But Missy knew it wasn't the party entirely. Nor was it entirely the sound of the rain swishing, nor the look of the trees quietly weeping, nor of the vivid red patches of geranium beds. Everything could have been quite different, and still she'd have felt happy. Her feeling, mysteriously, was as much from things INSIDE her as from things outside.

After dinner was over and the baby minded for an hour, mother made the pink-brocaded sash. It was very lovely. Then she had an hour to herself, and since the rain wouldn't permit her to spend it in the summerhouse, she took a book up to her own room. It was a book of poems from the Public Library.

The first poem she opened to was one of the most marvellous things she had ever read--almost as wonderful as "The Blessed Damozel." She was glad she had chanced upon it on a rainy day, and when she felt like this. It was called "A Birthday," and it went:

My heart is like a singing bird Whose nest is in a watered shoot; My heart is like an apple tree Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; My heart is like a rainbow sh.e.l.l That paddles in a halcyon sea; My heart is gladder than all these, Because my love is come to me.

Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes; Carve it with doves and pomegranates, And peac.o.c.ks with a hundred eyes; Work in it gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys, Because the birthday of my life Is come; my love is come to me.

The poem expressed beautifully what she might have answered when Aunt Nettie asked why she smiled. Only, even though she herself could have expressed it so beautifully then, it was not the kind of answer you'd dream of making to Aunt Nettie.

The next morning Missy awoke to find the rain gone and warm, golden sunshine filtering through the lace curtains. She dressed herself quickly, while the sunshine smiled and watched her toilet. After breakfast, at the piano, her fingers found the scales tiresome. Of themselves they wandered off into unexpected rhythms which seemed to sing aloud: Work it in gold and silver grapes, In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys... Raise me a dais of silk and down; Hang it with vair and purple dyes...

She was idly wondering what a "vair" might be when her dreams were crashed into by mother's reproving voice: "Missy, what are you doing? If you don't get right down to practicing, there'll be no more parties!"

Abashed, Missy made her fingers behave, but not her heart. It was singing a tune far out of harmony with chromatic exercises, and she was glad her mother could not hear.

The tune kept right on throughout dinner. During the meal she was called to the telephone, and at the other end was Raymond; he wanted her to save him the first dance that evening. What rapture--this was what happened to the beautiful belles you read about!

After dinner mother and Aunt Nettie went to call upon some ladies they hoped wouldn't be at home--what funny things grown-ups do! The baby was taking his nap, and Missy had a delicious long time ahead in which to be utterly alone.

She took the library book of poems and a book of her father's out to the summerhouse. First she opened the book of her father's. It was a translation of a Russian book, very deep and moving and sad and incomprehensible. A perfectly fascinating book! It always filled her with vague, undefinable emotions. She read: "O youth, youth! Thou carest for nothing: thou possessest, as it were, all the treasures of the universe; even sorrow comforts thee, even melancholy becomes thee; thou art self-confident and audacious; thou sayest: 'I alone live--behold!'

But the days speed on and vanish without a trace and without reckoning, and everything vanishes in thee, like wax in the sun, like snow..."

Missy felt sublime sadness resounding through her soul. It was intolerable that days should speed by irrevocably and vanish, like wax in the sun, like snow. She sighed. But even as she sighed the feeling of sadness began to slip away. So she turned to the poem discovered last night, and read it over happily.

The t.i.tle, "A Birthday," made her feel that Raymond Bonner was somehow connected with it. This was his birthday--and that brought her thoughts back definitely to the party. Mother had said that presents were not expected, that they were getting too big to exchange little presents, yet she would have liked to carry him some little token. The ramblers and honeysuckle above her head sniffed at her in fragrant suggestion--why couldn't she just take him some flowers?

Acting on the impulse, Missy jumped up and began breaking off the loveliest blooms. But after she had gathered a big bunch a swift wave of self-consciousness swept over her. What would they say at the house?

Would they let her take them? Would they understand? And a strong distaste for their inevitable questions, for the explanations which she could not explain definitely even to herself, prompted her not to carry the bouquet to the house. Instead she ran, got a pitcher of water, carried it back to the summerhouse and left the flowers temporarily there, hoping to figure out ways and means later.

At the house she discovered that the baby was awake, so she had to hurry back to take care of him. She always loved to do that; she didn't mind that a desire to dress up in her party attire had just struck her, for the baby always entered into the spirit of her performances. While she was fastening up the pink dotted mull, Poppy walked inquisitively in and sat down to oversee this special, important event. Missy succeeded with the greatest difficulty in adjusting the brocaded sash to her satisfaction. She regretted her unwaved hair, but mother was going to crimp it herself in the evening. The straight, everyday coiffure marred the picture in the mirror, yet, aided by her imagination, it was pleasing. She stood with arms extended in a languid, graceful pose, her head thrown back, gazing with half-closed eyes at something far, far beyond her own eyes in the gla.s.s.

