MISS. DARITT FROM DETRIOT

"One carriage will be enough to meet the morning train, but we will need to send two in the afternoon."

Mrs. Bradley's clear generous Voice was caught in a delicate web of benevolent anxiety as she spoke from behind the high coffeeurn at one end of the table. She moved her distinguished head a little restlessly, stroked her white hair up and away from her forehead with quick movements of her well-shaped hands, and continued her hospitable reflections.

"I do hope they will all be comfortable, and Susan not mind sleeping downstairs in the Prophet's Chamber alone. It is her first season, and I want her to enjoy herself. Her mother would have wanted her to get this ball with us."

"No one cares where they sleep on the night of their first ball, mother, so don't worry," Brenda offered, a trifle wearily.

"Mine was seven years ago, and I remember that I was so surprised to see the dawn at the end of the day instead of at the beginning that I couldn't sleep at all. I go to sleep soon enough now ... can hardly wait to get home!"

When she finished speaking she looked up at her mother, and the dark droop around the corners of her mouth lifted in a casual smile, the guilty boredom vanished from her naturally gay brown eyes.

Mrs. Bradley observed her eldest daughter for a tactful second and then said in a tone free of rebuke but quickened by disturbed affection, "My dear Brenda, you go to so many! And you don't seem to get any real pleasure from them - not since ..."

"Don't worry about that either, mother darling. I'm perfectly

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happy, really, and having a very good time. I just need another cup of coffee." She held out her cup to be filled, and looking down the long breakfast-table where she and her mother sat alone, asked, "What's the matter with the rest of the family this morning? Why are they all so late?"

"Phyllis is so excited at the thought of seeing Dick again - he arrives this afternoon - that she has worn herself out and is having her breakfast in bed. She is so easily upset! Elizabeth is deep in the morning papers. Your father breakfasted early and has gone into town. The boys are always late, and Gillian - where is Gillian?" She turned to the servant who was standing behind her chair. "Ellen, go tell Miss. Gillian that breakfast has been ready for fifteen minutes, and that we are waiting for her."

As the servant left the room Mrs. Bradley moved in her chair with a suggestion of uneasiness, and said gently - as if to herself - "Gillian is difficult lately ... so grave - so - I don't quite know what it is - so wise, perhaps - but difficult. I suppose it's her age - thirteen is always a difficult age - but none of the rest of you girls were like her."

She moved again and looked at Brenda, and then proceeded to develop the theme of Gillian's character. "She seems to know much more than she has experienced. She goes to school as if she were indulging some caprice of mine! She listens to your father at times as if he were a child, and doesn't listen to the rest of you at all any more, unless you are describing some adventure or disagreeing about some fact. She used to drink in every word! Now she appears fond enough of us, but not very interested. She seems determined about something, though I can't make out what it is. I wonder if she herself knows." She glanced at the other end of the table where Mr.

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Bradley usually sat, and added, "Yet she's not unhappy - just grave."

Brenda laughed. "Being the youngest member of a family of seven id enough to make anyone grave, and if she hasn't gained some wisdom from watching the rest of us grow up, she never will! Don't forget - she's not thirteen any longer - she's just had a birthday. Perhaps she's difficult because she's beginning to realize how plain she is, though I must say she's got a very good sense of humour. The only thing I can't make out about her is whether she has a heart! She laughed again, very cynically this time."

"Brenda! Gillian is an extremely emotional child!" Mrs. Bradley exclaimed. "She's unusually quiet, but that doesn't mean she has no heart. It means she controls herself. As for her being plain ... well, she is plain, but she is not unattractive."

The servant came back into the room with news of the grave plain child. "Oh, Mrs. Bradley! I found Miss. Gillian standing in front of her mirror, all dressed up in Miss. Phyllis's new ball-dress. She didn't hear me when I came in, Ma'am, and I had to speak to her twice. Whatever'll Miss. Phyllis say, Ma'am? Her new dress, that she's never had on herself!"

"You needn't tell Miss. Phyllis, Ellen. The dress won't be harmed."

"Oh, mother! You're so exaggerated about Gillian! You think father spoils her, but you're much worse. You only say she's difficult to give yourself an excuse for indulging her."

