d her expression changed to one of pitiful appeal.
"But, oh, have you got any boot-polish? The most awful thing has
happened. I've brought my old shoes by mistake! Look! I don't know
what on earth I shall do, if you can't give me something to black the
toes." She held out the shoes as she spoke, and Rosalind gave a shrill
scream of laughter.

"Oh! oh! Those things! How fwightfully funny! what a fwightful joke!
You will look like Cinderwella, when she wan away, and the glass
slippers changed back to her dweadful old clogs. It is too scweamingly
funny, I do declare!"

"Oh, never mind what you declare! Can you lend us some boot-polish--
that's the question!" cried Peggy sharply. She knew Mellicent's horror
of ridicule, and felt indignant with the girl who could stand by, secure
in her own beauty and elegance, and have no sympathy for the misfortune
of a friend. "If you have a bottle of peerless gloss, or any of those
shiny things with a sponge fastened on the cork, I can make them look
quite respectable, and no one will have any cause to laugh."

"Ha, ha, ha!" trilled Rosalind once more, "Peggy is cwoss! I never knew
such a girl for flying into tantwums at a moment's notice! Yes, of
course I'll lend you the polish. There is some in this little
cupboard--there! I won't touch it, in case it soils my gloves. Shall I
call Marie to put it on for you?"

"Thank you, there's no need--I can do it! I would rather do it myself!"

"Oh--oh, isn't she cwoss! You will bweak the cork if you scwew it about
like that, and then you'll never be able to get it out. Why don't you
pull it pwoperly?"

"I know how to pull out a cork, thank you; I've done it before!"

Peggy shot an angry glance at her hostess, and set to work again with
doubled energy. Now that Rosalind had laughed at her inability, it
would be misery to fail; but the bottle had evidently lain aside for
some time, and a stiff black crust had formed round the cork which made
it difficult to move. Peggy pulled and tugged, while Rosalind stood
watching, laughing her aggravating, patronising little laugh, and
dropping a word of instruction from time to time. And then, quite
suddenly, a dreadful thing happened. In the flash of an eye--so quickly
and unexpectedly, that, looking back upon it, it seemed like a nightmare
which could not possibly have taken place in real life--the cork jerked
out in Peggy's hand, in response to a savage tug, and with it out flew