She asked meekly, "What dress am I to wear this evening, please, Blossom? Dear me! It seems to me you two have made yourselves rather gorgeous for a mere godfather. He'll be quite dazzled."
Both girls looked down consciously at their pretty frocks. They exchanged glances.
"It isn't exactly for Professor Jimsy," murmured Jacqueline. "He never looks at any one but you, anyway. It's—you tell her, Jemmy!"
"No, you!"
In the end, they told her together. "It's a party!"
Kate looked at them in surprise. Suddenly their eagerness, their excitement, struck her as being pathetic. What had they known of parties, of the gay, pleasure-seeking life usual to girls of their class?
The county of which Storm was the chief estate occupied toward its more aristocratic neighbor, the Bluegrass, the relative position of an unpretentious side-street toward the fashionable residence district of a city. It had a social life of its own—what portion of the hospitable, gregarious, pleasure-loving State has not? There were many simple gaieties, dances, picnics, and the like, which took no account of distance or other obstacles to the natural coming together of young men and girls, and of older folk who have exchanged gallantry for gossip. In this life, the mistress of Storm held a certain place. No farmers' dinner, no fair, or barbecue, was complete without the presence of the county's one great landowner.
But her daughters were creatures apart, young princesses among admiring vassals. The country people looked with awe upon their tutors and dancing-masters and singing-teachers, their books, their clothes from the city. It had never occurred to them to include the little heiresses of Storm in their humble amusements; they belonged so palpably to a different world. The fact that this world was closed to them, because of the unforgotten scandal connected with their mother, left Jemima and Jacqueline singularly friendless; princesses, perhaps, but lonely princesses in their castle.
For the first time Kate realized this. Hitherto she had felt that they three were all sufficient unto themselves, with Philip Benoix, and James Thorpe, and one or two others who came regularly to Storm. Now she said to herself with a sharp pang, "My poor babies! My little hidden, lovely girls!"
Aloud she said, "A party?—that is splendid! Who are coming to the party? Some neighbor boys and girls?"