Tootsie's terpsichorean assistance was sorely needed. Skippy was not a natural glider and gliding as Tootsie explained to him was essential in a ballroom, in polite society at least. Skippy's feet could skip, hop and jump with the best, but they were not, in any sense of the word, gliders. The change from the inanimate embrace of the dressmaker's form to Tootsie's pliant figure, however, worked such miracles that at the end of twenty minutes' industrious application, Tootsie expressed herself as astonished and delighted.
Now of course Skippy could have gone for instruction to Dolly Travers, who was the object of these secret efforts. But that was not the Skippy way. He had always shunned any exhibition of inferiority. Whatever was to be learned he learned in privacy and exhibited in public. He had taught himself to shoot marbles, to solve the intricate sequences of mumblety peg, to throw an out-curve, to pick up a double hitch with one hand, to chin himself, skin the cat and hang by his toes behind the safe seclusion of the barn wall. Whatever his failures they were not accompanied by the jeers of an audience. He had gone off in secret to the swimming pool by Bretton's creek and smarted for hours under crashing belly-whoppers until he had taught himself to dive forward and backward. Then he watched with grinning superiority the fate of less experienced youngsters who followed his dare.
So in the present sentimental crisis. To rank in the estimation of Miss Dolly Travers there was no escaping the fact that he would have to surrender his prejudices and incline his feet to the popular way. But having reached this decision he determined to stage his effects. For two more Saturdays he continued in dignified isolation to escort Miss Travers to the weekly hop and back, guarding her scarf and fan, straining his mouth into the semblance of an interested smile while other fellows slipped their arms around the tiny figure and moved dexterously or heavily about the ballroom.
On the third Saturday, halfway to the club house, just as he had planned, Miss Dolly returned to the point of discussion.
"Jack, aren't you ever, ever going to learn to dance?"
"Oh well, perhaps some day," he said casually.
"But you can't go through life without dancing!"
"Oh no, of course not."
"Really I think it's just too selfish of you. You know how I adore it. Why won't you try? I do believe you're afraid of being laughed at."