Thus the introductions went on, and the girls who met these heroes would have been tongue-tied before such greatness had not Peggy, before she left them, raised them also to eminence. Miss Winterbean was the one who had invented the Lilian Walker waltz the girls would teach their guests that afternoon; Miss Thomas, of course, was the vice-president of the freshman class—“the best class——” Peggy leaned over and whispered it, so that the girls who were not members of it shouldn’t hear,——“the best class that had ever come to Hampton.” Miss Pilcher was the house entertainer, and could play anything that was written, for a piano.
Hearing themselves thus praised, the girls took heart and laughed happily up into the faces of the men as the music began.
“My Little Dream Girl” caught them up into its delightful, sweet rhythm, and with such partners as they had not enjoyed before in college, the Hampton girls were swung out across the floor.
To Peggy, laughing up at Bud Bevington, it seemed that the whole world was dancing. He knew so many funny steps, and threaded his way so dangerously among the other couples, doubling the time, and then going even faster, until their one-step was simply a run-step as fast as they could go.
“You—you think—this is a football field,” gasped Peggy, when she could speak at all. “I—I’m half dead—I know now how it feels to be a football.”
“You mean I’ve been kicking you,—did I hit your foot, really?”
Bud was contrition itself.
“N-no, certainly you didn’t; how could you when they went so fast? I mean you have been making a goal with me.”
“I hope the goal is a long way off,” laughed the football man.
They had gone around nearly twice more, when he bent and said suddenly in Peggy’s ear, “Who is our cross-looking friend in the doorway with the Charley Chaplin scowl?”