"Gillian has been brought up as you all have, Brenda - with the same discipline. Your father does spoil her - but it's very hard to have such gaiety going on and be not yet old enough to share it. After all, she's the only one of us except your Aunt Elizabeth who isn't going to Mary's ball tonight, and the only one who has no friend arriving for it. She'll be here alone with Elizabeth, and though

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your aunt is one of the most delightful women in the world, she's hardly ... Of course, it seems a trivial matter to you who go to so many parties in town and everywhere, but Mary's ball will be the most elaborate one that has been given amongst us here in years, and it's perfectly natural that Gillian should"-

"There, there, darling," Brenda broke in, "don't go on defending her! If you weren't the most wise and generous and tolerant mother in the world, we would all be insufferable. As it is, we are the most enjoyable family in existence ... Let Gillian put on all our dresses and dance on our heads, if she pleases. Here she comes now. I'll leave you to nurse your ewe-lamb by yourself. I can't bear to see you breaking up this way!"

Brenda got up from the table and - lightly kissing her mother's splendid white hair as she passed her - hurried from the room as Gillian walked slowly into it, pulled a chair out from the table and sat down.

"Good morning, Gillian."

"Good morning, mother. I'm sorry I'm late. I was busy" - she paused, and as Mrs. Bradley made no comment, she repeated the three words with slow portentous pleasure - "I was busy." She looked with steady inquiry into Ellen's face and reassured by what she saw there asked, "Are there any strawberries? I would likely not to eat bananas this morning - they are so fruitless."

Ellen left the dining-room, returned quickly with a small dish of strawberries, put them down in front of Gillian and turned apologetically to Mrs. Bradley. "Cook didn't need all the berries for the cream tonight, Ma'am, so I saved these out for Miss. Gillian. I know she can't abide bananas."

"Thank you, Ellen," Gillian interjected, and began to eat them

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before her mother could decide whether this was what Brenda meant by spoiling. "They are very good strawberries, and the cream is beautifully thick this morning ... May I have some on my bread, mother, if I crumble it up?"

"You eat too much cream, Gillian. It isn't good for you when it's as thick as this."

"But mother, I'll eat all my bread - crusts and all - if I may have just a little cream on it. The crusts are good for me, you know."

"Gillian, you are not a child any longer. You should eat your crusts without bribes."

"Well, if I'm not a child any longer, why can't I have as much cream as you do?"

Mrs. Bradley turned irritably to Ellen and made her a sign to pass the cream. "You are sometimes a very trying child, Gillian," she said, with a tinge of impatience which had rarely heard in her voice. And then, as if to escape from the self-accusation of having given in to the child - however trying - and with an impulse to a void a silence as she watched Gillian spooning out quantities of cream on her crumbled bread, she said in a perfunctory voice, "What are you planning to do this morning?"

"I think I'll walk over to South Pasture and see if there are any mushrooms."

"Don't be ridiculous, Gillian!" Mrs. Bradley was startled to hear herself call one of her children ridiculous, but the child was difficult. She softened her voice as she spoke again. "You know it's too late for mushrooms, and South Pasture is quite a walk. Why don't you stay in and read? You look a little tired this morning."

"Read!" Gillian exclaimed. "Stay in and read!! ... Oh, I could-

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n't - it's too - too special an morning. I must go out somewhere. I
forgot about it's being late for mushrooms. I'll bring back some
leaves or something - for the table."

"We have masses of flowers for the table tonight, and the
house is full of the branches and sedges you and the boys brought in
yesterday. You've arranged them beautifully, and I love your doing
it, but we really don't need any more."

Gillian looked directly into her mother's eyes, and said with
grave courtesy but unquestionable determination, "Very well, mother
dear ... but I'm going out."

She got up from her chair and started toward the door. Half
way across the floor she stopped, and with a smile that brought all
the uneven features of her pale plain face into a focus of radiant
gaiety she added, "And I'm not tired. I feel very strong. I'm just
busy, that's all - very, very busy."

She walked to the door and at the threshold paused, turned to
her mother and asked, "Why must girls wait until they are eighteen
before going to balls?"

"Because they are not old enough until they are eighteen, Gillian," Mrs. Bradley answered lamely.

"Oh - just not old enough? You mean - no girl is old enough until she is eighteen? - and then every girl is old enough? ... How funny! ... Thank you mother," She went out of the room.

Mrs. Bradley sighed perplexedly but not unhappily, and rang
for Ellen.

"Yes, Ma'am, I'm just here." Ellen spoke from behind Mrs. Bradley's chair. "I hadn't left the room, Ma'am."

