“You did not find it hard, did you?”
“I found it—funny!”
“Oh!”
“Miss Wynnette,” said young Edward Grandiere, “will you be so very good as to give me this next dance, also?”
“Not if I know it! I mean, thank you very much, but I hope you will do me the favor of asking one of the Misses Elk to dance with you. I intend to put on Le’s cap and be a gentleman, and ask one of your sisters to dance with me.”
“Why, Miss Wynnette, how strange!”
“There’s no help for it; there are not gentlemen enough in the company, so I must be one! Why, just see, here are fourteen ladies and only seven gentlemen. And always about the same proportion in this neighborhood, whether it be a ball, or a dinner party, or a tea-drinking, or a little dance like this. It is always the same—about twice as many ladies as gentlemen! Oh, I don’t know what is to become of us all, unless we go out as missionaries to the heathen!” sighed Wynnette.
“You must not go! I beg you will stay and take care of one poor heathen!” said the boy, trying his boyish best to be gallant.
“Maybe I will—stay and take care of poor, old Gov. Broadvally, who has gout in his great toe and infidelity on his brain, and neither wife nor child to make him a poultice, or read him a sermon,” said Wynnette, as she sprang up and left the side of her partner.
“Rosemary, darling, will you dance this set with me? I wished so much to dance the first set with you, but——” Roland Bayard, who was the speaker, paused, and Rosemary finished the sentence for him: