“You young ladies must attend to my movements, and not expect me to signal you,” said Mrs. Drysdale, her face only sweetly black, like a becoming thunder-cloud, as Miss Willoughby’s parlor boarder was one of the offenders. She could scold Bella easier at home. Just then a stout lady trying to get by, with a good deal of jet trimming about her person, sent out one of the octopus threads, and hooked Mrs. Drysdale in the most vulnerable point,—the choice old lace on her sleeves.
“Excuse me,” panted the stout lady, pulling at the entanglement. “There, break it, I’m sure I don’t care.”
“I’ll get it out,” cried Mrs. Drysdale in a terror, laying a quick hand on it.
“Step out of the doorway, please,” said some one. And the stout lady and Mrs. Drysdale edged off as one person, and everybody in the vicinity fell to helping; even Grace was brought out of her misery enough to take her turn. As she bent over her task, some one’s elbow gave her French bonnet a knock. Out fell a hair-pin from her frizzes, and she felt rather than saw the curious eyes of the lady next to her upon her hair. So she deserted the jet and lace, making Mrs. Drysdale say with some asperity, “I think you have not bettered it any, Miss Strange.” Then she looked up into the face of her next neighbor. She was the lady who had asked Bella to introduce her.
Grace darted behind a tall fern, and hid her hot, distressed face.
Grace fled out into the wide upper hall, fragrant with its wealth of blossoms, and darted behind a tall fern, where she hid her hot, distressed face, and tried to stop the throbbing of her heart.
“Well, now get Miss Strange,” Mrs. Drysdale was saying as she emerged into the hall. “It is the last time I shall ever allow you to ask a friend to go with you, Bella. Where in the world is she?” peering about.
Bella flew back into the room. “Grace, Grace,” she cried in a loud voice.
“Here I am,” said Grace miserably, and creeping out from behind the fern. “I was so hot, and it’s cool out here,” feeling the necessity for words with the audience that now hung on the scene, and the throng of ladies coming and going to the dressing-room, and whose passage they were blocking up.