The loan of a lover, under these circumstances, may be painful to the lessee, and Alice, smiling never more brightly, found nothing to say to Mr. Russell, though she thought he might have found something to say to her. “I wonder what Mildred told him,” she thought. “Probably she said, 'Dearest, there's one more girl you've got to help me out with. You wouldn't like her much, but she dances well enough and she's having a rotten time. Nobody ever goes near her any more.'”
When the music stopped, Russell added his applause to the hand-clapping that encouraged the uproarious instruments to continue, and as they renewed the tumult, he said heartily, “That's splendid!”
Alice gave him a glance, necessarily at short range, and found his eyes kindly and pleased. Here was a friendly soul, it appeared, who probably “liked everybody.” No doubt he had applauded for an “encore” when he danced with Ella Dowling, gave Ella the same genial look, and said, “That's splendid!”
When the “encore” was over, Alice spoke to him for the first time.
“Mildred will be looking for you,” she said. “I think you'd better take me back to where you found me.”
He looked surprised. “Oh, if you——”
“I'm sure Mildred will be needing you,” Alice said, and as she took his arm and they walked toward Mrs. Dresser, she thought it might be just possible to make a further use of the loan. “Oh, I wonder if you——” she began.
“Yes?” he said, quickly.
“You don't know my brother, Walter Adams,” she said. “But he's somewhere I think possibly he's in a smoking-room or some place where girls aren't expected, and if you wouldn't think it too much trouble to inquire——”
“I'll find him,” Russell said, promptly. “Thank you so much for that dance. I'll bring your brother in a moment.”