Mrs. Bradley turned with a start. "Oh, yes. I ... I only wanted to tell you that the table is large enough for luncheon as it is,

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but you will have to put in an extra leaf for dinner tonight. We will be eighteen - no, sixteen, I mean, Ellen - sixteen."

"Yes, Mrs. Bradley. You told me. You gave all the orders to John and me this morning early - before breakfast. Only you didn't say whether Miss. Gillian was coming down for dinner or having it up upstairs, Ma'am." Ellen starched skirts rustled as she took a step forward.

"Upstairs, Ellen."

"Oh - Ma'am! All alone upstairs!"

"Yes, Ellen. All alone upstairs."

Ellen made no answer, but stepped back again. Mrs. Bradley rose up from her chair with preoccupied movements, stroking her hair back from her patient forehead as she went out of the room and down the long hall into the living-room of the big welcoming house.

* * * * *

After leaving the dining-room Gillian went to a cavernous closet near the great front door of the house, and took a cost from the odd assortment of garments which had accumulated there from the many comings and goings of the large family. Struggling into it - it was one which even she had outgrown - she walked out of the front door, crossed the driveway, and started off through the grove on the other side in the direction of South Pasture.

It was a late autumn morning. The air was pungently alive with the smell of peacefully dying and dead leaves, cooked in the still hot sun, which reached down through the tattered branches to the ground gradually retreating and chilled earth. Gillian thought the autumn, with its perpetually renewed combat between heat and cold, the most exciting season of all. She liked to fancy that the trees lived so deeply and fully that they had to drop their leaves and branches at

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rhythmic intervals to free themselves for further growth, though she knew they had no choice. She stepped heavily on the rich brown moulding mass under her feet as she walked on through the grove, feeling that she was sending life more quickly down to the roots, so certainly awaiting renewal.

A few dry abruptly curled leaves of greying brown clung stiffly to the topmost branches of an oak tree here and there. An even pattern of speckled yellow leaves was still discernible on one chestnut tree, while the fallen ones on the ground beneath lighted the air around. A tiny frantic little lemon colored leaf fluttered low on a bending birch. The maples, exhausted from their early spendthrift rose-blaze, stood primly stripped and repentant.

A squirrel ran slidingly fast along a branch over Gillian's head, and jumped surely to the tip of a branch on a nearby tree, where he sat up and chattered crossly as the branch moved agitatedly from the sudden impact. He held a nut between his teeth and clutching front paws, and blinked his greedy bright brown eyes at Gillian as she stood looking up at him. He was used to humans: the place was overrun with squirrels, and most of them tame. As Gillian imitated his sharp elucking little chirrup, he shook his fine tail in quick shuddering curves over his back until - in a burst of vanitous response - he dropped the nut. Then he snapped his tail down suddenly and scampered angrily away.

Gillian was glad she had not brought any of the logs with her. She had disliked the dilemma in which she had found herself a few days earlier when McGinnis, her beloved terrier, had chased and killed a most beautiful wild white squirrel who had appeared on the ground from nowhere. He had dropped at their feet like a white plum from the sky, and as Gillian had sat out in pleasure at the sight,

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It was at this point that she let her mind definitely (consciously) form the purpose which had busily pervaded her for days: it became one important thought, and would allow no other. It was that she was going to the ball tonight. She had determined it. She was going to do about this new thing, however difficult it might be to accomplish.

She wondered if Phyllis had been told about the dress. She had been very careful of it, only trying it on to see if the color suited her. Phyllis would not mind - she would think it was fun. It was pink - as were most of Phyllis's frocks - and Gillian had decided this morning once for all that pink was hideously unbecoming to her. She would have to look in the closets of her other sisters. She knew that Kate had left only a few old dresses from last summer hanging in her's, and settled on the idea of wearing one of Brenda's. Brenda was small, and Gillian knew from surreptious experiments that her clothes were a better fit than the rest.

Whatever she wore, she was going - of that she was sure - but she had not as yet planned how: she had been too busy concentrating on the State of going. She had had a moment of doubt at breakfast, when she had been silly about the mushrooms, because it had made her realize that she had been careless, which might have been a forewarning of failure. Gillian was very stern with herself about such things, believing that perfectly determined things never failed. Certainly it was not perfect to have been so absorbed in the idea of going that she had spoken of gathering mushrooms today - when everyone knew that mushrooms did not grow in South Pasture in late November! She had needed to be alone to concentrate, but she had not needed to make such a stupid mistake about it. Well, - the moment of carelessness had passed without too much trouble, and here she was, with the grove behind her and the fence that enclosed South

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Pasture ahead of her to climb.

