In all the dim-coloured splendour of flame and mist was Mary now enwrapped, with every step that Barbara took towards her home did the splendour grow.
III Then followed an invitation to tea from Mary's mother.

Barbara, preparing for the event, suffered her hair to be brushed, choked with strange half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation that comes from anticipated glories: half-sweet because things will, at their worst, be wonderful; half-terrible because we know that they will not be so good as we hope.
Barbara, washed paler than ever, in a white frock with pink bows, was conducted by Miss Letts.

She choked with terror in the strange hall, where she was received with great splendour by Mary.

The schoolroom was large and fine and bright, finer far than Barbara's room, swamped by the waters of religion and politics.

Barbara could only gulp and gulp, and feel still at her throat that half-sweet, half-terrible suffocation.
Within her little body her heart, so huge and violent, was pounding.
"A very nice room indeed," said Miss Letts, more friendly now to the optimist because she was leaving in a day or two, and could not, therefore, at the moment be considered a success.