How girls manage to squeeze such a lot of clothes into small space, I don't know. Anyhow, Miss Patty and the Goodriches and the two young married women didn't appear in the same dresses they had worn for the dance at Easthampton. I never saw Patty look so pretty, though as a rule I don't like green, and to me it's unlucky. I shall never let her have another green dress when we are married, becoming though the colour may be. Storm was looking after the Grayles-Grice when the rest of us went into the clubhouse, so I knew the dance Patty was to "remember" couldn't be the first. I asked her to sit it out with me, and she hesitated a minute. "Has some one else got ahead of me?" I asked. She said no, but she had been thinking she wouldn't give the first dance to any one; she would "sit with Molly and Jack." It shot into my head that she didn't want Storm to come in and find her with me, knowing he wastes no love on yours truly. I was mad, but I kept cool. "All right, let me sit with you all three," I said. "I've got something important to tell you that can't very well wait."
I saw by her eye what she thought the "something important" was, so I hurried to disabuse her mind. "It's about Storm," I explained. "I don't know whether you'd care to save him serious trouble, but you can do so if we talk the thing over while there's time."
"Of course I would care to!" she said. "He's been very kind to Larry and me."
In my opinion it was the other way round, but I didn't stop to argue. I took her into the ballroom, having previously found out that Mrs. Sam de Silverley hadn't arrived yet. I was counting on her being a bit late. She generally is—for the sake of the effect.
When we were sitting down together, Patty and I (all the rest of our lot dancing, except the Winstons), I didn't waste a second in firing off my first gun. "I want to ask you frankly, Miss Moore," I began, "to tell me if you know whether Storm intends to be present at this dance to-night."
"But yes!" she answered in that funny French way she has, that would be difficult to put on paper if one wanted to. "He will come in a few minutes."
"Oh," said I. "That's a pity."
"Why a pity?" she wanted to know.
"Because he's not invited, and that is going to make it mighty awkward—worse than awkward."
"But, you invited us all," she insisted. "You are a member. You have the right——"