'You naughty puss!' said Gertrude, 'we have been looking for you all over the gardens. Mrs. Val and the Miss Neverbends have been waiting this half-hour.' Katie looked terribly frightened. 'Come along, and don't keep them waiting any longer. They are all in the passage. This was your fault, Master Charley.' 'O no, it was not,' said Katie; 'but we thought----' 'Never mind thinking,' said Gertrude, 'but come along.' And so they hurried on, and were soon replaced in their respective vehicles, and then went back to town. 'Well, I do think the Chiswick Gardens is the nicest place in all the world,' said Katie, leaning back in the cab, and meditating on her past enjoyment. 'They are very pretty--very,' said Lactimel Neverbend. 'I only wish every cottar had such a garden behind his cottage. I am sure we might manage it, if we set about it in the right way.' 'What! as big as Chiswick?' said Katie. 'No; not so big,' said Lactimel; 'but quite as nicely kept.' 'I think the pigs would get in,' said Katie. 'It would be much easier, and more important too, to keep their minds nicely,' said Ugolina; and there the pigs could never get in.' 'No; I suppose not,' said Katie. 'I don't know that,' said Lactimel. CHAPTER XXVI KATIE'S FIRST BALL In spite of Mrs. Val's oft-repeated assurance that they would have none but nice people, she had done her best to fill her rooms, and not unsuccessfully. She had, it is true, eschewed the Golightly party, who resided some north of Oxford Street, in the purlieus of Fitzroy Square, and some even to the east of Tottenham Court Road. She had eschewed the Golightlys, and confined herself to the Scott connexion; but so great had been her success in life, that, even under these circumstances, she had found herself able to fill her rooms respectably. If, indeed, there was no absolute crowding, if some space was left in the front drawing-room sufficient for the operations of dancers, she could still attribute this apparent want of fashionable popularity to the selections of the few nice people whom she had asked. The Hon. Mrs. Val was no ordinary woman, and understood well how to make the most of the goods with which the gods provided her. The Miss Neverbends were to dine with the Tudors, and go with them to the dance in the evening, and their brother Fidus was to meet them there. Charley was, of course, one of the party at dinner; and as there was no other gentleman there, Alaric had an excellent opportunity, when the ladies went up to their toilets, to impress on his cousin the expediency of his losing no time in securing to himself Miss Golightly's twenty thousand pounds. The conversation, as will be seen, at last became rather animated. 'Well, Charley, what do you think of the beautiful Clementina?' said Alaric, pushing over the bottle to his cousin, as soon as they found themselves alone. 'A 'doosed' fine girl, as Captain Val says, isn't she?'