"I'm glad you didn't, Mr. Carlyon," protested Muriel Smith, consolingly. "You look very nice in it. Only those things on your legs--I forget the proper name--must be difficult to dance in." "Greaves--the well-greaved Greeks, me dear madam," put in the Commissioner. "Plural of grief. Ah! ye should have seen him come to it just now with the general's wife. Your chance of promotion's gone, me dear boy--the marble floor resounded." "Well, it isn't half so inconvenient as my husband's dress, anyhow," continued Mrs. Smith, persisting in her mission of sympathy, when the laugh at Lance's expense had subsided. "That's all you know, my dear," remonstrated Mr. Smith, sleepily, from a quiet nook in one corner. "I never said Robinson Crusoe was a good dancing dress, but I claim it isn't bad to sleep in, especially out of doors. Soft and furry--and--" His voice sank into dreamful ease. "And it can claim solitude, anyhow," added the doctor, mournfully. "Think of the disgust of an old established microbe, like myself, when his swept and garnished home is invaded by a party of seven strange devils." "How rude you are!" exclaimed Mrs. Smith. "Besides, we aren't seven, and I believe Robinson Crusoe discovered this island before you did!" "I think the French cook takes the cake, though," said poor Lance, who had been following up his own grievance. "Shirt sleeves must be an awful pull when you are dancing with a _burra mem_."[8] "True for you!" assented the Commissioner, sympathetically. "That's the very reason I took to it, me dear boy, when me own merits and me advancing years doomed me to all the stout ladies in India. Besides, me paper cap rids me of two of me reports anyhow. Ye see I always have to wear two caps; one before, and one after supper. Otherwise I find the contints get mixed, and make me statements unreliable; and then me enemies say it's the champagne. I feel it coming on me now, but--" he sprang to his feet, light as a boy--"by a merciful providence there's the band at the 'Roast Beef.' Now, are ye coming in to supper with me, Mrs. Smith, or are you one of those who have to change their identity?" "Not I," she declared, taking his arm, "I'm quite content with myself, thank you!" She might well be, since her costume of water-nymph could not have been improved upon. It enabled her to show off her long, rippling, pale gold hair, and the filmy green and white, the feathery weeds, the iridescent shells, matched her delicate face, which seemed almost overweighted by her water-lily crown. "Besides, Undine can always do quick-change artist, and assume a soul," suggested the Commissioner, as he led her off; adding, in mock alarm: "Me dear madam! I apologize profoundly. Miss Bonaventura, Captain Dering's waiting for you, I'm sure."