“Isn’t she lovely!” Kate exclaimed in admiration that must find voice. “Do you know I think she is the very prettiest——” She was going to say, “the very prettiest girl I have ever seen,” but Jack interrupted, his brown eyes smiling down at her: “No, I wouldn’t say she’s the prettiest——”
No one in all her life had ever even insinuated that Kate was pretty before, and the comparison that Jack indicated now was beyond contemplating. It was the magic silver cap, of course. Suppose it should blow off as they danced! How surprised Jack Denton would be!
As the evening went on Kate entertained more and more the conceit that she was masquerading in prettiness. There was no blinking the fact that she was tremendously popular. And it obviously was not just the easy popularity of the girl for whom the party is given. Not a bit of it. It was spontaneous, joyous. Perhaps she realized the reality of this popularity all the more because she had never experienced it before. At the two or three high-school dances in Middletown which her mother had allowed her to attend, while not being exactly a wallflower, she had not particularly shone. There had been many minutes of suspense when she forced a semblance of a smile to her lips and intense interest to her eyes while she watched the more popular girls swinging by with their partners, while all her mind was taken up with praying that Jim Walker or Cecil Quinn would look in from the hall and notice there was a girl there not dancing. It is true that Jim or Cecil or some other usually did notice sometime before the dance was half over and come to her rescue, for Kate was a good sort and everybody liked her. At those dances Kate never counted on the Hart boys for attention, although they were her escorts to and from; for to them Kate was no better than a sister. They would have been glad to see her popular, and taken natural pride to themselves in it. But it never entered their heads to be gallant themselves. No, the high-school dances had left Kate secure in the conviction that she would never be a success socially and in the philosophical determination not to care.
But to-night all that was changed. Even Elsie, perfectly beautiful as she was, was not having the same success. She danced constantly, of course, but often with a boy whom Kate had had to refuse.
In an intermission a dowager-like old lady beckoned to Kate from a chair near an open door leading out on to the terrace. Kate left Jack Denton who at the minute was fanning her with a magazine which he had picked up from a table for the purpose, and went to the dowager.
“Bring a chair,” the bejewelled one commanded, “and talk to an old woman for a minute.”
And when Kate had drawn up a stool that stood near and sat down close to her she said, “You are every bit as pretty as your mother was, Katherine Marshall. Every bit!”
Kate shook her head, laughing. “It’s just a disguise,” she affirmed, mysteriously.
“A disguise? What do you mean, you funny child?”
“This cap I am wearing is a magic cap,” Kate informed her, touching its star points ever so lightly with her finger tips. “But shh! don’t let them hear. I will confess to you, though, that it makes me much, much better looking than I really am, and more popular.”