“What a débutante you would have made!” she sighed. “You have a queenly something about you that is quite rare in a débutante and might have made the hit of the season.”
“Oh, Mumsy, I’m a much better district school teacher!” and Douglas blushed with pleasure at her mother’s rare praise.
The girl had seen a subtle difference in her mother’s manner to her ever since she had felt it her duty to take a stand about their affairs. Mrs. Carter was ever gentle, ever courteous, but Douglas knew that she looked upon her no longer as her daughter somehow,—rather as a kind of taskmistress that Fate had set over her.
The young men were gathered in the living-room waiting for the girls and when they burst upon them in all the glory of ball gowns they quite dazzled them.
“Douglas!” gasped Lewis in an ill-concealed whisper, “you somehow make me think of an Easter lily.”
“Well, I don’t feel like one a bit. I can’t fancy an Easter lily’s dancing, and I mean to dance every dance I get a chance and all the others, too.”
“I reckon I can promise you that,” grinned her cousin.
Bill Tinsley made no ado of taking the pretty Tillie in his arms and opening the ball with a whistled fox trot.