Annie, with other friends of Mrs. Munger, gained a reserved seat on the veranda through the drawing-room windows; but once there, she found herself in the midst of a sufficiently mixed company.
“How do, Miss Kilburn? That you? Well, I declare!” said a voice that she seemed to know, in a key of nervous excitement. Mrs. Savor's husband leaned across his wife's lap and shook hands with Annie. “William thought I better come,” Mrs. Savor seemed called upon to explain. “I got to do _something_. Ain't it just too cute for anything the way they got them screens worked into the shrubbery down they-ar? It's like the cycloraymy to Boston; you can't tell where the ground ends and the paintin' commences. Oh, I do want 'em to _begin_!”
Mr. Savor laughed at his wife's impatience, and she said playfully: “What you laughin' at? I guess you're full as excited as what I be, when all's said and done.”
There were other acquaintances of Annie's from Over the Track, in the group about her, and upon the example of the Savors they all greeted her. The wives and sweethearts tittered with self-derisive expectation; the men were gravely jocose, like all Americans in unwonted circumstances, but they were respectful to the coming performance, perhaps as a tribute to Annie. She wondered how some of them came to have those seats, which were reserved at an extra price; she did not allow for that self-respect which causes the American workman to supply himself with the best his money can buy while his money lasts.
She turned to see who was on her other hand. A row of three small children stretched from her to Mrs. Gerrish, whom she did not recognise at first. “Oh, Emmeline!” she said; and then, for want of something else, she added, “Where is Mr. Gerrish? Isn't he coming?”
“He was detained at the store,” said Mrs. Gerrish, with cold importance; “but he will be here. May I ask, Annie,” she pursued solemnly, “how you got here?”
“How did I get here? Why, through the windows. Didn't you?”
“May I ask who had charge of the arrangements?”
“I don't know, I'm sure,” said Annie. “I suppose Mrs. Munger.”
A burst of music came from the dense shadow into which the group of evergreens at the bottom of the tennis-court deepened away from the glister of the electrics. There was a deeper hush; then a slight jarring and scraping of a chair beyond Mrs. Gerrish, who leaned across her children and said, “He's come, Annie--right through the parlour window!” Her voice was lifted to carry above the music, and all the people near were able to share the fact that righted Mrs. Gerrish in her own esteem.