Books like Her First Ball: By Katherine Mansfield - Illustrated

Young Leila, an only child, living in the country, goes to her first ball with her cousins. She's at that age where women do not read much, unless they are ugly in which case they read a lot but are not invited to balls. So women who review this would either go reminiscing ("I remember when I had my first dance at...") or experience vicariously the youthful innocence and thrill of such experience ("so that was how it must have felt had I been to a ball.."). Me, I'm not a girl and I had not had any balls but my own. The enjoyment I had reading this was when a old, fat man who had attended balls for 30 years already (likely a teacher) took Leila for a dance, correctly guessed that it was her first ball, then engaged her in a conversation where he told her that not too long after that magical night:"you'll be sitting up there on the stage, looking on, in your nice black black velvet. And these pretty arms will have turned into little short fat ones, and you'll beat time with such a different kind of fan--a black bony one. ...And you'll smile away like the poor old dears up there, and point to your daughter, and tell the elderly lady next to you how some dreadful man tried to kiss her at the club ball. And your heart will ache, ache because no one wants to kiss you now. And you'll say how unpleasant these polished floors are to walk on, how dangerous they are."