"I should think you'd be perfectly paralyzed trying to think of things to talk to him about," said little Bessie Meed, who had not yet put her hair up. "Older men scare me stiff."
"They don't me," declared Lou Pierce; "they make me tired. Sitting out dances, and holding hands, and talking high-brow. When I come to a dance I want to dance. Give me Johnnie Rawlings or Pink Bailey and a good old jazz."
Eleanor pinned on her orchids and moved away. The girls seemed incredibly young and noisy and crass. Less than six months ago she, too, was romping through the dances with Jimmy and Pink, and imagining that a fox-trot divided between ten partners constituted the height of enjoyment. Mr. Phipps had told her in the summer that she was changing. "The little butterfly is emerging from her chrysalis," was the poetic way he had phrased it, with an accompanying look that spoke volumes.
Once on the dance floor, however, she forgot her superior mood and enjoyed herself inordinately until supper-time. Just as she and Pink were starting for the refreshment room, she caught sight of a familiar graceful figure, standing apart from the crowd, watching her with level, penetrating eyes.
"Pink, I forgot!" she said hastily; "I'm engaged for supper. I'll see you later." And without further apology she slipped through the throng and joined Harold.
"Let's get out of this," he said, lightly touching her bare arm and piloting her toward the porch.
"But don't you want any supper?" asked Eleanor, amazed.
"Not when I have you," whispered Harold.
Eleanor gave a regretful glance at a mammoth tray of sandwiches being passed, then allowed herself to be drawn out through the French window into the cool darkness of the wide veranda.
"Let's sit in that car down by the first tee," Harold suggested. "It's only a step."