"Glad you didn't! of all the cheek I ever heard of! I wish I'd been there. How did you get rid of him, Kitty?"
"Why—I ought not to tell, Bobby. Promise never to tell anybody! Promise, Sarepta! Well—Wilson felt a little sentimental after the party and all, and I—I—tipped him out, going round the corner!"
"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Bobby Shafto.
"He! he! he!" tittered Sarepta, and fled, her bread being in the oven.
Kitty held out her hands with a sudden gesture, Bobby grasped them, and the two danced up and down, holding hands and laughing like two children. Kitty ought to have known better. There are so many psycho-chemical formulae; they combine so easily, especially with certain cardiac conditions. She knew perfectly well that Bobby had been sighing and looking and sighing again, ever since she came back. I am afraid she was rather used to sighs and looks. She had spoken casually of "people" in Switzerland and Italy who had been "rather foolish." She knew, or she ought to have known, that it was one thing to dance with a lad at the party, one revolving unit among many, and a wholly different thing to take hands with that lad and dance child-fashion, just the two of them in all the world. What wonder that poor Bobby Shafto was swept out to sea in good earnest? He could not know that the girl was not really thinking of him at all, that she was dancing with Tommy Lee, as she always had danced, ever since she could toddle.
Kitty saw the look in Bobby's eyes, and a cold wave swept over her. She would have withdrawn her hands, but Bobby held them tight.
"Kitty!" The laughter died out of his rosy face.
"Kitty, dear!"
"Yes, Bobby! we must stop now, and you must run along; I have my housekeeping to see to."
"Kitty, dear! wait just a minute. I—I want—I wish I might hold these little hands all the time!"