"Certainly not Daisy."
"Oh, not Daisy—of all people! Oh, certainly not!"
"Next, you were doing what you ought not to do."
"What!"
"Yes, you were. You danced barefoot before those—those unspeakable fools!"
Patty felt uncomfortable. She hadn't herself exactly liked the idea of that barefoot dance, and hadn't told any one she was going to do it. She had insisted to Mr. Grantham that she preferred to wear sandals. But he had talked so beautifully of the naturalness of the whole conception, the exquisite appropriateness of unshod feet, and the necessity of her carrying out his design as a whole, that she had yielded.
And now that Bill Farnsworth spoke of it in this rude way, it seemed to divest the dance of all its aesthetic beauty, and make of it a horrid, silly performance.
She tried to speak, tried to reply in indignant or angry vein, but she couldn't articulate at all. A lump came into her throat, big tears formed in her eyes, and a sob that she tried in vain to suppress shook her whole body.
She felt Farnsworth's arm go protectingly round her. Not caressingly, but with an assurance of care and assumption of responsibility.
Then, he pulled off the glove from his other hand with his teeth, and after a dive into a pocket, produced and shook out a big, white, comforting square of soft linen, and Patty gratefully buried her face in it.