“Nonsense, Willy; give me back my card at once.”
“No fear; not till I’ve done with it. Well, this will do for a start,” he said, at length returning me my card, black with his initials, and departing without giving me time to remonstrate. As he went away, Nugent came up.
“Can you give me a dance?” he asked. “I am afraid it is not very likely, after the amount of time Willy has spent over your card. I never saw him write so much before in his life; he looked as if he were writing a book.”
“Oh, I think I have some left,” I said, resolving to do as I thought fit about Willy’s dances.
“Then, may I have 6, 11, 13, and 18, if you are here; and supper?”
“I am afraid I can’t give you supper,” I said, glancing at the large “W” scrawled through the four supper extras on my card; “but you can have the others, I think.”
“Thanks; that is very good of you. I think the next thing to be done is to ask Mrs. Croly for a waltz”—making a survey of the room as he spoke. “I always do, and she always pretends to strike me with her fan, and says, ‘I suppose you’re mistaking me for Sissie,’ and is arch. I should watch if I were you; I am sure you would like to see her looking arch.”
I was, unfortunately, not privileged to see this phase of my hostess, as The O’Neill had already stationed himself beside me, so as not to lose a bar of his polka.
“Lots of people here to-night, Miss Sarsfield. You must feel as if you were back in Boston, eh? Ah, there’s the music! Let us start while we have plenty of room.”
He danced with the self-assertive vigour peculiar to small fat men, and we stamped and curvetted round the room in circles so small that I found it difficult to keep on my feet.