When the music stopped, and they stood, breathless and laughing, at the dressing-room door, Ruth said:
"I thought Annette told me you were just learning to dance!"
"So I am," said Sandy; "but me heart never kept time for me before!"
When Annette joined them she looked up at Sandy and smiled.
"Poor f-fellow!" she said sympathetically. "What a perfectly horrid time you've had!"
CHAPTER XVI
THE NELSON HOME
Willowvale, the Nelson homestead, lay in the last curve of the river, just before it left the restrictions of town for the freedom of fields and meadows.
It was a quaint old house, all over honeysuckles and bow-windows and verandas, approached by an oleander-bordered walk, and sheltered by a wide circle of poplar-and oak-trees that had nodded both approval and disapproval over many generations of Nelsons.