this, when Mrs. William Ford Maynard must come forth from her hiding-place and meet this test of a searching inspection.
I shall never forget the faint, sickening feeling inside of me as we stood waiting for admittance before the big colonial house. We must have been the last ones to arrive. A babble of voices in the drawing-room at the left greeted us as we entered. We walked up the old colonial stairway, and into a big bedroom at the top with a black walnut bedroom set. I noticed that even in my fright.
"Mercy, child, don't take off your gloves," whispered Edith to me.
"I hate them," I said, and ripped my arms bare. I wore a light blue silk dress with a Dutch neck, in spite of Edith in her low-cut ball-gown plastered over with glittering black spangles. My hair was done in its usual everyday knot at the back of my neck, bobbed up in the last five minutes after Ruth's sixth attempt at dressing it in the "new way." Edith looked like a fashion-plate: she had a perfect figure; her neck is marvellous; she wore diamonds and a string of pearls.
I followed her down the stairs very carefully, lest I trip in my little French-heeled satin slippers or lose the silly things altogether. My heart was in my mouth. "What shall I say when I am introduced? What shall I say? What shall I say?" I kept thinking in a panic and watched Edith sweep across the hall in her most impressive manner. I waited an instant. A minute more and Will was announcing, "And this is my wife, Mrs. Graham." My heart fluttered as it used to at parties at home.
