'Sometimes, when a lot of us went to a
shop with one of the governesses, one would slip out and post a letter.
Fraulein was so short-sighted, she never guessed. We used to call her
the jolly old Kafer. But Mademoiselle was very sharp. She once caught
Alice Bell, so that she had to make an excuse and say she had dropped
something. You see, she really had--the letter into the slit.'
'But that was an equivocation.'
'Oh, you darling scrupulous, long-worded child! You aren't like the
girls at Miss Dormer's, only she drove us to it, you know. You'll be
horribly shocked, but I'll tell you what Louie Preston did. There was
a young man in the town whom she had met at a picnic in the holidays--a
clerk, he was, at the bank--and he used to put notes to her under the
cushions at church; but one unlucky Sunday, Louie had a cold and didn't
go, and she told Mabel Blisset to bring it, and Mabel didn't understand
the right place, and went poking about, so that Miss Dormer found it
out, and there was such a row!'
'Wasn't that rather vulgar?' said Dolores.
'Well, he was only a clerk, but he was a duck of a man, with regular
auburn hair, you know. And he sang! We used to go to the Choral
Society concerts, and he sang ballads so beautifully, and always looked
at Louie!'
'I should not care for anything of that sort,' said Dolores. 'I think
it is bad form.'
'So it is,' said Constance, seriously, 'only one can't help
recollecting the fun of the thing, and what one was driven to in those
days.
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