"Ready for the two-step, children?"
A mild tolerance grew on him. If dancing must be, better
the two-step than anything else. It is not an alluring dance, your two-step; it does not require temperament. Any one with a firm intention of keeping the time and a strong arm can drag a girl through it very acceptably.
Dicky skirted the row of mothers and aunts cautiously.
"Oh, look! Did you ever see anything so sweet?" said somebody. Involuntarily he turned. There in a corner, all by herself, a little girl was gravely performing a dance. He stared at her curiously.
She was ethereally slender, brown-eyed, brown-haired, brown-skinned. A little fluffy white dress spread fan-shaped over her knees; her ankles were bird-like. Her eyes were serious, her hair hung loose. She swayed lightly; one little gloved hand held out her skirt, the other marked the time. Her performance was an apotheosis of the two-step; that metronomic dance would not have recognized itself under her treatment.
Dicky admired. But the admiration of his sex is notoriously fatal to the art that attracts it. He advanced and bowed jerkily, grasped one of the loops of her sash in the back, stamped gently a moment to get the time, and the artist sank into the partner, the pirouette grew coarse to sympathize with clay.
"Don't they do it well, though! See those little things near the door!" he caught as they went by, and his heart swelled with pride.
"What's your name?" he asked abruptly after the dance.
"Thithelia," she lisped. She was very shy.