“Might be!” grinned Fayte. “Miss Ferguson, that dance’ll furnish you one solid chunk of local color. It’s sure going to be what you call a very characteristic entertainment.”
It seemed to Hilda, when once she had the assurance that she would get to go to the dance, that the Saturday night for which it was set delayed and dallied on its way down the aisles of time in an exasperating fashion. All her thoughts of the coming evening centered around one point. She didn’t dare ask direct questions; she knew that she couldn’t command her features or her telltale color if she did. But she came at it indirectly, casually, in her talks with Maybelle, asking,
“Who all will be there?”
“Everybody—just everybody that lives within twenty miles; and some from as far away as sixty,” Maybelle answered. “The Grainger’s are great for that. They don’t stop at tacking up notices. Billy and Ed get on horses and ride for days giving invitations just like Pa does when he’s electioneering.”
Everybody. That would certainly include Pearse. Well—if she was to see him—she was to see him; the readiness was all. And the days went on, with hurried lessons in the morning, long afternoons of planning and preparation. Not till Saturday afternoon, during a last rehearsal of the dresses and the way they were going to do their hair, was Hilda sure enough of herself to venture another of those casual questions: A young lady named Esmond—was she likely to be at the dance?
Maybelle spoke through the pins between her teeth; she was doing her hair at the glass.
“That Galveston girl—niece of the manager of the J I C? No. She’s gone home. Thought I told you—he’s to follow later—they’ll be married in Galveston. Some girls have all the luck. Bet I could have got him away from her—with a fair chance. Fannie May wasn’t what I’d call pretty. But she had him right there on the ranch—and Pa won’t let a J I C put foot on the Alamositas.” She sighed. “He’s awfully good looking. Do you like my hair this way, Hilda?”
“Why—yes. You’ve got it a little too loose. Let me pin it in for you.”
Hilda’s voice didn’t amount to much; but she was thankful to be able to speak at all. Of course this was what she might have expected. Yet she hadn’t. No, no—she hadn’t. Going to Galveston, to be married—married! But maybe it wasn’t true. It might be—why, it might be just like what Fayte was telling about herself. To-night—to-night at the dance. He’d be there. She thought she would know when she looked at him, heard him speak—even if he told her nothing about Fannie May Esmond—whether it was so or not.
She came to herself with Maybelle giving dry little details concerning the girl from Galveston: her looks; how she had dressed; the “pieces” she played—small, definite things that seemed somehow to make her a very living presence to Hilda, and the idea of her engagement to Pearse very real. Her Boy-On-The-Train; her fugitive of the cyclone cellar; Pearse Masters, who, present or absent, had filled a place in her life and thoughts that no one else ever touched or came near to—he was going altogether away from her—almost as if he died.