"An' we'll all have new dresses for the party," exulted Lizzie May. "Poolers is a-going to have a party Christmas Eve an' we're all bid to go. But we'll have to hurry to git the dresses done."
Unable to wait a minute longer, the girls drove to Clayton first thing next morning and selected the material for their dresses. They chose cotton voile as being the prettiest, most party-like material to be had for the sum that they were able to spend. Lizzie May selected a delicate pink. Luella's choice was a medium blue with darker blue shadow bars running through it. Judith's was a red and white check. They were delighted and voluble over their purchases. They felt gay and festive and full of holiday spirit, like boarding school girls on a visit home. On the way home they all tried to talk at once and laughed so much that Tom and Bob, disturbed by the unusual hilarity behind them, kept looking around inquiringly trying to see what was going on. As they jolted at a fast trot past the Pettit place, Aunt Eppie peered out of the kitchen window.
"There goes them Pippinger girls, an' I'll bet they've spent most every cent Judy's earned while she's been here," she said to Cissy, turning away from the window with her heavy money sigh. "It beats me haow extravagant an' shiftless folks kin be. They don't seem to ever have a thought that there's another day a-comin'."
That very afternoon the girls started to make their dresses. They could hardly wait to eat and wash the dishes.
On Christmas Eve, when they were dressed ready for the party, they felt somehow like different beings, as though they were not workaday people at all but ladies who had always worn new, fluffy dresses, white stockings, and shiny shoes.
It was a drive of three miles to the scene of the party. Then the mules had to be hitched to a fence post at the top of the ridge and the remaining quarter of a mile made on foot. The descent into the hollow where the Pooler house stood was too steep and narrow to attempt with a wagon at night. Tom Pooler, the father of Lizzie May's sweetheart, was a tenant of old Hiram Stone and lived in one of Hiram Stone's tenant houses. Like most of the other tenant houses in Scott County, it was built close to the acres of tobacco land with which it belonged. Proximity to the main road was a matter not taken into account.