"This is the life!" he said to himself, decidedly. There was not a pay dance-hall in town that could touch it.
Other connoisseurs more experienced than Archibald Blair have looked with delight upon a Galt House Ball—and will look no more, alas! Along the broad corridor behind the ballroom picked experts were wont to congregate early in every season to inspect Louisville's latest contribution to the beauty of the race, comparing points and conformation, class, speed, and endurance, as knowingly as such things are later discussed at Churchill Downs. Indeed, Louisville may be said to be, in some matters, a city of experts. The youth who sells you your cigar, the newsie who provides you with an evening edition, should without a moment's hesitation be able to tell you the name of two things on demand: the Derby winner and the season's beauty.
So Archibald was in a measure prepared for what he saw. Anticipations of it had kept him awake at night. His trouble was in the midst of so much loveliness to fix his ravished attention upon the finding of one face.
When he found it at last, however, his eye did not again wander. He was a young man whose head rarely contained more than one idea at a time—a fact which perhaps accounted for his growing success in the selling end of the business.
He let her pass the first time out of sheer pleasure of the sight of her in motion. Joan was wearing, as she usually wore nowadays, an odd shade of blue, very much the color of the orchids at her waist. In the hand on her partner's arm she carried another bouquet, of violets; and the second time she passed she had exchanged this for a third, of pink roses. From which it may be gathered that Louisville was at last waking up to the attractions of our heroine.
Archibald wished suddenly that he had sent her a bouquet himself, but decided that she might have thought it "fresh."
"Unless I was to send it just 'From a Friend'?" he thought, his eye brightening.
She had changed partners on each appearance, as well as bouquets; and the third time she was dancing with a portly gentleman who one-stepped so majestically, so benignly, that their passage down the room was a sort of royal progress.
"Why, the gay old guy!" thought Archibald, surprised; and decided that this was the moment for his grand coup. Girls like that should not have to dance with parties old enough to know better.
He stepped up to the couple as he had seen others do, and slapped Major Darcy on the back, remarking with the excessive nonchalance which is the result of nervousness, "So long, old top! Back to the tall timbers for you."