“My goodness, look at Packy, entirely surrounded by a frown,” she tossed back at him—how easily Jerry’s line came to one’s lips. “Is that all you’ve got to say?” he demanded, blocking their way as they started again to join the dancers. Joy remembered a saying of Jerry’s which seemed peculiarly pat at this moment: “A girl never has the right amount of men. If she has few, it’s boring; if she has many, they get in the way and cramp her style.” She laughed. Packy was really a grotesque figure, with his glowering face and childish remarks. “You make me feel like a dancing school, with all this talk of changing partners,” she observed, and turned to Grant. She was amazed at the transformation. Grant’s lips were drawn back over his teeth, his eyes glittering. “Would you mind stating what business it is of yours, who Joy goes to a dance with?” he asked, in a voice as chill and cold as Mrs. Grey’s herself; a voice with the ring of generations of Boston ancestors behind it. It was the end of the dance; and Joy now realized, in a sort of detached horror, that they were becoming conspicuous. Grant and Packy were facing each other in the same tense, bristly pose that dogs assume before a pitched battle; faces were turning their way; she could see Mrs. Grey rising, in impotent protest, across the room—— A voice assailed her memory. “Is it really you, Miss Nelson?” Standing close at hand, his eyes upon their little group in grave attention, was a good-looking boy of medium height, with blond, wavy hair that had been plastered back in an attempt to make it look straight—At her look of vague recognition, he stepped nearer, said to Grant and Packy in an undertone: “Couldn’t you talk it over just as well out-doors?” then smiled at Joy, and in a normal, bread-and-butter voice that seemed to have the effect of suddenly bringing everything back to an everyday basis, said: “You don’t remember me, do you? I met you at Prom this spring—my name’s Dalton.” “Mr. Dalton—of course!” she exclaimed. “I remember you very well—” she stopped, and twinkled. The echo of his blunt lecture seemed for a moment to hang in the air. She turned to introduce him to Grant and Packy; but Packy had gone. The scene was over, and she relaxed. “I’ll cut in later,” said Jim Dalton, and moved away. The music had started again, the orchestra-leader announcing that this was “the last dance.” In Grant’s arms she floated off to the strains of “I Love You Truly.” “Hope that fellow who said he’d cut in, will have sense enough not to do it on the last dance,” he growled, clasping her almost fiercely to him. “If that fellow hadn’t come up just then, I don’t know what might have happened,” Joy suggested. “Damn Packy! Forgive me, Joy; but don’t you think Packy rates a damn or two? Of all the cake-eating parlour pythons——” “Your mother was watching us. In fact, she still is. That was an awful scene to make, Grant.”