Miss Bellamy examined her tray. The basket-ends were full of telegrams, a spray of orchids lay across the plate and beside it a parcel in silver wrapping tied with pink ribbon.

“What’s all this?” she asked, as she had asked for her last fifteen birthdays, and took up the parcel.

“The flowers are from the Colonel. He’ll be bringing his present later on, as per usual, I suppose.”

“I wasn’t talking about the flowers,” Miss Bellamy said and opened the parcel. “Florrie! Florrie, darling!”

Florence clattered the firearms. “Might as well get in early,” she muttered, “or it’d never be noticed.”

It was a chemise, gossamer fine and exquisitely embroidered.

“Come here!” Miss Bellamy said, fondly bullying.

Florence walked over to the bed and suffered herself to be kissed. Her face became crimson. For a moment she looked at her employer with a devotion that was painful in its intensity and then turned aside, her eyes filmed with unwilling tears.

“But it’s out of this world!” Miss Bellamy marvelled, referring to the chemise. “That’s all! It’s just made my day for me.” She shook her head slowly from side to side, lost in wonderment. “I can’t wait,” she said and, indeed, she was very pleased with it.

“There’s the usual mail,” Florence grunted. “More, if anything.”

“Truly?”

“Outside on the trolley. Will I fetch it in here?”

“After my bath, darling, may we?”

Florence opened drawers and doors, and began to lay out the clothes her mistress had chosen to wear. Miss Bellamy, who was on a strict diet, drank her tea, ate her toast, and opened her telegrams, awarding each of them some pleased ejaculation. “Darling, Bertie! Such a sweet muddled little message. And a cable, Florrie, from the Bantings in New York. Heaven of them!”

“That show’s folding, I’m told,” Florence said, “and small wonder. Dirty and dull, by all accounts. You mustn’t be both.”