girls had all done their best, also, to look beautiful, though
not one of them had worked so hard for such a consummation as
Alice had. They did not need to; they did not need to get their
mothers to make old dresses over; they did not need to hunt
violets in the rain.

At home her dress had seemed beautiful; but that was different,
too, where there were dozens of brilliant fabrics, fashioned in
new ways--some of these new ways startling, which only made the
wearers centers of interest and shocked no one. And Alice
remembered that she had heard a girl say, not long before, "Oh,
ORGANDIE! Nobody wears organdie for evening gowns except in
midsummer." Alice had thought little of this; but as she looked
about her and saw no organdie except her own, she found greater
difficulty in keeping her smile as arch and spontaneous as she
wished it. In fact, it was beginning to make her face ache a
little.

Mildred came in from the corridor, heavily attended. She carried
a great bouquet of violets laced with lilies of-the-valley; and
the violets were lusty, big purple things, their stems wrapped in
cloth of gold, with silken cords dependent, ending in long
tassels. She and her convoy passed near the two young Adamses;
and it appeared that one of the convoy besought his hostess to
permit "cutting in"; they were "doing it other places" of late,
he urged; but he was denied and told to console himself by
holding the bouquet, at intervals, until his third of the
sixteenth dance should come. Alice looked dubiously at her own
bouquet.