“Barbara!  With your dear little Letter in my breast pocket at this moment!”

“I didn’t know men had breast pockets in their evening clothes.”

“Oh well, have it your own way.  I’m too happy to quarrel,” he said.  “How well you dance—­only, let me lead, won’t you?  How strange it is to think that we have never danced together before!”

“We must have a talk,” I said desparately.  “Can’t we go somwhere, away from the noise?”

“That would be conspicuous, wouldn’t it, under the circumstances?  If we are to overcome the Familey objection to me, we’ll have to be cautious, Barbara.”

“Don’t call me Barbara,” I snapped.  “I know perfectly well what you think of me, and I——­”

“I think you are wonderful,” he said.  “Words fail me when I try to tell you what I am thinking.  You’ve saved the Cotillion for me, haven’t you?  If not, I’m going to claim it anyhow.  It is my right.”

He said it in the most determined manner, as if everything was settled.  I felt like a rat in a trap, and Carter, watching from a corner, looked exactly like a cat.  If he had taken his hand in its white glove and washed his face with it, I would hardly have been surprized.

The music stopped, and somebody claimed me for the next.  Jane came up, too, and cluched my arm.

“You lucky thing!” she said.  “He’s perfectly handsome.  And oh, Bab, he’s wild about you.  I can see it in his eyes.”

“Don’t pinch, Jane,” I said coldly.  “And don’t rave.  He’s an idiot.”

She looked at me with her mouth open.

“Well, if you don’t want him, pass him on to me,” she said, and walked away.

It was too silly, after everything that had happened, to dance the next dance with Willie Graham, who is still in knickerbockers, and a full head shorter than I am.  But that’s the way with a Party for the school crowd, as I’ve said before.  They ask all ages, from perambulaters up, and of course the little boys all want to dance with the older girls.  It is deadly stupid.

But H seemed to be having a good time.  He danced a lot with Jane, who is a wreched dancer, with no sense of time whatever.  Jane is not pretty, but she has nice eyes, and I am not afraid, second couzin once removed or no second couzin once removed, to say she used them.

Altogether, it was a terrible evening.  I danced three dances out of four with knickerbockers, and one with old Mr. Adams, who is fat and rotates his partner at the corners by swinging her on his waistcoat.  Carter did not dance at all, and every time I tried to speak to him he was taking a crowd of the little girls to the fruit-punch bowl.

I determined to have things out with H during the Cotillion, and tell him that I would never marry him, that I would Die first.  But I was favored a great deal, and when we did have a chance the music was making such a noise that I would have had to shout.  Our chairs were next to the band.