"I don't mean to say that Joyce doesn't dance beautifully," I added, hastily, "she dances better than I do, because she is so tall and slight, but she does get out of breath before the end of a waltz."
He did not make any remark upon this. He only said, "Shall we go back to your mother?"
We got up and walked across the room. Miss Thorne was talking to mother, and a clean-shaven, fresh-colored young officer was inscribing his name on Joyce's programme.
Captain Forrester just shook hands with Joyce, and then he came and sat down beside mother and began talking away to her in his most excited fashion, telling her all about the waxing of the floor and the hanging of the banners and the trimming of the evergreen garlands, and how the gardener would put the Union Jack upside down, until she was forced to be more gracious with him than was her wont.
Joyce's sweet mouth had the look upon it that I knew well when mother and she had had an uncomfortable passage, but I could not imagine why she should wear it to-night. I could look across upon her programme, and I could see that there were names written nearly all the way down it, although I could not read whose names they were, and especially after my one taste of the joy of waltzing, I was beginning to think that no girl could have cause for sadness who had a partner for every dance. Alas! I had but one, and my spirits were beginning to sink very low. I had forgotten love affairs; I wanted to waltz.
"There is a dreadful lack of gentlemen," said Jessie Hoad, who had come up beside us, putting up her eye-glass and looking round the room. "That unfortunate man must have his hands full."
"Do you mean Squire Broderick?" asked Miss Thorne. "I don't think he considers himself unfortunate. He looked cheerful enough just now, dancing with Miss Maliphant."
Miss Hoad vouchsafed no reply to this; she moved off to where her father was talking to mine in a corner, and passing her arm within his, walked him off without the slightest ceremony to be introduced to the old lady with the handle to her name who had come over from our fashionable seaport.
I thought it was very rude, but Mr. Hoad was not quite as affable himself to-night as he was in the privacy of our own Grange parlor.
"I hate that kind of thing," said Miss Thorne to me, in her out-spoken way. "When are there ever men enough at a country dance unless you get in the riffraff from behind the shop counters? We come to meet our friends, not to whirl round with mere sticks."