She consulted a surreptitious little card. "I'm afraid you'll have to wait till quite a little later on, Noble. That one is poor Mr. Ridgely's. I promised him I wouldn't——"
"Then can I cut in on the next one after that?"
"It's Mr. Clairdyce's," said Julia—and she blushed.
"My goodness!" said Noble. "Oh, my goodness!"
"Sh! I'm afraid people——"
"Let's go out on the porch," said Noble, whose manner had suddenly become desperate. "Let's go out and get some air where we can talk this thing over."
"I'm afraid I'd better not just now," she returned, glancing over her shoulder. "You see, all the people aren't here yet."
"You've got an aunt here," said Noble, "and a sister-in-law and a little niece: I saw 'em. They can——"
"I'm afraid I'd better stay indoors just now," she said persuasively. "We can talk here just as well."
"We can't!" he insisted feverishly. "We can't, Julia! I've got something to say, Julia. Julia, you gave me the first dance and the last dance, and of course sitting together at supper, or whatever there is, and you know as well as I do that means it's just the same as if you weren't giving this party but it was somewhere else and I took you to it, and it's always understood you never dance more with anybody else than the one you went with, when you go with that person to a place, because that's the rights of it; and other towns it's just the same way; they do that way there, just the same as here; they do that way everywhere, because nobody else has got a right to cut in and dance more with you than the one you go with, when you goes to a place with that one. Julia, don't you see that's the regular way it is, and the only fair way it ought to be?"