The Perfect Year
by Eleanor A. Hallowell
When Dolly Leonard died, on the night of my débutante party, our little community was aghast. If I live to be a thousand, I shall never outgrow the paralyzing shock of that disaster. I think that the girls in our younger set never fully recovered from it.
It was six o'clock when we got the news. Things had been jolly and bustling all the afternoon. The house was filled with florists and caterers, and I had gone to my room to escape the final responsibilities of the occasion. There were seven of us girl chums dressing in my room, and we were lolling round in various stages of lace and ruffles when the door-bell rang. Partly out of consideration for the tired servants, and partly out of nervous curiosity incited by the day's influx of presents and bouquets, I slipped into my pink eider-down wrapper and ran down to the door. The hall was startlingly sweet with roses. Indeed, the whole house was a perfect bower of leaf and blossom, and I suppose I did look elfish as I ran, for a gruff old workman peered up at me and smiled, and muttered something about "pinky-posy"—and I know it did not seem impertinent to me at the time.
At the door, in the chill blast of the night, stood our little old gray postman with some letters in his hand. "Oh!" I said, disappointed, "just letters."
The postman looked at me a trifle queerly—I thought it was my pink wrapper,—and he said, "Don't worry about 'just letters'; Dolly Leonard is dead!"
"Dead?" I gasped. "Dead?" and I remember how I reeled back against the open door and stared out with horror-stricken eyes across the common to Dolly Leonard's house, where every window was blazing with calamity.
"Dead?" I gasped again. "Dead? What happened?"