“To think,” meditated Pen presently as she deftly cut out a waist, “that the thief should be making evening clothes, when it was only but yesterday she was booked for bars instead of balls.”
CHAPTER V
The two fiddlers were tuning their instruments when the party from the house entered the rosy-lighted mess-hall. Jo started forward with an air of assurance to claim Pen. When he beheld her, he stopped abruptly, lost in admiration of the daintily clad young person whose Castle-cut locks had been lured to a coiffure from which little tendrils escaped in babyish rings.
Jakey Fourr, second violin, glimpsed her at the same time and noticed Jo’s hesitating halt.
“Ladies’ Choice!” he shouted with a grin.
Jo looked at her expectantly but vainly; for she gladdened the pride of Francis by choosing him as her partner. Betty and Billy mutually chose each other. Mrs. Kingdon selected a newcomer. Agatha and the “other girl” asked their particular friends, and the cook spitefully “sat it out.” Pen had to follow the prim little steps learned by Francis at a city dancing school the winter before, and Sleepy Sandy thoughtfully timed his tune thereto and shortened the number. Then Jo started for the belle of the ball, but a youth in combination attire of hunter, cowboy and soldier was ahead of him.
“Would you honor me, ma’am?” he asked.
She would and did, but she never learned the name of the wonderful dance with which she “honored” him. It had been a case of “whither thou goest, I will go.”