A wire had been carried from the village to the scene of the play at South
Hatboro', and electric globes fizzed and hissed overhead, flooding the open
tennis-court with the radiance of sharper moonlight, and stamping the thick
velvety shadows of the shrubbery and tree-tops deep into the raw green of
the grass along its borders.
The spectators were seated on the verandas and terraced turf at the rear of
the house, and they crowded the sides of the court up to a certain point,
where a cord stretched across it kept them from encroaching upon the space
intended for the action. Another rope enclosed an area all round them,
where chairs and benches were placed for those who had tickets. After the
rejection of the exclusive feature of the original plan, Mrs. Munger had
liberalised more and more: she caused it to be known that all who could get
into her grounds would be welcome on the outside of that rope, even though
they did not pay anything; but a large number of tickets had been sold to
the hands, as well as to the other villagers, and the area within the rope
was closely packed. Some of the boys climbed the neighbouring trees, where
from time to time the town authorities threatened them, but did not really
dislodge them.
Annie, with other friends of Mrs. Munger, gained a reserved seat on the
veranda through the drawing-room windows; but once there, she found herself
in the midst of a sufficiently mixed company.
"How do, Miss Kilburn? That you? Well, I declare!" said a voice that she
seemed to know, in a key of nervous excitement. Mrs. Savor's husband
leaned across his wife's lap and shook hands with Annie. "William thought
I better come," Mrs. Savor seemed called upon to explain. "I got to do
_something_. Ain't it just too cute for anything the way they got them
screens worked into the shrubbery down they-ar? It's like the cycloraymy to
Boston; you can't tell where the ground ends and the paintin' commences.
Oh, I do want 'em to _begin_!"
Mr. Savor laughed at his wife's impatience, and she said playfully: "What
you laughin' at? I guess you're full as excited as what I be, when all's
said and done."
There were other acquaintances of Annie's from Over the Track, in the group
about her, and upon the example of the Savors they all greeted her. The
wives and sweethearts tittered with self-derisive expectation; the men were
gravely jocose, like all Americans in unwonted circumstances, but they were
respectful to the coming performance, perhaps as a tribute to Annie. She
wondered how some of them came to have those seats, which were reserved at
an extra price; she did not allow for that self-respect which causes the
American workman to supply himself with the best his money can buy while
his money lasts.