"You're not going to be home tonight, are you?" she inquired presently. When Varick said no, that he'd be out all the evening, Bab perched herself on the serving table in the corner, and sat swinging her shapely, slender heels. "I suppose you're going to a party, aren't you?" she suggested.
Again he smiled.
"Why, yes, Bab—why?"
"Oh, I don't know," she murmured as aimlessly. Then her eyes growing vague, she drew a little breath.
"There'll be a tree, I suppose?" Varick nodded. Yes, there would be a tree. "And you'll dance besides, I shouldn't wonder?" added Bab, drawing in her breath again, a pensive sigh. "I imagine, too, there'll be a lot of girls there—pretty girls?"
She could see him stare, curious at her tone, her questioning; but now she hardly cared. There was something Bab meant to ask him presently, though how she was to do it she still was not quite sure.
"Funny," she murmured, her tone as if she mused; "do you know, I've never been at a dance!"
Varick stared anew. "Really?"
"Honor bright!" said Bab, aware of his astonishment. She had a way, when others amused her, of drolly twisting up one corner of her mouth; and then as her smile broadened, rippling over her face, Bab's small nose would wrinkle up like a rabbit's, obscuring temporarily the freckles on each side of it. "Give you my word!" she avowed.
Leaning back, then, she sat clicking her heels together, her eyes roving toward the ceiling.