"The Colonel would enjoy Mrs. Adlerfeld best. Miss Lily would be too shy to say anything."
"So she would! I only thought of her because she's the birthday girl. Oh! You can't imagine how surprised she was—I thought she'd better know it right away, and not try to be secret about it."
Miss Sterling smiled assent.
"She looked as if she were going to cry," Polly went on; "but then I said something funny, and she laughed. I could see she was wonderfully pleased that Doodles should propose it. I'm glad he did, for I guess she doesn't have very much to make her happy.
"Oh, I forgot! What do you think Mrs. Adlerfeld calls it? I happened to say we thought it was so nice it came when the moon was full, and she said, 'Thank you, I shall be so glad and happy to go! I am very fond about moonshine nights!' Isn't that just lovely? I'm going to call it a 'moonshine' party! It is ever so much prettier than 'moonlight.' Won't Colonel Gresham be pleased to have Mrs. Adlerfeld sit with him!"
CHAPTER XX
THE PARTY ITSELF
The weedy roadside was a witching tangle of shadows, and the air was drowsy with spicy, wind-blown scents, as four motor cars swept on their merry way to Foxford.
Juanita Sterling, in the last of the procession, watched the gay little imps dance across the windshield and thought glad thoughts. It was going to be a worth-while evening she felt sure, and it was good that her left-hand neighbors, Miss Major and Mrs. Winslow Teed, had each other to entertain, and she was free to anticipate and ponder and to feast her heart on the visions of the night.
The sometimes insisting opinions of Miss Major and the familiar "When I was abroad" of Mrs. Winslow Teed seldom obtruded on her dreams. Once, however, she came to her surroundings with a start.