“Why not go as the Dawn?” he said; “ ‘the Dawn, which always means goodbye.’ ”

“But I don’t want to mean goodbye,” protested the lady; “it’s hard enough to find one’s partners in all that crush, without saying goodbye to them when you’ve got them.”

“An inspiration!” cried Rollo; “there is one character in fiction one hears no end of, but no one has ever seen her represented in portrait or in the flesh. Go as the Aunt of the Gardener. Every one would welcome her as an old friend the moment she came in with the pen of the Admiral and the good pears of the Ambassador. That woman must have been an inveterate kleptomaniac, you know, or else a very advanced Fabian; nothing seems to have been safe from her. The basket of the washerwoman and the small apricot of the child were no more sacred to her than the property of people better able to afford plundering. Do go as the Aunt of the Gardener, Mrs. Pendercoet. I have a great-uncle who is an admiral, and I’m sure he’d be delighted to lend you a pen.”