Curiously enough, amid all this elegance, Bab felt a little homesick. She kept thinking of her mother and the little cottage.
“It’s a wonderful experience for Mollie and me,” she said to herself. “I hope I can tell mother exactly what it looks like. I am sure fairyland can’t be half so gorgeous; fairies wear only dewdrops for jewels; but here, I believe, there must be nearly all the jewels in the world.”
Barbara did not know how big the world really is, nor how many people and jewels, both real and paste, there are in it. After all, artificial people are no better than paste jewels!
Earlier in the evening Mollie and Barbara had stood with their hands tight together, watching the men and women enter the great reception room to speak to their host and hostess.
“Diamonds,” whispered Mollie to Bab, “seem as plentiful as the strawberries we gathered for the hotel people this summer. We didn’t dream, then, that we were coming to Newport! Isn’t my Mrs. Cartwright the most beautiful of them all?” wound up the loyal child.
Mrs. Cartwright wore a white satin gown, with a diamond star in the tulle of her bodice. In her hair was a spray of diamonds, mounted to look like a single stalk of lilies of the valley, each jewel hanging from the slender stem like a tiny floweret.
The conservatory was almost empty while Bab rested and waited.
During the intermission in the dance nearly all the guests had wandered into the dining-room or into the moonlit garden.
Barbara realized that she was almost completely hidden by the great palm trees that formed an arch over her head and drooped their long arms down over her. She had crept into this seat in order that she might see without being seen.
Yet in spite of the quiet, Barbara was not resting. Her heart was beating fast with the excitement of this wonderful evening, and her tiny feet in the pink silk slippers still kept time to the last waltz she had danced with Hugh.