As she felt the genuine pleasure she was affording them, all her fears as to its short-comings fled. She began to see that her story was even better than she had thought it. She saw it in better perspective through their eyes. Its plot moved so smoothly. There was more life, more go in it than she had been conscious of in her solitary readings. It was certainly worth all the painstaking effort it had cost her. She could look at it now and no longer humbly, but confidently call it good.
When in one scene she stole a furtive glance around to note the effect, and caught Lucy stealthily slipping out her handkerchief, Gay looking up with tears on her lashes and Lloyd with the peculiar tightening of the lips that showed she was trying to swallow the lump in her throat, she was so happy she could have sung for joy. She read on and on, and they forgot the rain beating against the windows, forgot everything but their interest in the story.
Lucy pushed her darning basket aside and leaned back in her chair, her hands clasped behind her head. The work over which Lloyd had been bending, dropped in her lap and her little gold thimble rolled away into a corner unheeded. There was a personal interest in the story for each of them. Lloyd saw herself as plainly in Betty's heroine as she could see her reflection in the mirror door of the huge mahogany wardrobe opposite her. Some of Kitty's ridiculous speeches that had become historical in her family, found a place here and there, and once Lucy laughed outright, exclaiming, "Why that's just like Gay! You must have been thinking of her when you wrote it."
The reading went on without interruption until it was so dark that Betty had to hold her manuscript close to the window. "I'll ring for lights," thought Lucy, "just as soon as she comes to the end of this chapter." But with the end of the chapter came Ca'line Allison with a message from the kitchen. Lucy started up in dismay.
"There! I forgot all about that salad. How could I be so careless when I'm to have a real live authoress to dinner? I was so interested I hadn't a thought for anything but the story."
"Such appreciation is a thousand times better than salad," laughed Betty, so jubilant over her triumph that her eyes were full of a happy light. "This is a good place to stop until after dinner. I've read until my throat is tired."
Lucy hurried down stairs to hasten the dinner preparations, in order that they might get back to the reading as soon as possible. The four girls folded their work, and sat in the twilight, talking.
"What does this make you think of?" asked Lloyd.
"I know what's in your mind," answered Kitty. "I was just about to speak of it myself; that rainy day at Boarding School, when Ida Shane read 'The Fortune of Daisy Dale' to us, behind locked doors. Wasn't it thrilling?"
Gay who had heard the incident mentioned many times at Warwick Hall, said plaintively, "You girls always make me feel that I have missed half my life, because I wasn't with you when Ida Shane read that story. I'd certainly like to get my hands on such a wonderful piece of literature."