How can you say it was leila first ball in story her first ball?

Answer 1

Leila's overflowing excitement from the first instance we meet her, sitting in the cab with the Sheridan girls and their brother, is the first indication we get of this being the young girl's first ball. Meg, Laurie, Laura are all, no doubt, excited and flurried too, but they are more composed. Leila on the other hand has been so filled with anticipation waiting for this day, that for her, the cab has already become her first dance partner. Her euphoria is such that her uncontainable exhilaration is projected to all the inanimate things around her; she cannot wait to dance, and while she is still on her way, the lampposts that go by her, "waltz". Her perception of the things surrounding her is so different from the other, more "experienced" girls, that it is apparent that this is all new to her. If it was not her first ball, she would not have been noticing every aspect of the evening, every azalea in the ball room, in such great detail. The night had a kind of ethereal beauty for her: "her second partner seemed to spring from the ceiling", and earlier, the fat man was "tossed away on a great wave of music that came flying over the gleaming floor".

Leila is naive; when someone hands her her programme, "she wanted to ask someone, 'Am I meant to have one too?' ". She is transfixed by the gleaming, golden, floor, by the colours of the dance-programmes, by the frantic girls who are looking for "invisible hairpins. She is not accustomed to the norms of conversation between dance partners in the ball room, so that when the boy asks her if she was at the ball at So-and-so's place, she fervently jumps into telling him all about her past life, and how this is her first ball. (OH and yes! she herself says that this is her first ball to all the men who dance with her!)

Also, we see Leila comparing this dance floor to the "dusty smelling hall" where she had learned dancing under Miss Eccles. She felt this difference to be so "tremendous that Leila was sure if her partner did not come, she would die at least, or faint, or lift her arms and fly out". She is so innocent and expectant that it is obvious this is her first ball. She simply revels in the mere dancing: she has no particular regard for the young men who dance with her, it is always a "someone". If this was not her first time coming to a place like this, then, like other girls, she would have cared more about the men, with their glossy hair and smooth gloves, than the actual dancing itself, as she does now.

"For it was thrilling. Her first ball! She was only at the beginning of everything.".