Punch didn’t want to be sent to bed, so he was adroitly evading his mother’s notice, flitting about the edges of the evening’s gaiety and lingering in the shadows. It was a warm windless evening. It would be stuffy in his little room on the top floor and he was feeling wide awake and rather restless. But out-of-doors, in the verandas and on the lawn, it was nice. The moon was dead full, hanging, an undisputed dignitary, in the cloudless sky. Not so exciting as when it went sailing through a scud of flying clouds, but he didn’t crave excitement just now. He’d had enough. They were dancing in the big west drawing-room--some of them were. Some of them seemed to share--though it couldn’t be from the fear of being sent to bed--his own preference for the shadows. In a sort of glade down at the bottom of the lawn, so far away that the music must almost have been inaudible, one pair were dancing, barefoot, Punch believed. There’d been some talk of what fun it would be, and Judy had applauded the idea, though she herself wasn’t dancing, of course, because of her ankle. She was permanently established in a long chair in the corner of the veranda, holding a sort of court between dances, and always with one man or another beside her when the music played. She adored dancing, Punch knew, and he wondered a little that she didn’t permit her ankle to get better. Bruce Applebury danced indefatigably. He always came back with his partner and sat beside Judy during the intermissions. But Punch had heard Judy tell him it was his duty to make the rounds of at least all the bridesmaids, so he didn’t sit out many dances with her. Punch was beginning to feel a little like a ghost. The mixture of cold moonlight with the music and the odor of a great thicket of lilac bushes in bloom at the corner of the house, was distilling a sort of melancholy in him, when the voice of the one he had privately ticketed as the nice bridesmaid roused him from the trance into which he was drifting. “Oh, but I’ve promised this dance to Punch,” he heard her say to the man who, with his hand on her arm, was trying to lead her down from the veranda to the lawn. He’d approached them unconsciously in his irregular orbit--Judy was the center of it--but on hearing this, he stopped before her and made her his best bow. The man, with a laugh, relinquished her arm, said he’d come back for the next, and strolled away, lighting a cigarette. Punch didn’t know the girl’s name; their acquaintance had begun in a spontaneous exchange of smiles at the tennis court, and they’d had a lot of fun together in the pool. “I _can_ dance,” he said, a little doubtfully, when they were left alone, “but I’m not sure that mother doesn’t think I’ve gone to bed.” The girl laughed and laid her hand on his arm. “We’ll go for a little walk instead then,” she decided.