Irving looked the culprit over from head to foot.
“Well,” he remarked, with a severity which seemed disproportionate to the occasion, “you are the limit!”
“And a transfer!” added Robert humbly. “Now you’re the only person that can save the day—I mean the evening. If you’ll go in, this minute,—go in eagerly, you know, just as soon as she sees you, fall over your own feet in your hurry,—do the thing handsomely, why, you’ll be acting like a friend! Get your breath as well as you can, and ask her for the first dance. So you will avert the storm from your tried and true Nixie!”
Irving looked unpromisingly gloomy. “I wasn’t thinking of dancing to-night,” he said.
“Well, think of it quick, now.” Robert dragged at his reluctant companion. “Put on a gilt edge by asking for the second one, too. She can’t give it to you, because I’ve engaged it. When you see me in the light, you’ll think I’ve turned gray in a single night; but it’s only the frosty rime that she cast over me when she accepted. Beside, you’ve got to ask Miss Vincent, haven’t you? You seem to have influence with mamma, and I’d rather you’d bring her over to be chaperoned than do it myself. Uncle Henry can’t play watchdog very well when it comes to partners.”
Irving allowed himself to be shoved and pulled toward the door. He felt the force of Nixie’s last argument, but he was still conscious of a strange disappointment in the carelessness of Rosalie’s greeting. Betsy’s earnest talk had fallen upon a wondering credulity, because of the tenderness that he had felt for this girl from the beginning,—a feeling totally different from anything he had ever experienced.
Her self-possession, and fleeting notice of himself just now, had given him an odd shock, and opened his eyes to the fact that he had given absurd weight to Betsy’s words.
Now, under Robert’s vigorous appeal, he shook himself together.
“I’m a worse sentimental idiot than dear old Betsy,” he thought.