Page:The Garden Party (Mansfield).djvu/214

Her First Ball big golden lantern, carried along the passage, and pushed into the little room marked “Ladies.” Here the crowd was so great there was hardly space to take off their things; the noise was deafening. Two benches on either side were stacked high with wraps. Two old women in white aprons ran up and down tossing fresh armfuls. And everybody was pressing forward trying to get at the little dressing-table and mirror at the far end.

A great quivering jet of gas lighted the ladies’ room. It couldn’t wait; it was dancing already. When the door opened again and there came a burst of tuning from the drill hall, it leaped almost to the ceiling.

Dark girls, fair girls were patting their hair, tying ribbons again, tucking handkerchiefs down the fronts of their bodices, smoothing marble-white gloves. And because they were all laughing it seemed to Leila that they were all lovely.

“Aren’t there any invisible hair-pins?” cried a voice. “How most extraordinary! I can’t see a single invisible hair-pin.”

“Powder my back, there’s a darling,” cried some one else.

“But I must have a needle and cotton. I’ve torn simply miles and miles of the frill,” wailed a third.

Then, “Pass them along, pass them along!” The straw basket of programmes was tossed 210