“Oh, am I, JUST!” she exclaimed. “The best time—but I don't know what has become of my partner. See! I'm left all alone—the only time this whole evening,” she added proudly. “Have you seen him—my partner, sir? I forget his name. I only met him this evening, and I've met SO many I can't begin to remember half of them. He was a young man from Bonneville—a clerk, I think, because I remember seeing him in a store there, and he wore the prettiest clothes!”
“I guess he got lost in the shuffle,” observed Annixter. Suddenly an idea occurred to him. He took his resolution in both hands. He clenched his teeth.
“Say! look here, Miss Hilma. What's the matter with you and I stealing this one for ourselves? I don't mean to dance. I don't propose to make a jumping-jack of myself for some galoot to give me the laugh, but we'll walk around. Will you? What do you say?”
Hilma consented.
“I'm not so VERY sorry I missed my dance with that—that—little clerk,” she said guiltily. “I suppose that's very bad of me, isn't it?”
Annixter fulminated a vigorous protest.
“I AM so warm!” murmured Hilma, fanning herself with her handkerchief; “and, oh! SUCH a good time as I have had! I was so afraid that I would be a wall-flower and sit up by mamma and papa the whole evening; and as it is, I have had every single dance, and even some dances I had to split. Oh-h!” she breathed, glancing lovingly around the barn, noting again the festoons of tri-coloured cambric, the Japanese lanterns, flaring lamps, and “decorations” of evergreen; “oh-h! it's all so lovely, just like a fairy story; and to think that it can't last but for one little evening, and that to-morrow morning one must wake up to the every-day things again!”
“Well,” observed Annixter doggedly, unwilling that she should forget whom she ought to thank, “I did my best, and my best is as good as another man's, I guess.”
Hilma overwhelmed him with a burst of gratitude which he gruffly pretended to deprecate. Oh, that was all right. It hadn't cost him much. He liked to see people having a good time himself, and the crowd did seem to be enjoying themselves. What did SHE think? Did things look lively enough? And how about herself—was she enjoying it?
Stupidly Annixter drove the question home again, at his wits' end as to how to make conversation. Hilma protested volubly she would never forget this night, adding: