How cool and fresh
the gulf breeze blew; how white and wonderful the moonlight was over
everything! This was life--enchanting life. Rilla felt as if her feet
and her soul both had wings.
CHAPTER IV
THE PIPER PIPES
Rilla's first party was a triumph--or so it seemed at first. She had so
many partners that she had to split her dances. Her silver slippers
seemed verily to dance of themselves and though they continued to pinch
her toes and blister her heels that did not interfere with her enjoyment
in the least. Ethel Reese gave her a bad ten minutes by beckoning her
mysteriously out of the pavilion and whispering, with a Reese-like
smirk, that her dress gaped behind and that there was a stain on the
flounce. Rilla rushed miserably to the room in the lighthouse which was
fitted up for a temporary ladies' dressing-room, and discovered that the
stain was merely a tiny grass smear and that the gap was equally tiny
where a hook had pulled loose. Irene Howard fastened it up for her and
gave her some over-sweet, condescending compliments. Rilla felt
flattered by Irene's condescension. She was an Upper Glen girl of
nineteen who seemed to like the society of the younger girls--spiteful
friends said because she could queen it over them without rivalry. But
Rilla thought Irene quite wonderful and loved her for her patronage.
Irene was pretty and stylish; she sang divinely and spent every winter
in Charlottetown taking music lessons.
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