The boys arrived in a batch. After the manner of their kind, they formed into groups about the big doors of the drawing-room and at the end of the lecture hall. But the masters who were with them routed them out with remorseless energy, and started the dancing. Bobby Felmore, very red in the face, and still adorned with sticking-plaster, led out the Head. He was most fearfully self-conscious for about a minute and a half. By that time he forgot all about being shy, for, as he said afterwards, the Head was a dream to dance with, and she was a downright jolly sort also.
Dorothy had danced with big boys, she had danced with cheeky youngsters of the Lower Fifth who aired their opinions on various subjects as if wisdom dwelt with them and with no one else, and then she found herself dancing with Bobby Felmore.
Bobby, by reason of having danced with the Head, was disposed to be critical regarding his partners that evening, and he began telling Dorothy how he had plunged through a foxtrot with Daisy Goatby, who was about as nimble as an elephant, and as graceful as a hippopotamus.
“She is quite a good sort, though, even if she is a trifle heavy on her feet,” said Dorothy, who was hotly championing Daisy just because Bobby saw fit to run her down.
“I say, do you always stick up for people?” he asked.
“When they are nice to me I do, of course,” she answered with a laugh.
“Well, you won’t have to stick up for Rhoda Fleming, at that rate,” said Bobby with a chuckle. “She seems to have a proper grouch against you. Tom was complaining as we came along to-night because you and Rhoda don’t hit it off together.”
“We do not have much to do with each other,” murmured Dorothy, resentful because Tom should have discussed her with this big lump of a boy who, however well he might dance, had certainly no tact worth speaking of.
“Just what Tom complained of; said he couldn’t think why his womenfolk didn’t hit it off better: seemed to think that you ought to be pally with any and every one whom he saw fit to honour with his regard. I like his cheek; the Grand Sultan isn’t in it with that young whipper-snapper.” Bobby tossed his head and let out one of his big laughs then, and Dorothy thought it might be for his good to take him down a peg.
“Tom is rather small,” she said, smiling at him with mischief dancing in her eyes; “but he is a force to be reckoned with, all the same.”