One of the observers had eyes only for the little girl with long 
flame-colored hair. Her connexion to that child was suggested by her auburn 
hair and eyebrows. She was dressed in a hand-sewn frock of woven cotton, whose 
crispness betrayed its recent
provenance in a milliner's atelier in Dovetail. If the gathering had included 
more veterans of that elongated state of low-intensity warfare known as 
Society, this observation would have been keenly made by those soi-disant sentries who stood upon the battlements, keeping vigil 
against bounders who would struggle their way up the vast glacis separating 
wage slaves from Equity Participants. It would have been duly noted and set 
forth in the oral tradition that Gwendolyn Hackworth, though attractive, 
hard-waisted, and poised, lacked the confidence to visit Lord Finkle-McGraw's 
house in anything other than a new dress made for the occasion.