‘Came yesterday evening,’ Dorine’s voice called out from some other room.

It had seemed a little house when Ellen had come to bring the apple. Now it seemed large to be holding many people. All were laughing and talking very loud but Dorine’s voice came again out of the jargon of words and laughter and shuffling feet.

‘It’s Ellen Chesser. Here’s a chair.’

The other people seemed to have come much earlier and all the first awkwardness was worn away. The party was congratulatory, for Dorine had won a three-piece combing set in a satin-lined box, had won it by selling eight boxes of some salve. Now that all the guests had arrived the prize was brought to the table and displayed. It was a brush and a comb and a hand mirror, all of a hard white stuff. The articles were fastened by little clasps onto a ground of pink satin.

‘Ain’t that something pretty now!’ voices cried out.

‘Eight boxes! That was a heap to sell!’

‘It wasn’t so easy to do, either,’ Dorine said. She wore a pink dress and her cheeks were pink and warm.

‘Name who bought,’ her mother said.

‘Eli bought one and Elmer Ware, and then Ras O’Shay and Mammy. That’s four. And then Sallie Lou and Mrs Al Wakefield and Jonas Prather and Mr Jim. Eight boxes of Lily-bud salve I sold.’ Ellen wished that she had bought one. But then she had not known about it and besides she had no money.

‘I bought it to grease my old buggy with,’ a young man said.

‘I bought mine to see if hit might cure my hens outen their roup.’ A half-dozen unflattering reasons were offered.

Dorine made faces at the speakers. The combing set was passed around and dark rough hands took out the white pieces and passed them to other dark hands. Splintered fingers caught on the soft spines of the satin. Someone discovered that the lining would come out of the box, for it was a crust of cloth glued onto wooden pegs. The three pieces of the set, the two linings of the box, and the box, six articles, were passed through the room. The prize was put together and taken apart several times for joy in the wonder of its mechanism. Ellen sat in her chair, out from the wall, conspicuous, miserable, her feet crossed under her dress, her eyes looking everywhere. She did not want to be sitting on the best chair out in the middle of the room, the chair nobody else would take because it was the best. Scarcely anyone knew her and she longed to be in a corner, but she dared not move. At the same time she longed to be known and to be liked. If the boy with the little beady eyes had said something to her she should have been most happy, or if the girl with the white stockings had, although that last was far too much to hope for. Effie Turpin stood over by the fireplace and presently Ellen knew that the girl called Maggie was a Turpin also although she was prettier than Effie. She wished that someone would ask her to move back into a corner, or she wished that she could say something pleasing and quick and that one or two would look at her and know what she meant. She wanted everyone to like her, to take her into the dance, into the game, into the jokes, or even into the crowd that went into the other room to be out of the way of the dancers.