exaggerated homage before her.

I felt suddenly out of it all, lonely. These people were nothing
to me, I said to myself. They were not my kind. I had a sudden
homesickness for the quiet monotony of my life before I married Dicky.
I thought of the few social evenings I had spent in the days before
I met Dicky, little dinners with the principals and teachers I had
known, when I had been the centre of things, when my opinions had been
referred to, as Lillian Gale's were now.

I went through the rest of the evening in a daze of annoyance and
regret from which I did not fully emerge until we were all at the
dinner table, with Dicky officiating at the chafing dish. Then
suddenly Mrs. Lester turned to me, her face filled with nervous fears.

"Oh, Mrs. Graham, I don't believe I can wait for anything. I am
getting so nervous about baby. I know it's awful to be so silly, but I
just can't help it."

"Daisy!" Her husband's voice was stern, his face looked angry. "Do
stop that nonsense. We are certainly not going home now."

His wife seemed to shrink into herself. Her pretty face, with its
worried look, was like that of a little girl grieving over a doll. I
felt a sudden desire to comfort her.

"I think you are worrying yourself unnecessarily, Mrs. Lester," I said
in an undertone. We were sitting next each other, and I could speak to
her without her husband overhearing. "When you telephoned the maid an
hour ago, the baby was all right, wasn't she?"