We had had a green Christmas, and the wind that blew in was not cold; but I thought how horrified my mother would be to see Betty leaning out of a window in January, with the night-wind blowing on her neck. We quarrelled a little, very softly, about shutting the window. Bettina was still flushed and a good deal excited. Rather anxious, too, about what had happened at the ball. But she defended herself. She overdid her air of justification--"such perfect nonsense Ranny's making all that fuss, just because a person naturally likes to waltz with a man who dances so divinely!" I asked what, precisely, Ranny had said. "Oh, he said he had hoped I would care to dance with him. And, of course, I said I did. I had already given him the first polka, and I had promised him----" She broke off. Nobody had ever been quite so reasonable as she, or so unreasonable as Ranny. He had tried to prevent her dancing _at all_ with Captain Boyne. "But you had already danced three times with Captain Boyne," I reminded her. "Well, what of that?" she demanded, in a quite un-Betty-like way. And instead of undressing she followed me about the room, her cheeks very bright as she told me how that unreasonable Ranny had "kept saying that he 'made a point of it.' Then my partner for the mazurka came, and I saw Ranny go over to you. What did he say?" she asked, so eagerly that she forgot to keep her voice down. My mother knocked on the wall. "Go to sleep, children," she called. We both answered "Yes," and I began hurriedly to undo Betty's gown. But she never stopped twisting her head round: "Go on, tell me. What did he say?" I told her, a little impatiently, that he hadn't said anything in particular--he hadn't tried to make himself the least agreeable, and he danced badly. "Danced badly?" said Bettina, as though it were quite a new idea. "I think that must have been your fault. He dances quite well with me." "Yes," I admitted, "he does dance best with you." Then she told of the part Hermione had played. Nothing escaped Hermione, and as soon as she got wind of what was happening, she egged Betty on. Hermione had laughed out, in the most meaning way, when she saw Ranny coming towards Betty in the interval with "blood in his eye," as she expressed it. She whispered to Betty that Ranny was far too used to having his own way. "'But you'll see, you'll have to give in,'" Hermione said, and went off laughing just as Ranny came up. And he began badly: "'You've told Boyne he can't have this waltz?'" Betty said "No." "'Why not? _Why_ haven't you told him?'" "He would ask for a reason." "'Very well, give it'" "'I don't know any reason,'" Betty said. "'The reason is....' Then he stopped, and seemed to change his mind. He began again: 'The reason is, you are going to sit out with me.' And then," Betty ended nervously, "Gerald Boyne came, and--we waltzed that time too."