“Never end your sentences with a preposition, mother! But despite your inelegance I will go and find her for you;” and Robert moved away, his eager eyes searching, but not for Irving’s stepmother. He soon descried the tall outline of his friend, standing alone in the dusk of the veranda, and he charged upon him. “Brute, I’ve put my foot in it!” he ejaculated. Irving turned slowly and regarded him. “That’s all you ever take it out for, so far as I can discover,” he replied pessimistically. “Cruelly unjust, but I’ll pass it by. Say, there aren’t so many peaches here but that you can do me a favor.” “Say on.” Robert made a grimace of rueful self-disgust. “Of course I ought to have taken the first dance with Helen Maynard.” “You couldn’t do anything else.” “Yes, I could. I can always do things that to others would seem impossible. To me they’re mere bagatelles. I’m about to be snubbed evermore by the heiress, and disinherited by mother.” “Speak out.” “It was an attack of emotional insanity. They always come out of a clear sky, and she was _so_ enchanting—” “Who?” “Hebe. I asked her for the first dance, in Helen’s presence.” Irving looked the culprit over from head to foot. “Well,” he remarked, with a severity which seemed disproportionate to the occasion, “you _are_ the limit!” “And a transfer!” added Robert humbly. “Now you’re the only person that can save the day—I mean the evening. If you’ll go in, this minute,—go in eagerly, you know, just as soon as she sees you, fall over your own feet in your hurry,—do the thing handsomely, why, you’ll be acting like a friend! Get your breath as well as you can, and ask her for the first dance. So you will avert the storm from your tried and true Nixie!” Irving looked unpromisingly gloomy. “I wasn’t thinking of dancing to-night,” he said. “Well, think of it quick, now.” Robert dragged at his reluctant companion. “Put on a gilt edge by asking for the second one, too. She can’t give it to you, because I’ve engaged it. When you see me in the light, you’ll think I’ve turned gray in a single night; but it’s only the frosty rime that she cast over me when she accepted. Beside, you’ve got to ask Miss Vincent, haven’t you? You seem to have in_flu_ence with mamma, and I’d rather you’d bring her over to be chaperoned than do it myself. Uncle Henry can’t play watchdog very well when it comes to partners.” Irving allowed himself to be shoved and pulled toward the door. He felt the force of Nixie’s last argument, but he was still conscious of a strange disappointment in the carelessness of Rosalie’s greeting. Betsy’s earnest talk had fallen upon a wondering credulity, because of the tenderness that he had felt for this girl from the beginning,—a feeling totally different from anything he had ever experienced. Her self-possession, and fleeting notice of himself just now, had given him an odd shock, and opened his eyes to the fact that he had given absurd weight to Betsy’s words.