in the other.  How absurdly easy it is for a grown-up to sit down!  I waited for Thomas to make a remark; I might be waiting still, if I had not made a beginning.  He looked at me under his eyelashes, and tried not to smile.  It was an effort, I could see, and I could tell just where the dimples would come.  When the effort became too great and the dimples asserted themselves beyond recall, he looked away and put out a minute portion of his tongue.  Having done that, he subsided into grave self-possession.

I began to feel embarrassed, and asked him how old he was.  He smiled.  “Do you like dancing, Thomas?” I said.

He looked away, and every time I addressed him he seemed to retreat farther into his chair, until I had fears that he would disappear altogether from my sight.  His waist-line seemed to be the vanishing-point.  I made no further effort, and relapsed into silence.  Thomas continued to gaze at me and smile.  At last he extended a fat little hand, uncurled one by one four soft little fingers, and revealed, lying in his palm, a short screw.  It was evidently his greatest treasure, for the moment.

“Is that for me, Thomas?” I asked.  “Nope,” he said, shaking his head.

“Is it your very own?”

“Yeth,” said Thomas, drawing in his breath.  He shut his little hand, put out his tongue just the smallest bit, and became serious and silent.

“Is it a present?” I asked.  Having got so far, it seemed a pity not to go on.  He had done me the greatest honor that a small boy can do a woman, which, by the way, was what our Nannie said when she told us that a strange man had proposed to her on a penny steamboat.

Thomas shook his head and said, “Nope.”

“Did you find it?” I asked.

He nodded.  “I always find fings,” he said.

Beyond that I could get nothing out of him.  I have not often sat out with a more embarrassing partner.  To be continually stared at and never spoken to would, I think, make the boldest woman shy.  There was a stolidity about Thomas that promised well for England’s future.  There was a steady resistance from attack that was really admirable; but I was not altogether sorry when Fraulein pounced upon him.  As she led him off I heard him say, “Parties do last a long time, don’t they, Leilein?”

Having lost Thomas, I sought a new partner.  A tall, fair girl with wide, gray eyes, a pink-and-white complexion, a beautiful mouth, and a delicately refined nose, interested me, as I imagine she has continued to do every one who has met her.  She reminded me of spring, with birds singing and flowers flowering and trees bursting, just as Diana does.  As it was quite the correct thing for girls to dance with one another, I made so bold as to ask her for a dance.  With the timidity of a boy just out of Etons, or perhaps I should say, of a shy boy just out of Etons, I approached her.  “Right-o,” she said, “let’s see.”