The hop was given in the town hall, a large, dreary-looking room with a raised platform at one end, where Johnson's band introduced instruments and notes that had never met before.
To Sandy it was a hall of Olympus, where filmy-robed goddesses moved to the music of the spheres.
"Isn't the floor g-grand?" cried Annette, with a little run and a slide. "I could just d-die dancing."
"What may the chalk line be for?" asked Sandy.
"That's to keep the stags b-back."
"The stags?" His spirits fell before this new complication.
"Yes; the boys without partners, you know. They have to stay b-back of the chalk line and b-break in from there. You'll catch on right away. There's your d-dressing-room
over there. Don't bother about my card; it's been filled a week. Is there anyb-body you want to dance with especially?"
Sandy's eyes answered for him. They were held by a vision in the center of the room, and he was blinded to everything else.
Half surrounded by a little group stood Ruth Nelson, red-lipped, bright-eyed, eager, her slender white-clad figure on tiptoe with buoyant expectancy. The crimson rose caught in her hair kept impatient time to the tap of her restless high-heeled slipper, and she swayed and sang with the music in a way to set the sea-waves dancing.