had it, had always seemed to "live" so on her shoulders. She declined Mrs. Leggat's help in getting into it; if Mrs. Leggat would be so good as to get her a hansom instead----Mrs. Leggat went out. The oyster-grey was one of the oldest of her frocks; Louie knew every stitch of it; and she smiled as she thought that for that very reason she would have chosen it had she deliberately intended to make a conquest. She surveyed herself in it in the tilted glass. Yes, she thought she would do. "It's your last time on, poor old rag," she muttered. She heard the pulling up of the hansom; she put on a light shawl and descended; and Mrs. Leggat lingered in the doorway as she drove off.