"Went a block for a beer with a Manhattan right inside," murmured Micky, as they prepared to start. "Oh, you g'wan!" she laughed, and they swung into the revolving circle.
Micky's boast of terpsichorean ability made good, (he had picked up the art long before, as readily as he did everything else,) he was rewarded with two more regulars and an extra before the affair ended. One of the regulars was originally scheduled with the recreant Ryan, who appeared for it in due course and retired congealed, with a black look at the grinning O'Byrn. The other regular had originally been Miss Muldoon's cousin's. She transferred it airily, but the cousin bore it with the equanimity of a mere relative.
"I suppose you've got company home?" inquired Micky, with a certain mournful hesitation, as they were finishing the last dance.
"Not yet," she answered demurely. "That is," with a flash of blue eyes, "Mr. Ryan brought me but he sha'n't take me back. He's too thirsty. That first dance you got was the second he'd missed with me."
"Forget him!" breathed Micky ecstatically. "I'm in luck." He invariably took things for granted.
"But," she recollected, chilling somewhat, "I haven't accepted your escort yet, Mr.—er—O'Byrn. I never met you till tonight."
"O, happy night!" he retorted, with the impudence that time would never wither nor custom stale. "Aren't you glad you came?"
She laughed again, a girlish, joyous laugh that warmed the heart in the hearing. "I'm it," she averred. "You are certainly the limit. But you aren't in such luck as you think. It's a long way home."
"Never too long with you for a pacemaker," he assured her. "And luck—I know the varieties. I've had all kinds." So, as the last waltz ceased and the dancers prepared for departure, he hastened to the door, where Dick was waiting for him, and dismissed that gentleman. Glenwood raised his eyebrows comprehensively and departed alone.
The way was short to Mulberry Avenue, all too short for Micky, and as for the lady—well, it would have seemed longer had the discredited Ryan been in her company. There was the first faint hint of dawn in the shrouded sky as Micky left the girl at her door and turned away, with her gracious permission to call on his next night off. So Micky turned to retrace the way now suddenly grown long; agitated stirrings in his warm Irish heart that he could not have explained, those first faint harbingers that come to us all, poor children of fleeting youth, and are stilled ere we can understand.