“I’m awfully sorry, Joe, but my card is full.”
This answer appeared exceedingly strange to Joe, until he beheld his partner for the dance. Then the base ingratitude of his friend so enraged him that he at once broke off all diplomatic and social relations.
So wary have the cadets become lest they be taken in, that when a fellow cadet comes out into the hall to get one of the stags to dance with a girl, he is at once the object of suspicion. When he asks his friend to take a dance because the girl’s partner failed to turn up, or what not, the friend instantly demands:
“Where is she?” “Where is she?”
Some of the more astute cadets then point out the prettiest girl in sight saying:
“There she is; she’s a fiend,” meaning she is all that is to be desired, and lead off their victim apparently in her direction, but by a well-planned movement, the victim is shunted off so that before he realizes it he finds himself bowing before Miss L. P. His comrade has escaped in the crowd, leaving him to “darkness and despair.” Here begins a desultory conversation, not marked by any great intellectual effort.
L. P.: “Do you like to dance?”
Cadet: “Yes, do you?”
(Long pause—atmosphere strained.)
Polite cadet: “Isn’t this a beautiful hall?”