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274 body must, unless indeed several people race each other to the hall door, and from the hall door to the reception room, and burst in on the host and hostess simultaneously, "like three jolly butchers all of a row." I have laid down my bouquet, and am fighting with the fourth button of my long gloves (I think I rather overdid them, they nearly reach to my elbow), when Milly sails in, majestic, beautiful, with the value of the clothes of twenty ordinarily well-dressed females on her back.

"Good gracious!" she says, catching sight of me, "how—how decent you look!"

"Yes," I say with delight, "is it not wonderful? I had no idea so much virtue lay in a gown!"

"Upon my word!" says Alice's gay voice behind me. "Talk about the ugly duckling"

I turn round to look at her, a dainty apparition in pale amber, with sapphires twinkling on her arms, neck, and hair. Alice is one of those fortunate people whom each colour seems to suit better than the last. Dress her in blue she is heavenly; in pink she is ravishing; white sets her off to perfection; and I have even known her emerge radiant from a bilious bottle-green serge that might have puzzled the fairness of Cytheræa herself.

"Do not revive that stale, stale old story," I say, entreatingly. "I know it is my clothes, not me; but let us try and shut our eyes to the fact. Let us for one evening indulge in the pious fiction that I am good looking!"

"I don't know that it is altogether your dress," says Alice, considering. "I have seen you look astonishingly well once or twice lately. If I had not always been so used to the idea that you were plain, Nell, I should say you were rather pretty."

Profoundly as I have been admiring myself, this unexpected praise makes me feel modest, and I turn the conversation with considerable haste.