“Rue, it’s awful! My reputation… in tatters. I may never recover from the scandal.” She paced about in a veritable state. A lock of her hair might actually have fallen out of place.

“My dear, what’s wrong?” Rue bribed Footnote to the floor with a bit of chicken skin. Then she stood to console her friend with an arm about the waist.

Prim trembled in agitation. “I hardly dare speak of it.”

Rue lowered her voice. “Prim, were you caught in flagrante?” Rue could hardly suppose this to be true – Primrose was a horrible flirt but she wasn’t a hardened flirt. As far as Rue knew, Prim had never even entertained a gentleman in private. In this, Prim was the more circumspect of the two of them.

Prim resumed pacing, gesticulating, and talking – likely to knock some carefully placed decorative item over in her agitation. “I was making my calls, presenting parting compliments pour dire adieu, the rounds and such, as you do.”

“You didn’t use the wrong size card, did you?”

“The very idea! I am not absent of all sense of decorum. Of course, I used the larger format. But you see, oh, it’s just too bad…”

“Primrose Tunstell, what has happened?”

“I made near a dozen calls and it wasn’t until I got to the duchess’s that I realised. Oh, Rue, I can hard bear think – the shame of it all.”

“What is it?” Now Rue was getting annoyed. Primrose was drawing things out for dramatic suspense.

“I wore the wrong outfit.”

“Is that all?” Rue realised that was what her inner drones had been upset about that afternoon. Primrose had been wearing a travelling dress, not a visiting dress.

“Queen Mums will never forgive me. A travelling outfit for evening calls? Should she hear of this, should it get back to her, I’ll never live it down. And of course I returned home to the hive and her drones saw. I wondered what they were tittering about. Then I got to my room and looked in the glass and right there, on my head, a sun hat. At night! And a travelling gown. Oh, the shame of it. I went back down immediately and begged them not to tell. But they can’t hold their tongues, not for more than one night.”

“This is a serious business.” Rue schooled her expression into one of deep concern. It hardly mattered that she thought it ridiculous – Primrose was in distress and such perturbation must be honoured.

“Queen Mums practically invented the idea of specialty hats. And to pair one with an inappropriate dress? I might as well have worn my bicycling outfit to her dinner party.”

“Practically?” interjected Rue. “She did invent the idea.”

“Oh, Rue, what are we to do?”

“Issue a statement of apology to the popular press?”