You notice when you have danced the first one with your brother's roommate, at whose special invitation you came, that as soon as he has taken you to your seat he rushes off like mad. In a moment he comes back again, bearing with him the young man who was pointed out to you at the concert as being down on your card for No. 2. While he is being presented, still another anxious-eyed man runs up and hurriedly snatches off your host. These are men who are "running" girls' cards.
Now, while you and your new acquaintance are waiting for the music to begin, and are amiably agreeing that the concert was good, that the room is warm, that the light effects are pretty, you may steal another glance at your dance-card to make sure of this man's name. It is carefully written in ink on the pretty silk-and-leather-bound card which was handed to you on the way to the concert. All the numbers are filled and three extras. This is the way it was done:
About three weeks ago a young man was sitting in the grand stand one sunny afternoon watching the baseball practice, and wondering whether the nine would beat Harvard, when one of his clubmates came along and asked him for a match. He complied with the request, and said, "Don't mention it." Then the borrower of the match asked if he were going to the dance, and as he admitted his intention of doing so, he was handed a preliminary card which had your name at the top of it. Then, after a little more conversation, he put his name down for No. 2, and handed it back to your host, who thanked him. And again he said, "Don't mention it." That was the man who is about to dance with you. At that time you were unknown to him. The other names were secured in various ways. In the midst of a lecture your card was passed along to some fellow on the end of the row, who, with the same pencil with which he was taking notes on "Post-Kantian Philosophy," secured for himself a deux-temps with you. Other men were hailed out in front of Old North when the seniors were singing, or at the club dinner tables, and in the lounging-rooms when they were talking baseball, or when they were at the billiard table and had to walk across the room to where their coats were hanging to see their cards. Perhaps your host took a night off to it, and went out on the campus and yelled "Hello, Billy Wilson!" under Billy Wilson's window to see if he were in before he ran up the stairs to his room and demanded to see his dance-card; and went on thus from entry to entry as if he were out after subscriptions, except that he went to his friends. Sometimes it is not an easy task to fill five or six cards, especially when every one is feeling rather down-hearted over an unfortunate athletic season. Of course if the girl has been down before, and is well known and popular, there is no difficulty of this kind. Probably the next time you come down you won't need a card.
Except for the five dances which he saves out for himself you see very little of your host during the evening, and even then he seems worried and absent-minded. It no doubt piques you a little that the moment the music ceases he leaves you, and, with an expression on his face which reminds you of when "Pigs in Clover" was the rage, darts across the room, bumping into people and begging pardons. The only time he looks comfortable and recalls to your mind last Christmas holidays is when he and you have slipped off to one of those quiet little nooks so bounteously adorned with rugs and hangings, brought for the occasion from some dormitory room, to enjoy two little bits of ice which he has pillaged from the supper-room. Then for a while he seems to forget his cares, and you two have a good old-fashioned chat. You notice a streak of chicken-salad along his silken collar, but that gives you no adequate idea of the muscle and bad language required to secure and bear away those two little dabs of ice and one napkin, any more than his anxious expression indicates the amount of patience and ubiquity required to "run" three girls' cards at a college dance.
All this time you have been going through the several different stages of "a perfectly lovely time." You have shown a lot of young men how well you can dance, and have gotten along very well with all you have met except that once when you asked sweetly, sympathetically, "Won't you be just too glad to be a sophomore next year?" of a very studious and diminutive member of the graduating class. The chat is no longer about the concert, nor is the heat mentioned, though it is terrific, nor the effect of the lights upon the pink and white cheese-cloth, except by those gallants who see fit to say something about its being becoming to certain complexions. And, most gratifying of all, you notice that those who have your name on their cards more than once come the second time without being brought. Indeed, some come again who have not that good fortune, and you pay slight attention to your card after supper, but dance with those who come up and beg for a dance, because you are tender-hearted and hate to displease them. It is a good plan to lose your card now or hide it. Some girls tear up theirs the moment they come, for fear they might make a mistake, and consequently hurt somebody's feelings.
By this time you have gotten your second wind, if you'll pardon the expression. You talk without previously meditating upon what you are about to say; but you know it's all right just as you drift to the strains of the music automatically. Your eyes are wide open and sparkling; your cheeks have a flush which is becoming; you are dimly conscious that your visit at Princeton is a success. And just as you are beginning to wish that all this could last forever you hear a strain of music of which every daughter of a loving home should be fond, and then, for the first time, you notice that the stately patronesses in their bower are opening their eyes very wide and gritting their teeth very hard. Then, having danced that last one furiously, you are dragged off, casting a lingering glance at faded flowers, wilted collars, tired musicians, torn skirts.
When you come from the noisy, laughing dressing-room a moment later, wrapped from head to foot in a great long thing which covers any changes the five hours' exercise might have wrought in your appearance, you are met by your bedraggled escort under the light, where you took his arm before, long ago, on the way to the dance. You can remember how stiff his collar was then and how smooth his hair. Everything, animate and inanimate, looks different now, especially with that ghastly streak of dawn which mingles with the electric light. It makes some of the girls look rather faded and jaded, you think, and some of the men rather rakish, but not even the girls seem to care very much. Every one is too excited to be tired, and too merry to be formal. All the stiffness of your escort's manner has gone with that of his collar. As he offers his arm this time he does not gaze straight ahead of him and murmur something incoherent about hoping that you are going to enjoy this, for he begins singing "It's all over now," to the dank and misty campus trees on the way to University Hall, and you give him permission to smoke a cigarette, and shout good-night down the stairs, and tell him what time to call around in the morning—later on in the morning—for he has made you promise to stay over all of the following day and see a little of the college and campus, and take a stroll in the queer old town.
Then, as the gray dawn creeps in through the dotted Swiss curtains which somebody made for the freshman who owns the room, causing the roses on the bureau to look pale and livid, and while the far-away voices of the dance committee can be heard from back of Witherspoon, where they are having an informal game of baseball in their evening clothes to celebrate the success of their efforts, and the sparrows outside your window begin to twitter as though there had been no dance, you lay your head upon the pillow and tell your roommate what the tall one said who danced the two-step so divinely, and what that funny little fellow with frowsy hair told you, and what were the remarks of the football man with whom you sat out two dances, and how the entertaining man who sang the solo at the concert seemed to like you, and what your brother's roommate told you not to tell.
THE LITTLE TUTOR
At first they thought he was one of the new students, he was such a little fellow and had such a smooth, boyish face. And one of the college men had stopped him on the street, and, in a manner that seemed to indicate that he had some particular reason for desiring the information, asked him abruptly: "What class do you belong to?"