Babe pounced upon a young man who was shouldering his way toward Girlie.

“Say, Jim, meet Miss Arundel!  Gee!  I’ve been wanting you two to get acquainted.”

Sheila held out her hand to Mr. James Greely, who took it with a surprised and dazzled look.

“Pleased to meet you,” he murmured, and the dimple deepened in his ruddy right cheek.

He turned his blushing face to Girlie.  “Gee!  You look great!” he said.

She was, in fact, very beautiful—­a long, firm, round body, youthful and strong, sheathed in a skin of cream and roses, lips that looked as though they had been used for nothing but the tranquil eating of ripe fruit, eyes of unfathomable serenity, and hair almost as soft and creamy as her shoulders and her finger-tips.  Her beauty was not marred to Jim Greely’s eyes by the fact that she was chewing gum.  Amongst animals the only social poise, the only true self-possession and absence of shyness is shown by the cud-chewing cow.  She is diverted from fear and soothed from self-consciousness by having her nervous attention distracted.  The smoking man has this release, the knitting woman has it.  Girlie and Babe had it from the continual labor of their jaws.  Every hope and longing and ambition in Girlie’s heart centered upon this young man now complimenting her, but as he turned to her, she just stood there and looked up at him.  Her jaws kept on moving slightly.  There was in her eyes the minimum of human intelligence and the maximum of unconscious animal invitation—­a blank, defenseless expression of—­“Here I am.  Take me.”  As Jim Greely expressed the look:  “Girlie makes everything easy.  She don’t give a fellow any discomfort like some of these skittish girls do.  She’s kind of home folks at once.”

“We can’t get into the quadrille now,” said Jim, “but you’ll give me the next, won’t you, Girlie?”

“Sure, Jim,” said the unsmiling, rosy mouth.

Jim moved uneasily on his patent-leather feet.  He shot a sidelong glance at Sheila.

“Say, Miss Arundel, may I have the next after ...  Meet Mr. Gates,” he added spasmodically, as the hand of a gigantic friend crushed his elbow.

Sheila looked up a yard or two of youth and accepted Mr. Gates’s invitation for “the next.”

The head at the top of the tower bent itself down to her with a snakelike motion.

“Us fellows,” it said, “have been aiming to give you a good time to-night.”

Sheila was relieved to find him within hearing.  Her smile dawned enchantingly.  It had all the inevitability of some sweet natural event.

“That’s very good of—­you fellows.  I didn’t know you knew that there was such a person as—­as me in Millings.”

“You bet you, we knew.  Here goes the waltz.  Do you want to Castle it?  I worked in a Yellowstone Park Hotel last summer, and I’m wise on dancing.”

Sheila found herself stretched ceilingwards.  She must hold one arm straight in the air, one elbow as high as she could make it go, and she must dance on her very tip-toes.  Like every girl whose life has taken her in and out of Continental hotels, she could dance, and she had the gift of intuitive rhythm and of yielding to her partner’s intentions almost before they were muscularly expressed.  Mr. Gates felt that he was dancing with moonlight, only the figure of speech is not his own.