Win forgot the question that had not been answered.  She seemed to see those strawberries and to smell the sweetness of roses and lilies in a house “as cool as snow.”

“Heavenly!” she sighed.  “I didn’t remember there were such things in the world!”

“Well, come with me to-night and remind yourself,” coaxed Miss Leavitt.  “You needn’t be afraid, because I said it was artists, to butt into some rowdy crowd.  They’ll be as quiet and refined as mice.  They’re more your kind than mine, I guess.”

“But who invites me?” Win made another bid for information.

“My artist friend said I could bring any one I wanted to bring, and I want to bring you.  I don’t just know who all’ll be there, but I guess not many, and it’s a real swell house to see.  You always refuse everything I ask you to, but I do think you might say yes this one time and show you’re not proud and stuck up.  It’d do you good!”

“I believe it would, and I’ll go!” cried Win.  She was in the mood to say “yes” to anything.

“Hully gee!  That’s the best thing’s happened to me since the measles!” exclaimed Miss Leavitt jovially.  “I’ll call for you at your place half-past nine this evening, so you can have a good rest before you begin fixin’ yourself up.”

“It’s an engagement,” said Win, with a kind of self-defiance.

She had wished for a change, “anything for a change,” and presto! her wish had been suddenly granted by fate.  Rather spitefully granted, it would seem, because to go to a “party” with Lily Leavitt was the very last thing she would have chosen.  And spitefully, also, as if to punish her own foolishness in wishing, she accepted such goods as the gods had mischievously provided.

“You’ve said yes, and now you must stick to it,” she told herself in preparation for a wave of regret, but to her surprise the day wore on and the expected tide of repentance did not set in.

The girl realized that she was looking forward, actually looking forward to the evening.  It would be like walking wide awake into the Hall of Dreams to put on a dress beautiful enough for a princess, and eat ice-cream and big red strawberries in a house “cool as snow” instead of sitting in her hot bedroom practising on the hired typewriter or panting on her bed, dead to everything in the world except a palm-leaf fan.

When she had been a little girl, invited to children’s parties, it had not been of the slightest importance whether she liked the child or not.  The party was the thing.  Now history was repeating itself in her nature.  The blank monotony of life and work had given back that childish eagerness for fun, no matter whence it came.  She did not care whose ice-cream and strawberries she was going to eat, provided she got them and they were good.  Besides, it would be like finding an old lost friend to look into her mirror (it was cracked and turned one’s complexion pale green, with iridescent spots; but that was a detail) and see a bare-necked, white-armed girl in evening dress.