without, and of, her heart
within, made it difficult to eat supper. And after supper it was hard to
breathe naturally, to control her nervous fingers as she dressed.

At last, with the help of mother and Aunt Nettie, her toilet was
finished: the pink-silk stockings and slippers shimmering beneath
the lengthened pink mull; the brocaded pink ribbon now become a huge,
pink-winged butterfly; and, mother's last touch, a pink rosebud holding
a tendril--a curling tendril--artfully above the left ear! Missy felt a
stranger to herself as, like some gracious belle and fairy princess and
airy butterfly all compounded into one, she walked--no, floated down the
stairs.

"Well!" exclaimed father, "behold the Queen of the Ball!" But Missy did
not mind his bantering tone. The expression of his eyes told her that he
thought she looked pretty.

Presently Mrs. Allen and Kitty, in the Allens' surrey, stopped by for
her. With them was a boy she had never seen before, a tall, dark boy in
a blue-grey braided coat and white duck trousers--a military cadet!

He was introduced as Kitty's cousin, Jim Henley. Missy had heard about
this Cousin Jim who was going to visit Cherryvale some time during the
summer; he had arrived rather unexpectedly that day.

Kitty herself--in pink dotted mull, of course--was looking rather wan.
Mrs. Allen explained she had eaten too much of the candy Cousin Jim had
brought her.

Cousin Jim, with creaking new shoes, leaped down to help Missy in. She
had received her mother's last admonition, her father's last banter,
Aunt Nettie's last anxious peck at her sash, and was just lifting her
foot to the surrey step when suddenly she said: "Oh!"

"What is it?" asked mother. "Forgotten something?"

Missy had forgotten something. But how, with mother's inquiring eyes
upon her, and father's and Aunt Nettie's and Mrs. Allen's and Kitty's
and Cousin Jim's inquiring eyes upon her, could she mention Raymond's
bouquet in the summerhouse? How could she get them? What should she say?
And what would they think? "No," she answered hesitantly. "I guess not."
But the bright shining of her pleasure was a little dimmed. She could
not forget those flowers waiting, waiting there in the summerhouse.
She worried more about them, so pitifully abandoned, than she did about
Raymond's having to go without a remembrance.

Missy sat in the back seat with Mrs. Allen, Kitty in front with her
cousin. Now and then he threw a remark over his shoul