Beatrice would have preferred meeting her new friends without any
ceremony in the garden, but Mrs. Meadowsweet was nothing if she was not
mistress of her own house, and she decided that it would be more
becoming and _comme il faut_ to wait in the drawing-room for the
young visitors.

Accordingly Mrs. Meadowsweet sat in her chair of state. She wore a
rose-colored silk dress, and a quantity of puffed white lace round her
neck and wrists; and a cap which was tall and stiff, and had little
tufts of yellow ribbon and little rosettes of Maltese lace adorning it,
surmounted her large, full-blown face. That face was all beams and
kindliness and good-temper, and had somehow the effect of making people
forget whether Mrs. Meadowsweet was vulgar or not.

She sat in her chair of state facing the garden, and her visitors, all
on the tip-toe of expectation, stationed themselves round her. The Bells
had taken possession of the Chesterfield sofa. By sitting rather widely
apart they managed to fill it; they always looked alike. To-night they
so exactly resembled peas in a pod that one had a sense of ache and
almost fatigue in watching them. This fatigue and irritation rose to
desperation when they spoke. The Bells were poor, and their dresses bore
decided signs of stint and poverty. They wore white muslin jackets, and
pale green skirts of a shining substance known as mohair. Their mother
fondly imagined that the shine and glitter of this fabric could not be
known from silk. It was harsh, however, and did not lie in graceful
folds, and besides, the poor little skirts lacked quantity.

The Bells had thin hair, and no knack whatever with regard to its
arrangement. They looked unprepossessing girls, but no matter. Beatrice