She heard unfamiliar voices behind her, and then a small group of middle-aged people drew up wicker chairs to the veranda railing that overlooked the dancing-floor. Mrs. Cromwell gave them a side glance and perceived that they were visitors, “put up” at the club, for this was an organization closely guarded, and she knew all of the members. The newcomers sat near her, and though she would have preferred her seclusion to remain secluded, she could not help waiting, with a little motherly satisfaction, to hear them speak of her Anne, as strangers inevitably must. And presently she smiled in the darkness, thinking herself rewarded; for a man’s voice, deeply impressed, inquired: “Who _is_ that wonderful girl?” In the light of the moment’s impending revelation, the mother’s smile upon Mrs. Cromwell’s half-parted lips, as she waited for the reply, becomes a little pathetic. “Why, it’s _Sallie_, of course!” This strange answer arrested Mrs. Cromwell’s smile, of which reluctant and mirthless vestiges remained for a moment or two before vanishing into the contours that mark an astounded disapproval. Then she slowly turned her head and looked at these queer visitors, and her strong impression was that the two middle-aged women and their escort, a stout elderly man in white flannels, were “very ordinary looking people.” Their chairs were within a dozen feet of hers, but they sat in profile to her, and possibly were unaware of her, or were aware of her but vaguely. For strangers in a strange place are often subject to such an illusion of detachment as these displayed, and seem to feel that they may speak together as freely as if they alone understood language. But, of course, to Mrs. Cromwell’s way of thinking, the greater illusion of the present group was in believing that somebody named Sallie was a wonderful girl. She failed to identify this pretender: none of her friends had a daughter named Sallie, and Anne had never spoken of any Sallie. “I declare I didn’t recognize her!” the elderly man said, chuckling. “Who’d have thought it? Sallie!” The woman who sat next him laughed triumphantly. “I don’t wonder you didn’t recognize her,” she said. “It’s six years since you saw her, and she was only fourteen then. I guess she’s changed _some_—what?” “Well, ‘some’!” he agreed. “She makes the rest of ’em look like flivvers.” The second of the two women tapped his head with her fan. “George, I guess you never thought you’d be the uncle of a peach like that!”