ken by the others, so
down I sit and fill up the wait by scribbling a page or two more, and I
hope, my dear, the result will amuse you.

"I wear my best clothes all day long, eat indigestible food, go to bed
late, get up later, and have Esmeralda's maid to do my hair. You'd
think it would need an effort to change into a fine lady all at once,
but it doesn't; you just slip in, and feel like a sleek, stroked cat.
My dear, I was born to be a Society Belle!

"Pixie."

CHAPTER NINE.

A RIFT.

"Let me break it to you tenderly," said Mrs Hilliard to her guests at
breakfast on the morning after the picnic, "that on Thursday there is a
bazaar, and that it's no use any of you making plans for that day or the
morning before. The real reason why I invited you all just at this
particular time is that you might assist, and be bright and pleasant and
make my stall a success."

She smiled beguilingly as she spoke, and no one could be more beguiling
than Joan when it suited her own purpose. But her blandishments failed
to propitiate her hearers, who one and all laid down knives and forks
and fell back in their seats in attitudes expressive of dismay.

"A bazaar. _Assist_? What bazaar? Where? What for? This is too
sudden! Why were we not warned?"

Joan twinkled mischievously.

"I was afraid you would run away. People are so surly about bazaars.
It's in the village; for a parish nurse. She's new, and needs a cottage
and furniture, and clothes and salary, and the money has to be found. I
wanted Geoffrey to give it right out, it's so much simpler, but he
wouldn't. He thought it was right that other people should help."

Geoffrey Hilliard said nothing. It was true that he thought it a wrong
attitude for a whole parish to depend upon the gifts of one rich man,
but an even stronger reason had been his desire to induce his wife to
take some active interest in her poorer neighbours and to occupy herself
on their behalf. When Joan had unwillingly consented to take the
principal stall at the bazaar, he had complacently expected a succession
of committee meetings and sewing-bees, which would make a wholesome
interest in a life spent too entirely in self-gratification; but the
weeks had passed by, and the bazaar was at hand, and so far he had
observed no symptoms of work on its behalf.

He sat silently, waiting to glean information through the questioning of
his guests.

"I've taken part in bazaars before now. I'm