"Is it your set next?" asked the little girl, filling up.
"Yes, I believe so," said Bob, trying to get back.
"No it ain't: I won't! I won't! There! I'm going to dance with Cousin Lind. I ain't going to dance with you no more—never! There!" And she whirled off, pettish, provoked, leaving the poor little fellow in his nervous state, lost in a sort of half-conscious misery. He had not the courage to seek her out and try to appease her: he took his hat and left without a word.
But little Sue was to pay dearly for her innocent little burst of temper. Two gentlemen behind her were commenting on our friend Major Johnstone: "What makes the major wabble so? I saw him dancing a while ago as light as the pen-feathers of a gander."
"Don't you know?" asked the other. "There was a row in the dressing-room between Short-stop Nettles and Bully Mason; and it always makes old Johnstone limp on that wounded leg to scent a duel."
They laughed and passed on, but poor little Sue, bred in the theory of the right of personal redress, felt her heart stop. That was what had made her lover so absent! What would she give to recall her words and manner—the last words she might ever have to say to him? But it was too late: he was gone.
After the party she said to the dowager, "Aunty, will there be any more trouble between Cousin Lind and Mr. Nettles?"
"There must not be," said the dowager: "I shall send for your cousin in the morning."
"In the morning?" hesitated little Sue.
"What has made you so wise?" asked the dame, seizing her niece with those bold questioning eyes. "You have never kissed a brother, put a rose in his buttonhole, and had him brought back to you stark and cold, with the rosebud unwithered. But you are right. I shall send for him at once."