"Ay, she means me," said Baby Jock, with mock egotism, looking down twinklingly at Daisy. "Does that no make ye proud-like, to know the company ye're in. But just haud yersel', and I'll mak' ye prouder yet. D'ye see yon straight-backit fellow, with the stiff hair, third couple to the right from us?" "Who's he?" "Ye'll no be long in this town till ye ken who he is. Yon's Nick Cluett, the middleweight champion o' the boxin' ring. I dinna ken just where I stand in the dancin'--ye canna althegither go by what ye just heard oor neighbor, behind here, say--but there's nae doubt where Nick stands. He's the best on the floor, by long odds. I'll see that ye have the next dance with him. Nick, he never promises a dance ahead, so he'll no be down on anybody's programme for the next turn on the floor." "Who's Leeby Cameron?" said Daisy. "She's juist hersel'," responded Baby Jock, evasively, as the dance-music ended. "Hut, Nick, lad!" A young man with heavy dark eyebrows and his hair combed straight up from a forehead with transverse wrinkles, as it were, ironed into it, came lightly across the floor, one hand in his pocket. As he drew near, Daisy saw that his hips and shoulders moved with a strong rigidity, as though all in one piece, and that his back was straight as a line. He had recently shaved, but not very closely; and all over his chin and cheeks black pepper-dots of stiff bristles pricked forth in a kind of index of the lad's superb virility. He had a kind of fixed smile, deprecating, almost apologetic. He carried his head canted slightly forward and down; and, instead of tilting it back when he looked up, merely raised his eyebrows. This habit was what had engraven the transverse wrinkles across his forehead. "Well, Babe," he said to Jock, casting a quick but careless glance at Daisy, "what d'ye know!" "I hae a lass here," said Daisy's escort, "wha's lookin' for a dancin' partner. Miss Nixon, I'll leave ye with Mr. Cluett while I go 'tend to my family affairs yonder," Jock humorously indicated the chair upon which Miss Leeby Cameron sat glowering; and, with a genial parting grin to Daisy, moved off toward his lady-love. A man cannot excel in everything, and Nick Cluett, champion pugilist, was no talker. In fact, he looked for a moment as though he were about to walk away and leave Daisy standing in the middle of the floor. "He says you're a fine dancer," primed Daisy. Nick Cluett's eyebrows travelled up, and his dark face sloped at an angle, in its perpetually-smiling way, above hers. "Want to try me?" he jetted. "I don't mind if I do," said Daisy, demurely. "Do anything once?--eh, kid?" commented Mr. Cluett, taking her upper arm in a hand of steel fibre, propelling her toward a bench, and drawing her down upon it in the manner of a man to whom girls had voluntarily given the privilege of handling them freely; "come to think of it, now, you can be a life-saver, if you like, see?" "How?" Daisy glanced at him sidewise.