A voice assailed her memory. “Is it really you, Miss Nelson?” Standing close at hand, his eyes upon their little group in grave attention, was a good-looking boy of medium height, with blond, wavy hair that had been plastered back in an attempt to make it look straight—At her look of vague recognition, he stepped nearer, said to Grant and Packy in an undertone: “Couldn’t you talk it over just as well out-doors?” then smiled at Joy, and in a normal, bread-and-butter voice that seemed to have the effect of suddenly bringing everything back to an everyday basis, said: “You don’t remember me, do you? I met you at Prom this spring—my name’s Dalton.”
“Mr. Dalton—of course!” she exclaimed. “I remember you very well—” she stopped, and twinkled. The echo of his blunt lecture seemed for a moment to hang in the air. She turned to introduce him to Grant and Packy; but Packy had gone. The scene was over, and she relaxed.
“I’ll cut in later,” said Jim Dalton, and moved away. The music had started again, the orchestra-leader announcing that this was “the last dance.” In Grant’s arms she floated off to the strains of “I Love You Truly.”
“Hope that fellow who said he’d cut in, will have sense enough not to do it on the last dance,” he growled, clasping her almost fiercely to him.
“If that fellow hadn’t come up just then, I don’t know what might have happened,” Joy suggested.
“Damn Packy! Forgive me, Joy; but don’t you think Packy rates a damn or two? Of all the cake-eating parlour pythons——”
“Your mother was watching us. In fact, she still is. That was an awful scene to make, Grant.”
“Scene! Asking him one question. It was nothing to what I wanted to do. At that, though, he faded away pretty quick. Joy you dance like—like nothing at all.”
“So do you!” she thrilled up at him; and they drifted rapturously past Mrs. Grey, whose eyes, freshly iced, followed them everywhere.
Jim Dalton did not cut in until the very last encore. Grant relinquished Joy, then went revengefully to cut in on Betty, who looked far from delighted to be interrupted in the midst of “I Love You Truly” by a brother.