Skippy's answer was something between a gulp and a gurgle.
"Don't you want me to teach you?" said Dolly in the velvetiest voice in the world.
"I'll try; I'll try anything you say," he said, breathing hard, "only I say, Dolly, remember a cart-horse has done more dancing than I ever have."
"The two-step is frightfully easy—you'll see," said the young lady when they had reached the dark end of the piazza. "It's just one-two to music. Put your arm around me!"
"You goose! How can you dance if you don't?" said Dolly in a cool professional manner. "Take my hand. So! Now just walk in rhythm."
When Skippy for the first time in his life had actually closed his arm around a feminine waist and clutched at the outstretched hand, he had a sensation of terrifying dizziness, such as had once overcome him when on a dare he had poised himself thirty feet in the air for his first high dive.
"Begin! One, two, left foot, to the music!"
Skippy blindly and obediently began to walk. He walked all over the little feet. He walked on his own. He walked into a chair and ricocheted from a table with a bump that bounced them off the railing.
"That's enough!" said Dolly in a slightly discouraged voice. "Gracious! You mustn't grab me like that. You're not drowning."