"Good gracious, I hope I'm not so old or so fat as all that!" came the crushing retort. Evidently the path of tact in a new country was going to be strewn with unforeseen difficulties. I reddened. It was disconcerting to break a cucumber frame as soon as one entered the garden. "Miss Helen Claybourne," I heard Mrs. Hemphill continue. I looked up, hope abandoned, to encounter two large serious grey eyes gazing at me with frank curiosity. I started, for they were beautiful eyes set wide apart beneath a high, well-modelled brow, over which soft light brown hair waved most alluringly. A straight nose and firm chin completed a face that was not only full of character, but also good to look upon. I was enough of a snob to note that her clothes were right and that her athletic figure carried them magnificently. She shook hands heartily and frankly; her grasp was warm and pleasant, strong as a boy's, but womanly too. My rout was complete; I could find words in the gaze of those grey eyes which seemed to say "We believe in the truth." I felt humble and apologetic; one should first crave audience before daring to speak to those eyes. The next reaction was one of anger that a girl--she couldn't be over eighteen--had so abashed me.
There were others present, both men and women, but they did not exist for me. I heard their names mentioned and could not remember them; I went around the room shaking hands and trying to repeat the necessary conventional phrases, but I stammered and stuttered and bumped into the furniture. Everywhere I felt two large grey eyes burning holes in the middle of my back. It was a great relief when we filed into the dining room. I was half hopeful and half fearful that I should be given Miss Claybourne to take down; I wasn't. My seat was next to Mrs. Martin for safe keeping, while grey eyes sat across from me and talked to an aggressive looking saphead in a watered silk waistcoat. My conversation was nil; my earlier break with Mrs. Martin discouraged me there, while she was now most absorbed in her food. I tried to hear something of what was said across the table, but in vain. Occasionally grey eyes looked in my direction, but without friendliness or even recognition. I sank into gloom and despair. Early in the dinner I hoped for a glass of wine to cheer me up. There was a slender empty glass beside the iced water at my plate. That hope was dashed when Mary Ellen filled these slender glasses with mineral water from a bottle most artfully concealed in a napkin. Occasionally, Hemphill burst into anecdote, but usually these sallies of his were sternly suppressed by the voice of the skipper at the other end of the table. The latter carried on a marvellous sign language with the harassed Mary Ellen, to whom dinner parties on this scale were obviously a novelty. When she wasn't signalling Mary Ellen in a code of frowns and nods, Mrs. Hemphill spent her time searching with one foot for a mysterious bell that was concealed somewhere beneath the table. At last the dinner was over, and we all adjourned to the front room. There was no smoking for the men; I was thus bereft of my last hoped-for consolation.