Martie made no answer.  She was looking at a memorandum which read:  “Invitations—­cream—
­Angela—­stamps—­illusion—­slippers.”

As the days went by the thought of the dance grew more and more troublesome.  The details of the affair were too strange to be entered into with any confidence, any rush of enthusiasm and spontaneity.  Every hour brought her fresh cause for worry.

Nothing went well.  The thought of her dress worried her.  She had conceived the idea of a black gown ornamented with cretonne roses, carefully applied.  She and Sally cut out the flowers, and applied them with buttonhole stitch, sewing until their fingers were sore, their faces flushed, and their hair in frowsy disorder.  It was slow work.  Miss Pepper, the seamstress, engaged for one day only to do the important work on both Sally’s and Martie’s gown, kept postponing, as she always did postpone, the day, finally appointing the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day.  Pa’s cousin, a certain Mrs. Potts, wrote from Portland that she was coming down for the holiday, and Sally and Martie could have wept at the thought of the complication of having her exacting presence in the house.  Worse than this Pa, who was to have gone to San Francisco on business on Friday morning—­whose decision to do so had indeed been one of Martie’s reasons for selecting this date for the affair—­suddenly changed his plan.  He need not go until December, he said.

Leonard, who at first had been faintly interested in the proceedings, later annoyed his sisters by intimating that he would not be present at the dance.  Martie and Sally did not want him for any social qualities he possessed, but he was a male; he would at least help to offset the alarming plurality of females.

Acceptances came promptly from the young women of Monroe, even from Ida and May Parker.  Florence Frost regretted; she was smitten even now with the incurable illness that would end her empty life a few years later.  Such men as Martie and Sally had been able to list as eligible—­the new young doctor from the Rogers building, little Billy Frost, the Patterson boys, home from college for Thanksgiving, Reddy Johnson, and Carl Polhemus—­answered not at all, as is the custom with young men.  Sally and Martie did not like the Patterson boys; George was fat and stupid; Arthur at eighteen sophisticated and blase, with dissipated eyes; both were supercilious, and the girls did not really believe that they would come.  Still, there was not much to lose in asking them.

There had been a debate over Reddy Johnson’s name; but Reddy was a wonderful dancer.  So he was asked, and Martie went so far as to say that had Joe Hawkes possessed an evening suit, he and Grace might have been asked, too.  As it was, Sally and Martie hoped they would not meet Grace until the affair was over.

They fumed and fussed over the list until they knew it by heart.  They wondered who would come first, how soon they should begin dancing, how soon serve supper.  Mrs. Monroe thought supper should be served at half-past ten.  Martie groaned.  Oh, they couldn’t serve supper until almost midnight, she protested.