Pretty soon Miss Antoinette's maid put my hair up a different way. And Miss Antoinette had a nice gown of hers altered for me. I'll never forget the night I first put on that lace dress. We'd motored out as usual, on a Friday in May, when I'd been going there most three months. They were going to have a few people for dinner. I'd had a peep at the table, that looked like a banquet, and I thought: "Not a thing on it, Cosma Wakely, that you don't know how to use right. Wouldn't Katytown stick out its eyes?" And when Miss Antoinette's maid put the dress on me, I most jumped. I wouldn't have believed it was me.
I remember I come out of my room, loving the way the lace felt all around me. The hall was lighted bright down-stairs, and, beyond, some folks were just coming into the vestibule, in lovely colored cloaks. And all of a sudden I thought:
"Oh—living is something different from what I always thought! And I must be one of the ones that's intended to know about it!"
It was a wonderful, grand feeling; and it was surprising what confidence it gave me. At the foot of the stairs, one of the maids knocked against me with a big branched candlestick she was carrying.
"You should be more careful!" I says to her, sharp. And I couldn't help feeling like a great lady when she apologized, scared.
In the drawing-room the first person I walked into was Mr. Gerald. I'd been seeing him almost every week—usually he and Miss Antoinette drove me down on Friday nights. But I'd never seen him quite like this.
"By jove! By jove!" he said, and bowed over my hand just the way I'd seen him do to other women. "Oh, Cosma!"
He'd never called me that before. I liked his saying it, and saying it that way. When I went to meet the rest, and knew he was watching me and that he liked the way I looked—instead of being embarrassed I thought it was fun.
And when it was Mr. Gerald that took me down, and we all went into that beautiful room, and to the dinner table that I wasn't afraid of—I can't explain it, but everything I'd ever done before seemed a long way off and I didn't want to bother remembering.
It was a happy two hours. After a while I began to want to say little things, and I found I could say them so nobody looked surprised, or glanced at anybody else after I had spoken. That was a wonderful thing, when I first noticed that they didn't glance at each other when I said anything. I saw I could say the truth right out, if I only laughed about it a little bit, and they'd call it "quaint," and laugh too, instead of thinking I was "bad form." There was quite an old man on my right, and I liked that. I always got along better with them than the middle ones that wanted to talk about themselves.