"Will you invite Bernice Dahl?" asked Myrtle, bending over her friend.
"I have been thinking about it," Elizabeth answered, slowly. "Miss Somers says she has the best lessons of any one in her class, and then she was so nice to Jimmy Flanders that day he sprained his arm. I have half a mind to." And she really did.
That night when Bernice was telling her mother of the invitation she had received, she said, doubtfully, "I think I shall not go."
"Why not?" was the reply. "It can do no good to stay away, and something may be gained by going."
So it chanced that Bernice found herself at Elizabeth's home on the evening of the party. Her hostess met her smilingly. "She is really glad that I came," thought Bernice. And she felt her soul suddenly warm to life, just as the thirsty earth brightens and glows and sends up little shoots of new green at a patter of summer rain.
The long parlor was decorated in green and white. The bright lights, the gay figures stirring beneath, and the shining faces, half of which were strange to Bernice, formed a pretty picture, and the girl moved here and there in the constantly shifting kaleidoscope with a freedom and happiness she had not known since coming to the town.
At last she found herself, with the others, sitting very quiet and listening to two girls playing a duet on the piano. Then one of them sang a Scotch song. There was warmth and richness, the warbling of birds, the melody of brooks, in the rendering, and Bernice heard a half-sigh close beside her.
"I wish I could sing! O, always I wanted to sing!"
Then for the first time she saw who sat there—a tall, handsome, beautifully gowned girl whom she had noticed several times during the evening, and to whom everybody seemed to defer. She had heard vaguely that this was Elizabeth's cousin, and wondered if it was for her that Elizabeth had given the party.
"And can't you?" she asked, evincing instant interest.