The Dunstables came to town,
and invitations followed. Mr. and Mrs. Meadows were asked to a large
dinner-party, and Doris held her peace and went. She found herself at
the end of a long table with an inarticulate schoolboy of seventeen, a
ward of Lord Dunstable's, on her left, and with an elderly colonel on
her right, who, after a little cool examination of her through an
eyeglass, decided to devote himself to the _debutante_ on his other
side, a Lady Rosamond, who was ready to chatter hunting and horses to
him through the whole of dinner. The girl was not pretty, but she was
fresh and gay, and Doris, tired with "much serving," envied her spirits,
her evident assumption that the world only existed for her to
laugh and ride in, her childish unspoken claim to the best of
everything--clothes, food, amusements, lovers. Doris on her side made
valiant efforts with the schoolboy. She liked boys, and prided herself
on getting on with them. But this specimen had no conversation--at any
rate for the female sex--and apparently only an appetite.
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