Page:Booth Tarkington - Alice Adams.djvu/71

 "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