Everything was ready for the dance night. Margreet walked upstairs and opened the door of her closet. It didn't seem appropriate for her to go to a dance night in jeans. Even though she had never experienced a dance night, she had a vague impression that it would be more fun to put on something else.

A dress... she knew in which dress she would look like a princess, but wasn't that a bit excessive? After all, it wasn't a dance night in a palace. She took the dress out of the closet. She remembered when she had bought it. She had loved it immediately, the narrow bodice that fitted her like a glove, closing high on her neck with an upstanding ribbed border of the same fabric, and a wide skirt underneath. The bodice and the three-quarter sleeves were red, the skirt looked like a sea of fire of red, orange and yellow. The colors blended so beautifully, it looked like a painting!

She remembered, far too well, how the dress had caused a scene at home. Her mother had mocked her, condemned her as a slut, scolded her for not thinking she was so special. Her mother had thought she would make a fool of herself if she put on such a dress. Her face contracted at that memory. Because of that reaction from her mother, she had never put on the dress.

It took her effort to go back to her own feelings of the moment she had put on the dress in the fitting room and looked in the mirror. How her mirror reflection had surprised her. She had turned around outside the fitting room for the saleswoman, laughing at the special effect of the skirt. The reaction of the saleswoman had also surprised her. She had been able to clearly hear and see that it had not been a standard comment from the saleswoman. She too had been really excited. This dress just looked great on her, and she had not hesitated for a second, she had taken it! Well, Mom's reaction had been awful, of course, but her reactions were standard awful, standard negative, standard judgmental.

She decided to hold on to her own happiness and started to change her clothes. She looked in the full-length mirror on the inside of the closet door. The dress looked really great on her, still does! She only hoped the guests would also be wearing special clothes, otherwise she would stand out. Then all the attention would go to her and she would feel like the center of the group. And that was really the last thing she wanted!

And what else? She never used make-up, she just hated it. She hardly had any jewellery, and the few she had were still in her parents' house. She could only try to do something about her hair. She brushed, pulling her hair with the brush to the top of her head and put a sturdy elastic around it. Then she grabbed the ponytail and did something she had never tried before: she tried to make a bun. She had no idea how to do it, but followed her intuition. She twirled her tail around her forefinger a few times, then twirled it around the elastic once and repeated that just until the entire tail was nestled around her elastic. She took out another elastic, the one she had been given when she bought the dress and had kept around the pendant with the dress. The elastic was as red as the bodice of the dress, and it had ribbons on it of the same colors as the skirt. She tied the elastic around the bun and carefully plucked out the ribbons that had become stuck. She looked at herself again in the mirror and tried to imagine how beautiful she would be if she could dance, sway... at the hand of Huib!

Dream girl, she scolded herself. She giggled a little, uncertainly, closed the closet door, and went downstairs.

The dance room was already bustling with activity. There were six guests in the boarding house at the moment, three couples, and they were all in the dance room. She saw that Huib was busy talking to Sjaak, the gardener. She smiled, she liked it that Sjaak was there too.

She was startled when it suddenly became silent. She saw that more and more eyes were on her, and she had the feeling that her cheeks were turning as fire-red as the bodice of her dress.

"Wow! Wow! And wow again!" admired Anton. "Margreet, you look like a princess!" He moved closer, grabbed her hands and whispered in her ear, "Where did you leave your prince?"

"Owww, Anton, stop teasing me! It scares the hell out of me that everyone is looking at me like that. Where's Joke?"

She looked where Anton pointed, "There, go and keep her company, the two most beautiful ladies of the house together! You're both beautiful..."

She smiled shaking her head and walked over to Joke.

"May I sit with you?"

"Gladly," Joke said, "it doesn't happen to me every day that such a beautiful young lady wants to sit next to me, so I'm going to enjoy that for a while!" She winked at Margreet. "It really is a special dress, girl, what is that fabric?"

"It's linen, according to the label, and feels lovely, not sticky."

Joke chuckled, "I wore a satin blouse once on a hot day. I hated it, within a few minutes the thing stuck to my skin and I felt dirty!"

Margreet laughed: "I can imagine! I do like satin very much, but I've also always been afraid it would be sticky."

A woman, who had introduced herself yesterday as Emma, had come crouching by them to feel the fabric of the skirt and had followed part of the conversation. She responded, "Satin is not actually a fabric, but a way of weaving it. So it depends on which fabric you use for a satin weave. That fabric that we usually call satin is that shiny fabric that hardly breathes. That's why it can feel so sweaty. This looks a satin weave too, but of linen fabric. That's why the label says it's made of linen, but it's not a standard weave. A standard weave makes linen a little coarser and rougher. Your dress is different, I'm almost certain it's a satin weave. This also makes your skirt fall more smoothly than a linen skirt usually does. It's really beautiful! I wonder what that skirt will look like when you dance."

Margreet nodded, "I don't think I'll be dancing, I just can't do it. I tried for a while, but I thought it was a disaster!"

Joke patted her thigh, "Finally a supporter! Dancing is fun, but I have trouble with the other people around me. It makes me feel watched and I don't think I can do it well enough. Just sit here, Margreet, we'll amuse ourselves by watching the dancers, and nibbling at the goodies! No matter how you look at it, even though I rarely dance, I always find it a festive evening! Next time, when we go on holiday here again, I'll bring a party dress too, then we'll hang out the princesses here together hahaha!"

Margreet and Emma, who had meanwhile sat down on the other side next to Joke, laughed along with her! "As long as you don't become wallflowers!"

"Then you don't know how beautiful wallflowers can be!" Joke replied, laughing. And again the women laughed. Margreet began to relax. With such sweethearts beside her, it would certainly be a pleasant evening!

To chapter 26. Deep conversations at the dance night

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