Chapter 36

Harrowby and the rest did not carry on their War Work in the slice of a
house. It was of an order requiring a more serious atmosphere. Feather
saw even the Starling less and less.

"Since the Dowager took her up she's far too grand for the likes of us,"
she said.

So to speak, Feather blew about from one place to another. She had never
found life so exciting and excitement had become more vitally necessary
to her existence as the years had passed. She still looked
extraordinarily youthful and if her face was at times rather marvelous
in its white and red, and her lips daring in their pomegranate scarlet,
the fine grain of her skin aided her effects and she was dazzlingly in
the fashion. She had never worn such enchanting clothes and never had
seemed to possess so many.

"I twist my rags together myself," she used to laugh. "That's my gift.
Hélène says I have genius. I don't mean that I sit and sew. I have a
little slave woman who does that by the day. She admires me and will do
anything that I tell her. Things are so delightfully scant and short now
that you can cut two or three frocks out of one of your old
petticoats--and mine were never very old."

There was probably a modicum of truth in this--the fact remained that
the garments which were more scant and shorter than those of any other
feathery person were also more numerous and exquisite. Her patriotic
entertainment of soldiers who required her special order of support and
recreation was fast and furious. She danced with them at cabarets; she
danced as a nymph for patriotic entertainments, with snow-white bare
feet and legs and a swathing of Spring woodland green tulle and leaves
and primroses. She was such a success that important personages smiled
on her and asked her to appear under undreamed of auspices. Secretly
triumphant though she was, she never so far lost her head as to do
anything which would bore her or cause her to appear at less than an
alluring advantage. When she could invent a particularly unique and
inspiring shred of a garment to startle the public with, she danced for
some noble object and intoxicated herself with the dazzle of light and
applause. She found herself strung to her highest pitch of excitement by
the air raids, which in the midst of their terrors had the singular
effect of exciting many people and filling them with an insane
recklessness. Those so excited somehow seemed to feel themselves immune.
Feather chattered about "Zepps" as if bombs could only wreak their
vengeance upon coast towns and the lower orders.

When Lord Coombe definitely refused to allow her to fit up the roof of
the slice of a house as a sort of luxurious Royal Box from which she