I went up the steps rather breathlessly. There was a big lump rising in my throat, as if I had run miles and miles. I wondered if they would let me in, or if I would have to say what my name was. I was not real sure in my mind that I knew what my name was. Once, years ago, I had been called Rhoda, but Rhoda always went to bed at seven o'clock. This was a new little girl, a fairy child, who walked under globes of fire straight into fairy-land.
Up, up, I went, past a man with shining buttons who held the door open very graciously for me, past shrubs and flowers banked along the staircase, into a room where there was a great hum of voices. Ever so many little girls, dozens of them, were taking off their hats, and shaking out their skirts, and doing what grandmother called "prinking" before a great glass. I prinked a little myself, following out Auntie May's directions. I thought that I looked rather nice. A woman in a white cap seemed to think so, too. She took a great deal of pains with me, and when the other little girls, who knew one another, went down the stairs in a group, she led me by the hand to the staircase, and showed me where to go.
It was very hard to walk down the stairs alone. I had such a queer feeling, and I could not see a thing for a mist before my eyes. I went quite slowly, step by step. I could hear the people in the parlor talking.
A lady said, "How pretty!" and a boy's voice cried, "Here she is! Here she is, at last!"
Then in a moment some one was shaking my hand. Little by little the mist cleared from before my eyes, and I saw that I was at the party.
The parlor was a long room, running the whole length of the house, but it looked crowded that night. There were groups of little girls, all those whom I had seen upstairs, and more besides, and lots and lots of little boys who stood in corners and laughed among themselves. There were lights on the walls and flowers everywhere, and the few grown-up people who moved about seemed just as gay and festive as the children. By the door were stationed Theodore Otway and his cousin, and she had on a lovely pink dress with cascades of little bows falling down her back. All the grown-up ladies seemed to watch her, and when she pranced and shook her bows I heard a lady say, "Paris!" in an awed tone.
There was such a hubbub everywhere that I did not notice at first that a boy, whom I had never seen before, was writing his name on my programme. He was quite a stout boy in tight clothes.
"I'll take this first one, just to make sure," he said. "Maybe, after awhile, I'll dance with you again. Don't you forget what I look like."
"No," I answered, humbly.
"That's right," he continued, patronizingly. "What's your name?"