" And she did. She held and entertained the young man for a full
ten minutes. She found, after all, that he was in no degree constrained
or backward, and she made him do himself justice.
"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Bates, as he withdrew, "you made my Billy
quite brilliant. I don't know when I have heard so much real
conversation!"
"That's all right," responded Jane; "I was young myself once. I haven't
forgotten that."
"Only you mustn't fascinate him," protested the elder woman, with a
burlesque of maternal anxiety. "I want somebody else to do _that_." She
gave Jane a smile full of meaning.
"Aha!" thought Jane, and wondered if she were to see a certain little
romance resumed after the lapse of so many lumbering years.
"But she didn't seem to mind Paston any. Well, why should she?" concluded
Jane.
Presently Truesdale came along and asked his sister to waltz. "All
right," she said; "just for a minute; but not out in the middle--yet."
She wished to test herself first.
"You're awfully good to me, Dicky," she whispered, as he led her back.
"Cut it," said Truesdale; "I'm proud of you."
Jane got back to her lofty perch. "I'll do it once more--if anybody
asks me; yes, I will."
In another ten minutes she was on the floor again. "Quite happy, I'm
sure," she had said to Bingham.
"Only I'm no great dancer," this big and bearded bachelor had warned her.
"Neither am I," declared Jane. "I can just totter around and that's about
all.
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