Then some one threw wood on the fire with a great bang, and then more wood and more wood, and we crowded round the hearth and scorched our faces and hands, but we could not get warm enough.

Dolly Leonard was not even in our set.  She was an older girl by several years.  But she was the belle of the village.  Dolly Leonard’s gowns, Dolly Leonard’s parties, Dolly Leonard’s lovers, were the envy of all womankind.  And Dolly Leonard’s courtship and marriage were to us the fitting culmination of her wonderful career.  She was our ideal of everything that a girl should be.  She was good, she was beautiful, she was irresistibly fascinating.  She was, in fact, everything that we girlishly longed to be in the revel of a ballroom or the white sanctity of a church.

And now she, the bright, the joyous, the warm, was colder than we were, and would never be warm again.  Never again ...  And there were garish flowers down-stairs, and music and favors and ices—­nasty shivery ices,—­and pretty soon a brawling crowd of people would come and dance because I was eighteen—­and still alive.

Into our hideous brooding broke a husky little voice that had not yet spoken: 

“Dolly Leonard told my big sister a month ago that she wasn’t a bit frightened,—­that she had had one perfect year, and a perfect year was well worth dying for—­if one had to.  Of course she hoped she wouldn’t die, but if she did, it was a wonderful thing to die happy.  Dolly was queer about it; I heard my big sister telling mother.  Dolly said, ’Life couldn’t always be at high tide—­there was only one high tide in any one’s life, and she thought it was beautiful to go in the full flush before the tide turned.’”

The speaker ended with a harsh sob.

Then suddenly into our awed silence broke my mother in full evening dress.  She was a very handsome mother.

As she looked down on our huddled group there were tears in her eyes, but there was no shock.  I noticed distinctly that there was no shock.  “Why, girls,” she exclaimed, with a certain terse brightness, “aren’t you dressed yet?  It’s eight o’clock and people are beginning to arrive.”  She seemed so frivolous to me.  I remember that I felt a little ashamed of her.

“We don’t want any party,” I answered, glumly.  “The girls are going home.”

“Nonsense!” said my mother, catching me by the hand and pulling me almost roughly to my feet.  “Go quickly and call one of the maids to come and help you dress.  Angeline, I’ll do your hair.  Bertha, where are your shoes?  Gertrude, that’s a beautiful gown—­just your color.  Hurry into it.  There goes the bell.  Hark! the orchestra is beginning.”

And so, with a word here, a touch there, a searching look everywhere, mother marshalled us into line.  I had never heard her voice raised before.

The color came back to our cheeks, the light to our eyes.  We bubbled over with spirits—­nervous spirits, to be sure, but none the less vivacious ones.