‘If I don’t button it this time,’ she replies, ’I really can’t try any more, for I have not got my own on yet, and I know they’ll begin to dance in a moment.’

‘You’ll let me have the first, won’t you?’ he says.

‘Certainly,’ she answers, all her attention absorbed in the button which is just half in the button-hole, one little poke and ‘there it’s done,’ she says.

But alas! it is done indeed, for there is an ominous crack, and a large split is seen right across it.

‘What a nuisance,’ says Helmdon, gazing at the torn article.

‘Oh I hope it wasn’t my fault,’ says Lippa.

‘No; not at all, I assure you—­’

‘Don’t waste time then looking at it, fetch another quickly,’ and Philippa begins hastily to cover her own bare hands.  ‘Chubby,’ she calls after him, ’they’re beginning to dance.  I can’t keep this one for you, the next one will do just as well, won’t it?’

‘Quite,’ is the reply as he ascends the stairs three steps at a time; while she becomes aware of two men making for her, Harkness and Dalrymple, the former she feels will reach her first, and she has no desire to dance with him:  so she suddenly feels that she ought to be nearer her sister-in-law, and edging her way through the crowd gains her chaperon’s side, a second before Jimmy comes up.

‘May I have this?’ he says eagerly, and receiving an affirmative, he leads her off to the ball-room, where the “Garden of Sleep” waltz is echoing through the well-lighted apartment, and the air is fragrant with the scent of many flowers.  Already a goodly crowd is there, mammas, elderly spinsters, girls of all sizes and ages, in satin, silks, and tulle; old men, middle-aged men, young men and mere boys are all collected there.  In a second Dalrymple and Philippa join in the giddy dance; for what is more giddifying (if I may use such a word), than waltzing in a room full of people who have not summoned up courage enough to begin, round and round they go, till Miss Seaton at length says, ’I think I really must stop although the best part of the tune is just coming.  We can’t be like the river, can we, going on forever:’ 

    ‘Men may come and men may go,’
    ‘But I go on forever.’

She murmurs more to herself than to him, as they make their way to the conservatory, and then, ‘Do you like poetry?’ she asks.

‘Pretty well, I don’t read much of it.’

‘I am so fond of it,’ replies Philippa, settling herself comfortably on a sofa surrounded by cushions, ‘I could read it all day.’

’Ah, you see you have more time to do what you like, but when a fellow has been at work all day, he doesn’t feel inclined for poetry, you’ve got nothing to do except to read and do fancy work, I suppose.’

’That’s a mistake that all men make, they think that girls have nothing to do all day, when they have quite as much as men if not more; you don’t know anything about them.  And I think poetry is the most restful thing to read when one’s tired, you see our minds soar to higher things than yours, you study the Racing Calendar and the newspapers, don’t you?’