“Now, don't fret yourself into a headache, dear,” she said in a voice meant to be soothing. “The party won't run away--just let yourself relax.” Relax! The musicians, out on the side porch, were already beginning their blaring preparations when the hostess, at last, ran down the stairs and into the front parlour. Her agitation had no chance to subside before they must file out to the dining room. Missy hadn't had time before to view the completely embellished dining room and, now, in all its glory and grandeur, it struck her full force: the potted palms screening the windows through which floated strains of music, streamers of blue and gold stretching from the chandelier to the four corners of the room in a sort of canopy, the long white table with its flowers and gleaming silver-- It might almost have been the scene of a function at Chetwoode Manor itself! In a kind of dream she was wafted to the head of the table; for, since the function was at her house, Missy had been voted the presiding place of honour. It is a very great responsibility to sit in the presiding place of honour. From that conspicuous position one leads the whole table's activities: conversing to the right, laughing to the left, sharply on the lookout for any conversational gap, now and then drawing muted tete-a-tetes into a harmonic unison. She is, as it were, the leader of an orchestra of which the individual diners are the subsidiary instruments. Upon her watchful resourcefulness hangs the success of a dinner-party. But Missy, though a trifle fluttered, had felt no anxiety; she knew so well just how Lady Chetwoode had managed these things. The hostess must also, of course, direct the nutrimental as well as the conversational process of the feast. She is served first, and takes exactly the proper amount of whatever viand in exactly the proper way and manipulates it with exactly the proper fork or knife or spoon. But Missy had felt no anticipatory qualms. She was possessed of a strange, almost a lightheaded feeling. Perhaps the excitement of the day, the rush at the last, had something to do with it. Perhaps the spectacle of the long, adorned table, the scent of flowers, the sound of music, the dark eyes of Mr. Edward Brown who was seated at her right hand. (Dear old faithful Ben!--to think of how his devotion to tippling Tim had brought Edward Brown into her life!) She felt a stranger to herself. Something in her soared intoxicatingly. The sound of her own gay chatter came to her from afar--as from a stranger. Mr. Brown kept on looking at her. The butler appeared, bringing the oyster cocktails (a genteel delicacy possible in an inland midsummer thanks to the canning industry), and proceeded to serve them with empressement.