She could not bear to give him anything common; and
Pansy believed that no one was needed to tell her what a common
thing is.
For a third reason slumber refused to descend and weigh down her
eyelids: on the morrow she was to call upon Dent's mother, and the
thought of this call preoccupied her with terror. She was one of
the bravest of souls; but the terror which shook her was the terror
that shakes them all--terror lest they be not loved.
All her life she had looked with awe upward out of her valley
toward that great house. Its lawns with stately clumps of
evergreens, its many servants, its distant lights often seen
twinkling in the windows at night, the tales that reached her of
wonderful music and faery dancing; the flashing family carriages
which had so often whirled past her on the turnpike with scornful
footman and driver--all these recollections revisited her to-night.
In the morning she was to cross the boundary of this inaccessible
world as one who was to hold a high position in it.
How pictures came crowding back! One of the earliest recollections
of childhood was hearing the scream of the Meredith peacocks as
they drew their gorgeous plumage across the silent summer lawns; at
home they had nothing better than fussing guineas. She had never
come nearer to one of those proud birds than handling a set of tail
feathers which Mrs. Meredith had presented to her mother for a
family fly brush. Pansy had good reason to remember because she
had often been required to stand beside the table and, one little
bare foot set alternately on the other little bare foot, wield the
brush over the dishes till arms and eyelids ached.
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