When he rejoined Honey in the dining-room he was smiling, not grimly now, but placidly.
"What is it, Dearie?" she asked.
"Just got something off my chest, that's all."
The words suggested something to Skinner; whenever his exasperation at his folly was too great for him to bear, he'd go upstairs and take it out on the dress suit. And the idea comforted him not a little!
So the Skinners put themselves in charge of a first-class dancing instructor just off Fifth Avenue. For two solid weeks, every day Honey met Dearie after office hours and they practiced trotting the fox trot, stepping the one-step, and negotiating the tango and the hesitation. Skinner was thorough in his dancing, as in everything else. He was quick to learn, light on his feet, and soon was an expert and graceful dancer.
At the end of the brief term Skinner wrote down in his little book:—
| Dress-Suit Account | |
| Debit | Credit |
Instruction in dancing | A certain stimulation |
The two weeks' loyal devotion to the art of Terpsichore made Skinner at the Crawford dance no less conspicuous as a dancer than as a man of distinguished presence. He found himself greatly in demand, and he made the quick calculation that this new enhancement of his value was due to his dancing—which, in turn, was due to—the dress suit!
Early in the evening Mrs. Crawford, the hostess, introduced Skinner to Mrs. Stephen Colby, the magnate's wife, and Skinner asked for a dance. And as he led that lady to the ballroom, he formulated the following entry in his notebook to be jotted down at the first opportunity: "Credit, dress-suit account, one dance with the wife of a multi-millionaire—a social arbiter. An event undreamed of, even in my most ambitious moments! What next, I wonder?"
Mrs. Colby had a way of commenting upon other persons present with a certain cynical frankness—as became a social arbiter—that amused Skinner, and he took a genuine fancy to her. The wine of the dance got into his blood, and when the music ceased, he begged for another dance.