"Nope," he said, smiling down into her wistful eyes. "I want to get a stand-in with your Dad because I want to take you to more parties."
"Oh, Billy! Do you!" breathed Lydia. "Well, I don't think there's any one in the world has nicer things happen to them than I do! Oh, Billy, just this waltz!"
It would have taken a harder heart than Billy's to resist this. He slipped his arm about her and they swung out on the floor to the strains of The Blue Danube, than which no lovelier waltz has ever been written.
They did not speak. Billy, holding the slender, unformed figure gently against his breast, looked down at the golden head with an expression of utter tenderness in his eyes, of deep resolve on his lips.
At the end, Lydia looked up with a wondering smile. "I didn't know any one could be so perfectly happy, Billy. I shall always remember that of you—you gave me my happiest moment."
On the way home in the bumping hack, Billy seemed to relax. "Well, did I give you a good time, Miss, or didn't I? Could Kent or Gustus have done better?"
"Oh, they!" cried Lydia indignantly. "But, Billy, I didn't know you could dance."
"I couldn't, but I've been taking lessons all winter. I'm not going to give a girl a chance twice to call me down the way you did last summer. Of course, this is just a second-hand dress suit, but I think it looks all right, don't you?"
"Billy," said Lydia, "last summer I was just a silly little girl. Now,
I'm grown up. You were the swellest person at the ball to-night.
You just wait till I tell your mother about it."
Billy went up the path with Lydia to the steps and held her hand a moment in silence after he said, "It's a wonderful night!"