Missy, still standing in mute embarrassment, couldn't have explained how it was not the party entirely.
Mother did not scold her for dressing up.
“Better get those things off, dear,” she said kindly, “and come in and let me curl your hair. I'd better do it before supper, before the baby gets cross.” The crimped coiffure was an immense success; even in her middy blouse Missy felt transformed. She could have kissed herself in the glass!
“Do you think I look pretty, mother?” she asked. “You mustn't think of such things, dear.” But, as mother stooped to readjust a waving lock, her fingers felt marvellously tender to Missy's forehead.
Evening arrived with a sunset of grandeur and glory. It made everything look as beautiful as it should look on the occasion of a festival. The beautiful and festive aspect of the world without, and of, her heart within, made it difficult to eat supper. And after supper it was hard to breathe naturally, to control her nervous fingers as she dressed.
At last, with the help of mother and Aunt Nettie, her toilet was finished: the pink-silk stockings and slippers shimmering beneath the lengthened pink mull; the brocaded pink ribbon now become a huge, pink-winged butterfly; and, mother's last touch, a pink rosebud holding a tendril--a curling tendril--artfully above the left ear! Missy felt a stranger to herself as, like some gracious belle and fairy princess and airy butterfly all compounded into one, she walked--no, floated down the stairs.
“Well!” exclaimed father, “behold the Queen of the Ball!” But Missy did not mind his bantering tone. The expression of his eyes told her that he thought she looked pretty.
Presently Mrs. Allen and Kitty, in the Allens' surrey, stopped by for her. With them was a boy she had never seen before, a tall, dark boy in a blue-grey braided coat and white duck trousers--a military cadet!
He was introduced as Kitty's cousin, Jim Henley. Missy had heard about this Cousin Jim who was going to visit Cherryvale some time during the summer; he had arrived rather unexpectedly that day.
Kitty herself--in pink dotted mull, of course--was looking rather wan. Mrs. Allen explained she had eaten too much of the candy Cousin Jim had brought her.