She climbed it and jumped down into the scrubby pastureland
on the other side, stumbling over a small hollow covered with tough
strongly interwoven brambles. This would never do! She knew the past-
ure as well as her own room, and was furious with herself for this
second sign of carelessness. As a measure of discipline she made her-
self run down and up the first two irregular little hills of the
pasture, balancing herself awkwardly on large stones in the path,
pulling her feet tearingly through low bushes and pushing her way
through the snapping branches of the high ones. Finally, jumping
waveringly from one hummock of grass to another of the lightly fro-
zen marshland at the base of the second hill, she decided she could
walk comfortably for a while along the ridge of the pasture, giving
herself a respite from discipline.

Scuffing the small stones in front of her, stepping firmly on
the big withered puff-balls to hear the dry sigh of their tiny ex-
plosions, she wandered along in the sun thinking about the great e-
vent ahead of her. She was feeling it ahead of her too, and hoped
she could persuade her mother, once it was over, that whether she
was eighteen or eight or fifty, she had known she was old enough to
go to a ball and so ... had gone. She knew the consequences would be
severe, but this she did not dread as much as she dreaded the pros-
pect of hurting her mother's tender heart. However, it would all
come out right somehow. Even her mother would be convinced that she
was old enough to go to a ball, since she had gone! And even if she
never went to another, she was going to this one.

She felt sure her father would not really mind. He might have
to seem cross, of course, but he knew she was old enough or young e-
nough or whatever enough to go where she pleased, (particularly if
it was where there was dancing, which he loved) and would not have

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to be convinced, nor would his heart be hurt.

Her sisters and brothers? Brenda would be sulien and angry un-
derneath though cynically amused, and offer suggestions of punish-
ment which her mother, being fairness itself, would rejeset - per-
haps in favour of sterner ones, but her own. Her most critical sist-
er, Kate, was away at school, and would only hear of it when the
worst was over. Phyllis she adored and was adored by: she would be
generous at least, and even possibly defend her. Two of her broth-
ers thought everything she did was right, though they would tease
her unmercifully about it for months afterward. They knew, too, that
she was more attractive than the rest of the family realized. Her
eldest brother would not notice it unless she brought home to him
something of what she had experienced there that he himself had not.
She thought him the most grown-up member of her family, and by far
the most interesting; though next to her father and mother Phyllis
was the dearest.

Except for the servants, Aunt Elizabeth would be the only oth-
er person in the house with her when the last carriage-load drove
off, and Gillian felt that in a crisis her aunt could be counted on
to encourage doing - regardless of age. She was not one who play-
ed the trick of herself everlastingly; she was always new, somehow.
Why waste any more of her feeling on thought on the disturbing quest-
ion of what would happen afterwards? She was going to the ball.

* * * * *

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PART TWO

It was early afternoon before Gillian decided that she felt
no further necessity of being alone. She had not wished to run the
danger of showing her excitement in carelessness again, and had not
wanted to be too long with the people whom she loved
most in the world: the thought of upsetting them might make her even-
ing less desirable. She wanted to enjoy it completely, as far as she
could, and knew herself a coward about tender hearts. But now her
concentration had fulfilled its span, and her presence at the ball
was as good as accomplished: she was ready to go home. She was just
physically tired enough to need the stimulus of her excitement, and
did not fear it would betray her into carelessness again. She start-
ed back, but did not think of herself as going home. She thought of
herself as going to the ball.

(have teen)

Her family was used to her long rambles, and would not be worried by her absence. Indeed, they would scarcely think it a thought in the flurry of new arrivals and the similarities of a long lunch-time. She arrived at the house, making her way through a side door and up a back staircase to her bedroom. As she crossed the long upper hall, she heard them at tea somewhere below her. The voices of men and women in the fluctuating rhythms of talk and laughter, mingled with the delicate noise of moved cups and spoons, made a curious agreeable sound. Gillian listened to it with pleasure for a moment before she stepped into her room and closed the door gently behind her.

She took off her mud-caked shoes, her torn stockings and the
outgrown overcoat. She undressed carefully, her clothes permeated
with the damp rich odors of the early autumn morning. She stood