“Oh, look! Did you ever see anything so sweet!” said somebody. Involuntarily he turned. There in a corner, all by herself, a little girl was gravely performing a dance. He stared at her curiously. For the first time, free from all personal connection with them, he discovered that those motions were pretty. She was ethereally slender, brown eyed, brown haired, brown skinned. A little fluffy white dress spread fan-shaped above her knees; her ankles were bird-like. The foot on which she poised seemed hardly to rest on the ground; the other, pointed outward, hovered easily—now here, now there. Her eyes were serious, her hair hung loose. She swayed lightly; one little gloved hand held out her skirt, the other marked the time. Her performance was an apotheosis of the two-step: that metronomic dance would not have recognized itself under her treatment. [Illustration: _“Thethelia,” she lisped._] Dicky admired. But the admiration of his sex is notoriously fatal to the art that attracts it. He advanced and bowed jerkily, grasped one of the loops of her sash in the back, stamped gently a moment to get the time, and the artist sank into the partner, the pirouette grew coarse to sympathize with clay. “Don’t they do it well, though! See those little things near the door!” he caught as they went by, and his heart swelled with pride. “What’s your name?” he asked abruptly after the dance. “Thethelia,” she lisped, and shook her hair over her cheek. She was very shy. “Mine’s Richard Carr Pendleton. My father’s a lawyer. What’s yours?” “I—I don’t know!” she gasped, obviously considering flight. He chuckled delightedly. Was ever such engaging idiocy? She didn’t know. Well, well! “Pooh!” he said grandly, “I guess you know. Don’t you, really?” She looked hopelessly at her fan, and shook her head. Suddenly a light dawned in her big eyes. “Maybe I know,” she murmured. “I gueth I know. He—he’th a really thtate!” “A really state? That isn’t anything—nothing at all. A really state?” he frowned at her judicially. Her lip quivered; she turned and ran away. “Here, come back!” he called, but she was gone. “Ready for the cotillion, children!” and Miss Dorothy, her arms full of long, colored ribbons, was upon him. There was a rumbling chord from the piano, a mad rush for the head of the line. A rosy blonde, with big, china blue eyes, dragged her protesting sailor-suited partner to the front, and glared triumphantly at the roly-poly couple behind her. They stared at each other desperately—they had had their dreams of precedence—and suddenly, as the robbers stood far apart and swung their arms carelessly high, the roly-poly couple crouched down, slipped between them, and emerged at the head of the procession!