Then suddenly she began to dance. She danced with her feet, her arms, her hands, her soul. She felt within her the grace of stately beauties, the heartbeat of dew-jewelled fairies, the longings of untrammelled b.u.t.terflies--dancing, she could have flown up to heaven at that moment!

A gurgle of sound interrupted her; it was the baby. "Do you like me, baby?" she cried. "Am I beautiful, baby?"

Baby, now, could talk quite presentably in the language of grown-ups.

But in addition he knew all kinds of wise, unintelligible words. Missy knew that they were wise, even though she could not understand their meaning, and she was glad the baby chose, this time, to answer in that secret jargon.

She kissed the baby and, in return, the baby smiled his secret smile.

Missy was sure that Poppy then smiled too, a secret smile; so she kissed Poppy also. How wonderful, how mysterious, were the smiles of baby and Poppy! What unknown thoughts produced them?

At this point her cogitations were interrupted and her playacting spoiled by the unexpected return of mother and Aunt Nettie. It seemed that certain of the ladies had obligingly been "out."

"What in the world are you doing, Missy?" asked mother.

Missy suddenly felt herself a very foolish-appearing object in her party finery. She tried to make an answer, but the right words were difficult to find.

"Party!" said Aunt Nettie significantly.

Missy, still standing in mute embarra.s.sment, 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 gla.s.s!

"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 b.u.t.terfly; 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 b.u.t.terfly 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.

Cousin Jim, with creaking new shoes, leaped down to help Missy in. She had received her mother's last admonition, her father's last banter, Aunt Nettie's last anxious peck at her sash, and was just lifting her foot to the surrey step when suddenly she said: "Oh!"

"What is it?" asked mother. "Forgotten something?"

Missy had forgotten something. But how, with mother's inquiring eyes upon her, and father's and Aunt Nettie's and Mrs. Allen's and Kitty's and Cousin Jim's inquiring eyes upon her, could she mention Raymond's bouquet in the summerhouse? How could she get them? What should she say?

And what would they think? "No," she answered hesitantly. "I guess not."

But the bright shining of her pleasure was a little dimmed. She could not forget those flowers waiting, waiting there in the summerhouse.

She worried more about them, so pitifully abandoned, than she did about Raymond's having to go without a remembrance.

Missy sat in the back seat with Mrs. Allen, Kitty in front with her cousin. Now and then he threw a remark over his shoulder, and smiled.

He had beautiful white teeth which gleamed out of his dark-skinned face, and he seemed very nice. But he wasn't as handsome as Raymond, nor as nice--even if he did wear a uniform.

When they reached the Bonners they saw it all illumined for the party.

The Bonners' house was big and square with a porch running round three sides, the most imposing house in Cherryvale. Already strings of lanterns were lighted on the lawn, blue and red and yellow orbs. The lights made the trees and shrubs seem shadowy and remote, mysterious creatures a-whisper over their own business.

Not yet had many guests arrived, but almost immediately they appeared in such droves that it seemed they must have come up miraculously through the floor. The folding camp chairs which lined the parlours and porches (the rented chairs always seen at Cherryvale parties and funerals) were one moment starkly exposed and the next moment hidden by light-hued skirts and by stiffly held, Sunday-trousered dark legs. For a while that stiffness which inevitably introduces a formal gathering of youngsters held them unnaturally bound. But just as inevitably it wore away, and by the time the folding chairs were drawn up round the little table where "hearts" were to be played, voices were babbling, and laughter was to be heard everywhere for no reason at all.

At Missy's table sat Raymond Bonner, looking handsomer than ever with his golden hair and his eyes like black velvet pansies. There was another boy who didn't count; and then there was the most striking creature Missy had ever seen. She was a city girl visiting in town, an older, tall, red-haired girl, with languishing, long-lashed eyes. She wore a red chiffon dress, lower cut than was worn in Cherryvale, which looked like a picture in a fashion magazine. But it was not her chic alone that made her so striking. It was her manner. Missy was, not sure that she knew what "sophisticated" meant, but she decided that the visiting girl's air of self-possession, of calm, almost superior a.s.surance, denoted sophistication. How eloquent was that languid way of using her fan!

In this languishing-eyed presence she herself did not feel at her best; nor was she made happier by the way Raymond couldn't keep his eyes off the visitor. She played her hand badly, so that Raymond and his alluring partner "progressed" to the higher table while she remained with the boy who didn't count. But, as luck would have it, to take the empty places, from the head table, vanquished, came Cousin Jim and his partner. Jim now played opposite her, and laughed over his "dumbness" at the game.

"I feel sorry for you!" he told Missy. "I'm a regular dub at this game!"

"I guess I'm a 'dub' too." It was impossible not to smile back at that engaging flash of white teeth in the dark face.

This time, however, neither of them proved "dubs." Together they "progressed" to the next higher table. Cousin Jim a.s.sured her it was all due to her skill. She almost thought that, perhaps, she was skillful at "hearts," and for the first time she liked the silly game.