he would "have
them done in a jiffy," she said, cheerfully. But it was Alice who washed
the dishes.

"I DON'T like to have you do that, Alice," her mother protested,
following her into the kitchen. "It roughens the hands, and when a girl
has hands like yours----"

"I know, mama." Alice looked troubled, but shook her head. "It can't be
helped this time; you'll need every minute to get that dress done."

Mrs. Adams went away lamenting, while Alice, no expert, began to splash
the plates and cups and saucers in the warm water. After a while, as
she worked, her eyes grew dreamy: she was making little gay-coloured
pictures of herself, unfounded prophecies of how she would look and what
would happen to her that evening. She saw herself, charming and demure,
wearing a fluffy idealization of the dress her mother now determinedly
struggled with upstairs; she saw herself framed in a garlanded archway,
the entrance to a ballroom, and saw the people on the shining floor
turning dramatically to look at her; then from all points a rush of
young men shouting for dances with her; and she constructed a superb
stranger, tall, dark, masterfully smiling, who swung her out of the
clamouring group as the music began. She saw herself dancing with him,
saw the half-troubled smile she would give him; and she accurately
smiled that smile as she rinsed the knives and forks.

These hopeful fragments of drama were not to be realized, she knew; but
she played that they were true, and went on creating them. In all of
them she wore or carried flowers--her mother's sorrow for her in this
detail but made it the more important--and she saw herself glamorous
with orchids; discarded these for an armful of long-stemmed, heavy
roses; tossed them away for a great bouquet of white camellias; and
so wandered down a lengthening hothouse gallery of floral beauty, all
costly and beyond her reach except in such a wistful day-dream. And upon
her present whole horizon, though she searched it earnestly, she could
discover no figure of a sender of flowers.

Out of her fancies the desire for flowers to wear that night emerged
definitely and became poignant; she began to feel that it might be
particularly important to have them. "This might be the night!" She was
still at the age to dream that the night of any dance may be the vital
point in destiny. No matter how commonplace or disappointing other
dance nights have been this one may bring the great meeting. The unkn