He felt that a challenge had been passed and accepted. He raised his voice.
"How about it, Goodhue?"
"Coming."
Dalrymple opened his mouth as if to speak, but Goodhue slipped into the room, and George and he went down the stairs and climbed into Goodhue's runabout.
"I didn't know," George said when they had started, "that you lived with Dalrymple."
"We were put together at school, so it seemed simple to start out here."
George was glad to fancy a slight colour of apology, as if such a companionship needed a reason.
It was a pleasant and intimate little dinner to which they drove. Mr. and Mrs. Alston recollected meeting George at the Baillys', and they were kind about his football. A friend of Betty's from a neighbouring house made the sixth. George was not uncomfortable. His glass had shown him that in a dinner suit he was rather better looking than he had thought. Observation had diminished his dread of social lapses. There flowed, however, rather too much talk of strange worlds, which included some approaching gaieties in New York.
"You," Betty said casually to him, "must run up to my great affair."
Her aunt, it appeared, would engineer that a short time before the holidays. George was vague. The prospect of a ballroom was terrifying. He had danced very little, and never with the type of women who would throng Betty Alston's début. Yet he wanted to go.