all about it soon, and I am sure you will be pleased."
If she had done so, she knew perfectly well how hearty and pleasant
would have been Mrs Asplin's consent; but there are some states of mind
in which it is a positive pleasure to be a martyr, and to feel oneself
misunderstood, and this was just the mood in which Peggy found herself
at present. She heard Mrs Asplin sigh, as if with anxiety and
disappointment, as she left the room, and shrugged her shoulders in
wilful indifference.

"She thinks I like sitting shivering here! I slave, and slave, from
morning till night, and then people think I am sulky! I am not working
for myself. I don't want the wretched old ten pounds; I could have ten
pounds to-morrow if I needed it. Mother said I could. I am working to
help Rob, and now I shall have to sit up later, and get up earlier than
ever, as I mayn't work during the day. Mellicent said I was never with
them, did she! I don't see that it matters whether I am there or not!
They don't want me; nobody wants me, now that Rosalind has come! I hate
Rosalind--nasty, smirking, conceited thing!" and Peggy jerked the towel
off the writing-table and flicked it violently to and fro in the air,
just as a little relief to her overcharged feelings.

She was crossing the hall with unwilling steps when the postman's knock
sounded at the door, and three letters in long, narrow envelopes fell to
the ground. Each envelope was of a pale pink tint, with a crest and
monogram in white relief; one was addressed to the Misses Asplin,
another to Oswald Elliston, and a third to Miss Mariquita Saville.

"Invitations!" cried Peggy, with a caper of delight. "Invitations! How
scrumptious!" Her face clouded for a moment as the sight of the letters
"R.D." suggested the sender of the letters; but the natural girlish
delight in an unexpected festivity was stronger even than her
prejudices, and it was the old, bright Peggy who bounced into the
schoolroom holding up the three letters, and crying gleefully, "_Quis,
Quis_, something nice for somebody! An invitation!"

"_Ego, Ego_!" came the eager replies, and the envelopes were seized and
torn open in breathless haste.

"From Rosalind! Oh, how funny! `Requests the pleasure--company--to a
pink luncheon.' What in the world is a `pink luncheon'?--`on Tuesday
next, the 20th inst.'"

"A p-p-pink luncheon? How wewwy stwange!" echoed Mellicent, who had
been suddenly affected with an incapacity to