We were laying aside our wraps in the bedroom amid the usual chatter and manoeuvring for position before the mirror. Mary, just returned from a trip abroad, was the centre of interest—in fact, we'd all been undisguisedly eying her clothes for the last five minutes. Her velvet wrap in tawny gold (almost it became bronze in folds of the fabric) with its high ruched collar and voluminous sleeves, and her slippers in the same shade of velvet; her frock, paler, yellower, but still not quite yellow, with its bodice fulness held by a casual cluster of field flowers in nasturtium colours at the neckline—so we talked clothes.

* * *

We heard a little about shopping in London and Paris, and about a dressshow a London friend had invited her to. We enquired about the tweed suit she had worn to Estelle's morning-tea party and were surprised to hear she had bought it in Sydney. We listened to a description of a more exciting suit than that—with family tartan fashioned into a kilt-like skirt fringed and wrapped to the side; of her very smartest cocktail hat, a silver toque with a coarse stiffened veil standing out round it; of her most comfortable frock on the boat and even for semievenings—a very fragile hand-knitted woollen that somehow didn't look like wool.

* * *

But by this time a move to the drawing-room seemed indicated. On the way I asked Mary whom she went to for manicures now she was back. “No one,” laughed Mary. “I'm greedy of my time, so I do my own.”

* * *

Not until a week later, at an informal luncheon-party for the returned wanderer (Mary in a mannish worsted suit with chalk white lines, and a sailor hat with flattering upturned brim), did I again broach the subject of manicures. If a perfectly groomed hand like Mary's was the result of home treatment, I was eager to learn her methods.

Here is a resume of what Mary told me. She always keeps her manicure utensils together on a tray—scissors, file, emery board, buffer, cotton wool, orange sticks, cuticle remover, cold cream, small bottle of peroxide, liquid polish. (She explained that until recently she had preferred a dry nailstone for producing a polish).

If her nails are fairly long, she uses the scissors first and finishes up with careful filing from the corners towards the middle of the nail. The emery board last of all makes an even neater job of it.

Soaking of the hands for several minutes in warm soapy water is the longest part of the procedure. The hands are then carefully dried, the cuticle being gently pushed back with the towel. (“I always do that when drying my hands.” Mary assured me). A dab of cold cream is then smeared round the base of each nail. An orange stick, wound round with a wisp of cotton wool and dipped in cuticle remover, tidies up the cuticle. Finally, the old polish is removed and the new applied.

“And the peroxide? Anything special about that?”

“No. Just for stains under the nail. I usually dip an orange stick with cotton-wool in the peroxide and wipe under each nail. They look cleaner. Occasionally, specially in the winter, I rub warm olive oil into my hands at night, and sleep in old gloves. The skin keeps in better condition.”

I've adopted Mary's manicure—and to-day Lucille, the rather supercilious Lucille, condescended to admire my nails! But I didn't tell her that I did them myself!

* * *