“I should have no pleasure in dancing with any one else.”
Miss Larkins laughs and blushes (or I think she blushes), and says, “Next time but one, I shall be very glad.”
The time arrives. “It is a waltz, I think,” Miss Larkins doubtfully observes, when I present myself. “Do you waltz? If not, Captain Bailey—”
But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been wretched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don’t know where, among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink camelia japonica, price half-a-crown), in my button hole. I give it her, and say:
“I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.”
“Indeed! What is that?” returns Miss Larkins.
“A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.”
“You’re a bold boy,” says Miss Larkins. “There.”
She gives it me, not displeased; and I put it to my lips, and then into my breast. Miss Larkins, laughing, draws her hand through my arm, and says, “Now take me back to Captain Bailey.”
I am lost in the recollection of this delicious interview, and the waltz, when she comes to me again, with a plain elderly gentleman, who has been playing whist all night, upon her arm, and says: