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débutante .
    On the other hand – although, mercifully, not everyone noticed it – they were extremely stupid.
    They seemed to be interested in nothing except each other. Even the young men whom Lady Osmund forced upon them, provided they were distinguished enough, evoked little more than monosyllabic replies and an endless succession of girlish giggles.
    Azalea had heard one lady who was supposedly a friend of Lady Osmund’s say scathingly,
    “They have two bodies with only one mind between them – and a very tiny one at that!”
    It was, Azalea had to admit, a more or less truthful comment, and yet she liked her cousins and they had never been anything but pleasant to her.
    Dressed in new and very elegant travelling gowns of rose-pink, their close-fitting jackets trimmed with fur, and their bonnets tied under their chins with satin ribbons, they looked very attractive.
    Azalea was well aware of the contrast of her own appearance.
    There had been nothing that had once belonged to the twins suitable for her to travel in, and – determined to economise where her niece was concerned – Lady Osmund had presented her with a travelling gown and jacket of her own which had proved an unfortunate purchase.
    Dark chocolate brown, it had been badly altered by the seamstress who came to the house and, although Azalea had tried with her own skilful fingers to make the gown fit better, nothing could change its unbecoming colour.
    It made her skin look sallow and seemed to envelop her with a kind of inexpressible gloom.
    “I hate it!” she told herself when she saw it lying on her bed ready for her to put on for the journey. “It is ugly!”
    She had at that moment a sudden longing for beautiful clothes, for the brilliant colours, the soft silks and transparent gauzes which her mother had worn.
    They had made her skin glow like ivory and her hair hold purple and blue lights which at night seemed part of the moonlight.
    But there was for Azalea only the brown dress, or else to board the ship in the March wind and rain wearing one of the thin, faded gowns which had been handed down to her by Violet or Daisy.
    ‘No one will look at me anyway,’ Azalea told herself sensibly, ‘and besides, I shall be very busy.’
    That was to understate what she knew lay ahead of her. Lady Osmund made it quite clear that, if she was to enjoy the privilege of travelling with them, she would act as lady’s maid to all three.
    “I would have taken a cabin on the Second Class deck for you,” she said to Azalea, “but that might make it difficult for you to spend your time with us. Therefore you are very fortunate, and you should be very grateful for being allowed to travel First Class.”
    “Thank you, Aunt Emily,” Azalea said, knowing the reply was expected of her.
    She was not, however, inclined to be so grateful when she saw her cabin.
    Lady Osmund and the twins had outside cabins on the First Class deck. They were spacious and light and were furnished in a manner which justified the P. & O.’s eulogising about them.
    Azalea’s cabin had no porthole and was so small as to have been, she was quite certain, intended only for a servant or perhaps when the ship was not full, for a store-room.
    But, she told herself quietly, what did it matter as long as the ugly, square-prowed Orissa , with its two slightly leaning funnels which gave it a vacuous look, would carry her to Hong Kong. She was well aware that the shipping lines were intensely proud of their ships and advertised them extravagantly.
    Her uncle had left a brochure lying on his desk, and reading it, Azalea had learnt that the engines were “so smooth it was difficult to believe the ship was moving at all.”
    There was an organ, a picture gallery, and a Library which contained over three hundred books!
    This, Azalea told herself, was the first place she would visit as soon as she had an opportunity.
    Lady Osmund swept up the gangway of the Orissa rather as if she herself were a ship