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We were both staying at Overdene. There was a big house party, and Aunt Georgina had arranged a concert to which half the neighbourhood was coming. Madame Velma failed at the last minute. Aunt 'Gina, in a great state of mind, was borrowing remarks from her macaw. You know how? She always says she is merely quoting `the dear bird. Something had to be done.
Why not go inside for a shampoo? She turned to her companions. "I suppose it is perfectly proper under the circumstances to go inside somehow. I'll apply for a shampoo!" "But the rest of us?" wailed the curious Velma. "Ask for something else," suggested the resourceful Jane. "Perhaps she won't answer the ring," parried Janet.
So the name of the greatest teacher of singing of this age did not convey much to Myra's mind. But Garth Dalmain sat up. "I say! No wonder you take it coolly. Why, Velma herself was a pupil of the great madame." "That is how it happens that I know her rather well," said Jane. "I am here to-day because I was to have played her accompaniment." "I see," said Garth. "And now you have to do both.
"Who is the surprise packet to-night?" asked Lady Ingleby, who had arrived since luncheon. "Velma," said Mary Strathern. "She is coming for the week-end, and delightful it will be to have her. No one but the duchess could have worked it, and no place but Overdene would have tempted her. She will sing only one song at the concert; but she is sure to break forth later on, and give us plenty.
The duchess smiled, and consented to sit down. "But, dear Duchess," suggested Garth in his most soothing voice, "the county does not know Madame Velma was to be here. It was a profound secret. You were to trot her out at the end. Lady Ingleby called her your 'surprise packet." Myra came out from behind her garden hat, and the duchess nodded at her approvingly. "Quite true," she said.
Then at the very end, you see and really some of it is quite good for amateurs she trots out Velma, or some equally perfect artiste, to show them how it really can be done; and suddenly the place is full of music, and a great hush falls on the audience, and the poor complacent amateurs realise that the noise they have been making was, after all, not music; and they go dumbly home.
"Just tell us what happened when you got inside the Beauty Shop," begged Velma, who had secret dreams of C. O. D. dimples and longed to hear of such possibilities. "It was like a screen comedy," replied Judith, who had been beautifully pillowed up and otherwise made comfortable on Janet's solo-couch.
But no one can accompany Madame Velma so perfectly, so this time she is commanded to stay. But I doubt if the 'surprise packet' will come off with quite such a shock as usual, and I am certain the fun won't be so good afterwards. The Honourable Jane has been known to jump on the duchess for that sort of thing.
"Velma said something like that," admitted Maud. "She said Shirley was so so antagonistic that her presence here might disturb some friendly communication, and " Jane's laugh finished the hypothesis. "How delicious of Velma!" she exclaimed. "But we must be careful not to bring any more trouble upon poor Shirley.
"I expected a holiday at least to fumigate, and here we have nothing but a lot of perfectly sanitary junk." "And I thought we would find a beautiful maniac walled up there," sighed Velma Sigsbee. "It's a perfect shame to have the thing end so unromantically." "Hard to suit you youngsters," commented Jane.
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