her house that I
went to my first ball. Except the Fergusons', hers was the only house
in the city with rooms large enough to dance in, and that ball is still
the most dazzling I can remember. I wore a rose-colored tulle skirt
with a peasant waist of rose-colored satin, and father, for a great
surprise, had given me a pair of pink silk stockings. No other girl in
town had such a beautiful thing, and in the dressing-room they would
not let me go down until I had shown them. The lighted dancing-rooms,
and all the strange people, and my tall partners made me nearly die of
shyness, but I danced two large holes in the toes of my lovely
stockings, and afterward father teased me, and said he found he had
suddenly become very popular with the young men. He had never been so
called upon in his life.

But most of our parties were not such elegant affairs, though sometimes
they were even more fun, like the Fergusons' calico ball, where I wore
my grandmother's gingham, and prunella shoes; or the party the Sumner
Light Guards gave, which was the prettiest of all on account of the
young men's uniforms, and the way we sat around the little refreshment
tables between dances with our mothers and our partners, the band
playing all the time, and every one so gay.

I sometimes went to as many as four parties a week, so that in the
morning it was all I could do to be up in time to see breakfast on the
table. I found out that being a housekeeper meant more than long
petticoats, and pouring tea. It meant being all over the house before
ten in the morning, for, as Abby said, a house has a lot of strings to
it, and unless you keep them all tied up tight something's going to
sag. But I enjoyed my authority of the house, and my liberty abroad
seemed like license to me. I felt launched on a wide sea of life.

The city itself was changed to my new horizon. It was larger, more
complicated, with more masts in the harbor, new streets and horse-car
lines, and every one moved about in it like the pieces of a Chinese
puzzle. The friends who had lived close about us had all moved
westward or southward with the trend of the city, and between Telegraph
and Chestnut Street Hills there were some very, fine houses. I was
often running over there to see Hallie or Estrella, and my shortest way
lay past the convent that stood a little apart in the middle of the
settlement. Next to it, but facing on another street, was a house
which had been built