Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley

								

as a sultana cake is stuffed with plums.
The day I asked Father for the white frock with roses on it in
Selfridge's window, he was so disagreeable that I went to my room and
slammed the door and kicked a chair. It was true that I did not need the
dress, because I never went anywhere and was only a flapper (it's almost
more unpleasant to be called a flapper than a "mouth to feed"); still,
the real pleasure of having a thing is when you don't need it, but just
want it. The farther away from me that gown seemed to recede, the more I
longed for it; and when Father told me not to nag or be a little idiot,
I determined that somehow or other, by hook or crook, the frock should
hang on my wall behind the chintz curtain which calls itself a wardrobe.
The morning of the refusal, Father and Di were starting off to be away
all that day and night. They were asked to a ridiculous house party
given by a rich, suburban Pickle family at Epsom for the Derby, and Di
had been grumbling that it was exactly the sort of invitation they
would get: for one night and the Derby, instead of Ascot. However, it
was the time of the month for a moon, and quite decent young men had
been enticed; so Di wasn't so very sorry for herself after all. Her
nickname at home in Ireland, "Diana the Huntress," had been already
imported, free of duty, to England, by a discarded flirtée; but I don't
think she minded, it sounded so dashing, even if it was only grasping.
She went off moderately happy; and I was left with twenty-four hours on
my hands to decide by what hook, or what crook, I could possibly annex
the dress which I felt had been born for me.
At last I thought of a way that might do. My poor little chocolate
mother made a will the day before she died, when I was a week old,
leaving everything she possessed to me. Of course her money was all
gone, because she had been married for two years to Father, and Himself
is a very expensive man. But he hadn't spent her jewels yet, nor her
wedding veil, nor a few other pieces of lace. Since then he's wheedled
most of the jewellery out of me, but the wedding veil I mean to keep
always, and a Point d'Alençon scarf and some handkerchiefs he has
probably forgotten. I had forgotten them, too, but when I was racking my
brain how to get the Selfridge dress, the remembrance tumbled down off
its dusty little shelf.
The legacies were at the bottom of my trunk, because it was simpler to
bring them away from Ballyconal, than find a stowaway place that the
American family wouldn't need for its belongings. The veil nothing would
have induced me to part with; but the scarf was so old, I felt sure it
must have come to my mother from a succession of chocolate or perhaps
soap or sardine grandmammas, and I hadn't much sentiment about it. I had
no precise idea what the lace ought to be worth, but I fancied Point
d'Alençon must be valuable, and I thought I ought to get more than
enough by selling it to buy the white dress, which cost seven guineas.