To her I was introduced. A New York belle at a Watering-Place! "There's a divinity doth hedge her," and a mystery too. She looked at me with supreme indifference as I advanced to the ordeal of presentation, evidently measuring my claims upon her consideration by the general aspect of my outer man. I moved with a certain pride, because although I felt awkward before the glance of Lulu, I was entirely self-possessed in the consciousness of unexceptionable attire before the unmeaning stare of the fashionable parvenue. You see I do get a little warm in speaking of her, and yet I was as cool as an autumn morning, when I made my bow, and requested her hand for the next set.
We danced vis-a-vis to Lulu. My partner swung her head around upon her neck, as none but Juno or Minerva should venture to do, and looked at the other personal of the quadrille, to see if she were in a perfectly safe set. I ventured a brief remark upon nothing—the weather, probably. The Queen of the Cannibal Islands bent majestically in a monosyllabic response.
"It is very warm to-night," continued I.
"Yes, very warm," she responded.
"You have been long here?"
"Two weeks."
"Probably you came from Niagara?"
"No, from Sharon."
"Shall you go to Lake George?"
"No, we go to Newport."