“Isn’t it wonderful?” cried Lucile, and the next instant a voice at her elbow pleaded, “Give me this dance, will you, Lucy?” and she looked up into Jack’s smiling face.
An answering smile flashed out. “Will I?” she cried, and led the way, Phil and Jessie following.
Another instant and she was being whirled away on Jack’s arm, and Jack, who had won renown for his dancing among his New York associates, thought he had never danced with anyone so lovely and so exquisitely graceful as this friend of Jessie’s.
“You dance wonderfully,” was Jack’s comment. “Anybody could tell you love it.”
“Oh, I do,” said Lucile, fervently. “There’s nothing like it.”
“Nor you,” said Jack, and he believed it.
The girls never forgot that night. A new world seemed to open before them—a world they never knew existed. A world filled with bright lights and music, where every one danced and laughed and was thrillingly and unbelievably joyful.
And Lucile, who had never dreamed of anything like this, suddenly found herself the very center of attraction. The crowd was always thickest about her and Jessie and Evelyn, and she was so deluged with requests for the next dance that her order was filled in no time and Jack had all he could do to squeeze in two numbers at the very end.
Some of the boys, to be perfectly frank, quite a few, were awkward and stepped on the toes of her dainty little white pumps until they were very nearly black, but she was so happy as to be absolutely oblivious of such trifles, while the awkward youths fell entirely under the spell of her sparkling, fun-filled eyes and the merry, bubbling laugh that seemed to overflow from sheer joy.
Once Jessie managed to whisper to her, “Miss—Mrs. Wescott didn’t say she was going to have such a wonderful affair as this. Were you in the secret, Lucy?”