Part 9 (1/2)
”Will you mark them with a tick, please--those you can't dance?”
Unsuspectingly she marked them.
”Good!” said he, writing his name against each tick. ”We'll sit those out. The next waltz, though, we will dance that.”
”But that's engaged--'Chester A. Bradford,'” she read.
”Poor Brad--didn't I tell you?” asked Wally. ”He fell downstairs a moment ago and broke his leg.”
That was the beginning of it.
The first dance they sat out Wally said to himself, ”I shall kiss her, if it's the last thing I ever do.”
But he didn't.
The next dance they sat out he said to himself, ”I shall kiss her if I never do another thing as long as I live--”
But he didn't.
The last dance they sat out he said to himself, ”I shall kiss her if I hang for it.”
He didn't kiss her, even then, but felt himself tremble a little as he looked in her eyes. Then it was that the truth began to dawn upon him.
”I'm a gone c.o.o.n,” he told himself, and dabbed his forehead with his handkerchief ...
”You've got him, all right,” said Helen later, going to Mary's room ostensibly to undress, but really to exchange those confidences without which no party is complete.
”Got who?” asked Mary. And she a Bachelor of Arts!
”Oh, aren't you innocent! Wally Cabot, of course. Did he kiss you?”
”No, he did not!”
”Of course, if you don't want to tell--!”
”There's nothing to tell.”
”There isn't? ... Oh, well, don't worry.... There soon will be.”
Helen was right.
From that time forward Mary's own shadow was hardly less attentive than Master Wally Cabot. His high-powered roadster was generally doing one of three things. It was either going to Mary's, or coming from Mary's, or taking a needed rest under Mary's porte cochere.
One day Mary suddenly said to her father, ”Who was Paul?”
Fortunately for Josiah the light was on his back.
”Last night at the dance,” she continued, ”I heard a woman saying that I didn't look the least bit like Paul, and I wondered who he was.”
”Perhaps some one in her own family,” said Josiah at last.