Sophie remembered how happy and excited she used to be about the Ridge balls. She thought of it all vaguely at first, that lost girlish joy of hers, the free, careless gaiety which had swept her along as she danced. She remembered her father's fiddling, Mrs. Newton's playing; how the music had had a magic in it which set everybody's feet flying and the boys singing to tunes they knew. The men polished the floor so that you could scarcely walk on it. One year they had spent hours working it up so that you slipped along like greased lightning as you danced.
Sophie smiled at her reminiscences. The high tones of a man's voice, eager and exultant, shouting to someone across the twilight; the twitter of a girl's laughter--they were all in the air now as they had been then. Her listlessness stirred; everybody was preparing for the ball, and getting ready to go to it. Excitement and eager looking forward to a good time were in the air. They were infectious. Sophie trembled to them--they tempted her. Could she go to the ball, like everybody else? Could she drift again in the stream of easy and genial intercourse with all these people of the Ridge whom she loved and who loved her?
Martha came to the door. Her eyes strained on the brooding young face, trying to read from the changing expressions which flitted across it what Sophie was thinking.
"You're coming, aren't you, dearie?" she begged.
Sophie's eyes surprised the old woman, the brilliance of tears and light in them, their childish playing of hope beyond hope and fear, amazed her.
"Do you think I could, Martha?" she cried. "Do you think I could?"
"Course you could, darling," Martha said.
Sophie's arms went round her in an instant's quick pressure; then she stood off from her.
"Won't it be lovely," she cried, "to dance and sing--and to be young again, Martha?"
It was still light; the sky, faintly green, a tinge as of stale blood along the horizon, as Sophie and Potch walked down the road to the hall. At a little distance the big building showed dark and ungainly against the sky. Its double doors were open, and a wash of dull, golden light came out from it into the twilight, with the noise of people laughing and talking.
"It's like old times, isn't it, Potch"--Sophie's fingers closed over Potch's arm--"to be going to a Ridge dance?"