So Cornelia had baked macaroni and cheese, roasted some apples and made a chocolate cornstarch pudding. There was cold meat in the refrigerator, and she wrote a note to Louise in case she should be late.
She looked very pretty and slim in her dark blue crêpe de chene made over with an odd little idea in pockets to cover where it had to be pieced. She resurrected an old dark blue hat with a becoming brim, re-dyed it and wreathed it with a row of little pale pink velvet roses. Nobody would ever have guessed that the roses were old ones that had been cleaned and retouched with the paint brush till they glowed like new ones. She added a string of queer Chinese beads that one of the girls at college had given her, and looked as chic and pretty as any girl could desire when Maxwell called for her. His eyes showed their admiration as he came up the steps and found her ready, waiting for him, her cheeks flushed a pretty pink, her eyes starry, little rings of brown hair blowing out here and there about her face.
“That’s a nice hat,” he said contentedly, his eyes taking in her whole harmonious costume, “New one isn’t it? At least I never saw it before.” He noted with pleasure that her complexion was not applied.
“A real girl!” he was saying to himself in a kind of inner triumph! “A real girl! What a fool I used to be!”
The day was wonderful, and there was a big box of chocolates in the car. Cornelia listening to her happy heart found it singing.
They made long strides in friendship as they drove through the city and out to the Cricket Club grounds, and Cornelia’s cheeks grew pinker with joy. It seemed as though life were very good indeed to her today.
They drove the car into the grounds, found a good place to park it and were just about to go to their seats on the grand stand when a young, gimlet-eyed flapper with bobbed hair rushed up crying:
“Oh, Arthur Maxwell, won’t you please go over to the gym dressing rooms and find Tommy Fergus for me. He promised to meet me here half an hour ago, and I’m nearly dead standing in this sun. I’d go in and sit down but he has the tickets and he promised on his honor not to be late. I knew it would be just like this if he tried to play a set before the tournament.”
There was nothing for Maxwell to do but introduce the curious-eyed maiden to Cornelia and go on the mission, and the young woman climbed up beside Cornelia and began to chatter.
It appeared that her name was Dotty Chapman, that she was a sort of cousin of Maxwell’s, and that she knew everybody and everything that had to do with the Cricket Club. She chattered on like a magpie, telling Cornelia who all the people were that by this time were coming in a stream through the arched gateway. Cornelia found it rather interesting.