"Give me that paper, Alice," her mother called, with a sharp and sudden
cry. She ran her eye down its column and then turned to her husband.
"Why, David, how did you happen to forget? You know I wouldn't have
missed this for anything."

Marshall checked his lingering smile. He looked at his wife with an
embarrassed pain, and then dropped his eyes to the carpet. "There must
have been some misunderstanding," he stammered. "The invitation was
delayed--or it miscarried. Perhaps it went to the store and got mixed up
with the mail there," he ventured; any improbability would do to soften
the shock.

"Delayed! Miscarried!" cried Jane, in an acute access of anger and
indignation. "Don't believe it! We're dropped, that's all! Well, what
else can we expect? How are we going to hold our own against all these
thousands and thousands of newcomers if we don't do anything? That's what
I've been telling you all along. We've got to wake up and make an effort.
Give me that paper." She snatched it from her mother. "Yes, they'll all
be there--the Hubbards, the Gages, and the whole crowd of Parmelees, and
Kittie Corwith and her father, and all the rest, and--and the Beldens!
The Beldens--there!" She turned fiercely on her mother. "What do you
think of that?"

Eliza Marshall was cut to the quick. For twenty years and more she had
attended this annual dinner; she had attached herself there to former
friends and neighbors, who listened indulgently to her narrow little
dribble of reminiscent gossip--the gossip and reminiscences of the
smaller town and the earlier day. This dinner was her sole remaining
connection (little as she had realized it) with the great and complex
city of the present day, just as it was the sole reason for her