Kent was truly enamored of pretty Olga but he looked at her angrily.

“You girls make me sick,” he grunted and started dodging among the dancers, across the room to Lydia’s side.  Olga stood pouting.

“What’s the matter?” asked Charlie Jackson.

“Oh, I just said Lydia’s dress was a fright and Kent went off mad.”

Charlie in turn stared at Lydia.

Kent in the meantime was grinning at Lydia amiably.

“Hello, Lyd!  Want to dance?”

“I can’t.  Don’t know how,” replied Lydia, despondently.

“Easy as anything.  Come on, I’ll teach you.”

Lydia seized Kent’s lapel with fingers that would tremble slightly.  “Kent, I dassn’t stir.  My back breadth don’t match and my skirt hangs awful.”

“Oh, shucks!” replied Kent, angrily, “you girls are all alike.  Red’s my favorite color.”

“Mine too,” said Charlie Jackson at his elbow.  “What’re you two arguing about?”

“Her dress,” growled Kent, “I don’t see anything the matter with it, do you?”

“Nope, and it’s on the prettiest girl in the room too, eh, Kent?”

“You bet,” returned Kent, believing, though, that he lied, for Olga was as pretty as a tea rose.

Lydia blushed and gasped.

“If you won’t dance, come on over and have some lemonade,” suggested Kent.

“If I sit in the window, will you bring me a glass?” asked Lydia, still mindful of the back breadth.

“You take her to the window and I’ll get the lemo, Kent,” said Charlie.

Kent led the way to the window-seat.  “You’re a good old sport, Lyd,” he said.  “Charlie’ll look out for you.  I gotta get back to Olga.”

he returned to make peace with the pink organdy.  She was very lovely and Kent was having his first flirtation.  Yet before he went to sleep that night the last picture that floated before his eyes was of a thin little figure with worn mittens clasped over patched knees and a ravished child’s face looking into his.

Charlie Jackson sat out two whole dances with Lydia.  Their talk was of Adam and of fishing.  Lydia longed to talk about Indians with him but didn’t dare.  Promptly at ten, Amos appeared at the front door.

Lydia’s first party was over.  Amos and old Lizzie were charmed with Lydia’s description of it and were sure she had had a wonderful time.  But Lydia felt that the dress had made of the party a hideous failure.  She knew now that she was marked among her mates as a poverty stricken little dowd whom popular boys like Kent and Charlie pitied.

And yet because life is as kind to us as we have the intelligence to let it be, it was out of the party that grew slowly a new resolve of Lydia’s—­to have some day as pretty hands and as well shod feet as Olga and Hilda and Cissy, to learn how to make her dresses so that even the composing of an organdy might not be beyond her.