She danced very badly. Harry had not been aware of it before; but she jumped up and down—and if the truth must be told, with an air and spirit of enjoyment not just then the fashionable style.
"How in earnest your fair friend dances," said a young man, with a smile, to Harry, as they passed in the dance.
Harry colored.
"Who on earth have you there, Harry?" asked another, with rather a quizzical look. "Introduce me, wont you?" But Harry affected not to hear the request.
"Who is the young lady your brother is dancing with, Mrs. Castleton?" he heard asked several times; to which his sister answered in her sweetest and most winning manner, "Miss Dawson—a friend of Harry's;" and to some of her brother's particular friends, he heard her say, "Oh, that's Harry's belle. Don't you know Miss Dawson—let me introduce you."
Harry felt quite provoked, he did not know why, at hearing his sister couple him always with Miss Dawson; and if he thought the room hot at the beginning of the dance, he did not feel it any cooler before it was over.
Mrs. Castleton introduced a gentleman just as the dance finished, who asked her for the next, when Harry said quickly,
"You are fatigued, are you not? Perhaps you had better go with me and get an ice."
"Do you go and bring Miss Dawson one," said his sister. "I hope," she continued, "you are not fatigued already?"
"Oh, no," replied the young lady, with an animation and energy that proclaimed she had a dancing power within not to be readily exhausted. "Oh, no, indeed; I could dance all night."