" Macauley
laughed. "But I'm not doing my duty," he said presently; "I was to present
you to the pretty ones only, I believe. Will you designate your preferred
fashion of beauty? We serve all styles."
"Thank you," the other answered, hurriedly. "I met a number last night--
quite a number, indeed." He had seen them only in dim lights, however, and
except Miss Hinsdale and the widower, had not the faintest recognition of
any of them, and he cut them all, except those two, one after the other,
before the evening was over; and this was a strange thing for a politician
to do; but he did it with such an innocent eye that they remembered the
dark porch and forgave him.
"Shall we watch the dancing, then?" asked Macauley. Harkless was already
watching part of it.
"If you will. I have not seen this sort for more than five years."
"It is always a treat, I think, and a constant proof that the older school
of English caricaturists didn't overdraw."
"Yes; one realizes they couldn't."
Harkless remembered Tom Meredith's fine accomplishment of dancing; he had
been the most famous dancer of college days, and it was in the dancer that
John best saw his old friend again as he had known him, the light lad of
the active toe. Other couples flickered about the one John watched,
couples that plodded, couples that bobbed, couples that galloped, couples
that slid, but the cousins alone passed across the glistening reflections
as lightly as October leaves blown over the forest floor.
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