“Let’s. And dance,” Glenn was in an astonishingly social mood to-night. “Let’s get Ariel down and teach her to dance, Anne. Since she’s turned Joan down, it’s up to us to do something for her education, isn’t it?”
“I’m afraid you can’t,” Mrs. Weyman said, getting up and stepping out of the long window onto the terrace. “Grandam can’t be left alone for a minute. And Ariel has proved herself extremely conscientious.”
“Can’t Hugh substitute for a little while? Grandam’s as glad to have him as Ariel, isn’t she? She’s definitely said good night to Anne and me, and good-by, too. Told us not to come up in the morning before leaving. But couldn’t you release Ariel for an hour or so, Hugh? Our one night home?”
“As soon as I’ve had some coffee I’ll go up and try,” Hugh agreed. But Glenn thought his voice now was deuced funny. Hugh’s back was to the lighted dining-room windows, and the stars did not disclose the expression on his face, but Glenn imagined it as matching in expression the deuced funny voice. Glenn had never felt like this before at home. He was aware of tension, not only in his mother and Hugh, but in himself.
It vanished, however, when Hugh had succeeded in making the exchange of himself for Ariel with his grandmother, and Ariel appeared on the terrace.
“Shall we have the victrola, or will you play, Anne?” Glenn asked, throwing his half-smoked cigarette into the rose bushes, and drawing Ariel by both hands along the terrace toward the drawing-room windows.
“Oh, I’ll play, since only two can dance at a time. But I don’t know how Glenn’s going to teach you to dance, Ariel, unless he’s been practicing himself lately.”
“I have,” Glenn confessed. “You see, I thought I was going to get Ariel to Prom. So I’ve been brushing up.”
“You’d better take up the rugs in the library and dance there,” Mrs. Weyman advised, trailing after them, dusky in the dusk. “These flags aren’t a good floor. ’Specially for a beginner.”
“But it’s cooler out here. And Ariel belongs out of doors on such a night.”