“Oh, I wish I could, but you know I never leave my mother at night. You see, she is all alone.”
“Of course you don’t, but your mother is especially invited to this ball. See her name is written over yours on the envelope. Why, child, it wouldn’t be a ball unless you came. We—we—” but here Judge Middleton dug an elbow into the Colonel’s ribs and took the conversation in his own hands.
“The fact is, Miss Judy, all of us old fellows think a lot of you and we are kind of ’lowing you’d dance with us and make it lively for us. We’ll take it as a special favor if you stretch a point and come—you and your mother.”
Judith glowed with appreciation and put a floury hand on the old man’s arm.
“Oh, Judge Middleton, you are good—all of you are so kind to me. I’d rather come to your party than do anything in the world. I never have been to a real ball—a picnic is about the closest I’ve come to one, that and some 125 school entertainments, but you see I haven’t a suitable dress. You wouldn’t like me to come looking like Cinderella after the clock struck twelve, would you now?”
“Well, you’d look better than most even if you did,” put in Colonel Crutcher, “but you needn’t be coming the Flora McFlimsey on us. Don’t we see you running around here in a blue dress all the time? And if that ain’t good enough I bet you’ve got a white muslin somewhere with a blue sash and maybe a blue hair ribbon.”
Judith laughed. “Well, I reckon I have and, after all, nobody is going to look at me and I do want to go. I’ll say yes and I can bulldoze Mother into accepting, too, I am sure. I think it is the grandest thing that ever happened for all of you to be giving a debut party, and I’m going to come, and what’s more, I intend to dance every dance.”
“Now you are talkin’,” shouted the old men. “Save some dances for us.”
After they had driven away, the buggy enveloped in the inevitable cloud of limestone dust, Judith still stood in the yard until she saw the cloud, little more than a speck in the distance, turn into the Buck Hill avenue.
“I reckon they’ll all laugh at the dear old 126 men and make fun of their having a debut party for themselves, but I think it is just too sweet of them. Oh, oh, oh, if I only had a new dress!”