He did not know what to do, so he sat down in one of the chairs ranged along the wall. After a minute or so Mrs. Carleton and the Ordes came in. Bobby went over to them.
"Don't you dance, Bobby?" asked Mrs. Carleton kindly.
"No, ma'am," replied Bobby in a very small voice.
When the music stopped, the children gathered in a group at the lower end of the hall. Bobby joined them; but somehow even then he felt out of it. Celia's cheeks were flushed bright with the exercise and pleasure. Her spirits were high. She laughed and chatted with Gerald vivaciously. Poor Bobby she included in the brightness of her mood, but evidently only because he happened to be in the circle of it. She was sorry he did not dance; but she loved it, and just now she could think of nothing else but the enjoyment of it. Bobby could not understand that there was nothing personal in this. He saw, with a pang, that Gerald danced supremely well; that Morris romped through the steps with a cheerful hearty abandon not without its attraction; that Tad Fuller, who had come in with his mother and his brother, and half a dozen others whom Bobby knew, all made creditable performers; that even Angus, red-faced, awkward, perspiring as he was, could yet command the hand, time and attention of any little girl he might choose to favour. He himself was useless; and therefore ignored.
At the end of the children's hour he said good night miserably, and trailed along home at his parents' heels. Ordinarily he liked to be out after dark. The stars and the velvet shadows and the magic transformations which the night wrought in the most ordinary and accustomed things attracted him strongly. But now he was too conscious of a smarting spirit. Mr. and Mrs. Orde were talking busily about something. He could not even get a chance to ask a question; and that seemed the last straw. His lips quivered, and he had to remember very hard that he was not a little girl in order to keep back the tears.
Finally the talk died.
"Mamma," blurted out Bobby.
"Yes?"
"Can't I learn how to dance?"
The pair wheeled arm in arm and surveyed him. In the starlight his round child face showed white and anxious.