"The best of it is," he said, "I am catching jackup. He is in an awful wax. I shouldn't be surprised if I were bigger than him next holidays. Do you like dancing? I simply loathe it--not with you, I don't mean I." He told me many other confidences, and I was really sorry when he remembered, with an evident pang, that he had to dance with that "rum little kid over there." I was quite certain that he would never break a promise. I could picture him going through life always keeping promises, rashly made, no doubt. I wondered what he would talk to girls about at dances years hence--trousers? Hardly. By that time he would have trousers of his very own, and they would cease, in consequence, to be things of interest. He would be a soldier--of that I could have no doubt. He was the kind of boy England wants and can still get, thank God! say pessimists what they will. While I was awaiting my Dolly dance, I came upon a small, disconsolate boy. "I'm looking for an empty partner," he said. I captured a passing girl, very small, and they danced away together. The boy I could see was very energetic, the girl was very small and fat. As they passed me I heard her say, "I--can't--go--so--fast!" "Very sorry," said the small boy, "but I must keep up with the music." Dolly found me. "I think I had better dance gentleman," she said; "I think I am as tall as you." With a tremendous effort she drew her slim figure to its full height, and, gazing up into my face she had the audacity to say, "Yes, I do just look down upon you; anyhow, men aren't always taller than girls. My cousin says so, and she goes to dances--heaps--and she is six foot." We started off, I felt at once, on a perilous course. "You see," she said, "I had better--steer--because" (bump we went into somebody), "because--I dance once a week--always" (crash), "sometimes oftener--so I get--plenty of practice" (bang) "in steering, and that helps. I love dancing--don't you? Oh, that's all right--it's--only--the stupid--old mantelpiece--I always go into that--it sticks out so--doesn't it? It is hard--rather!" Dolly was a flyer and no mistake. I was brought to a standstill at last by colliding with Thomas's Fraulein. "It's all right," said Dolly generously, "you didn't hurt us!" Fraulein was hurled on to a sofa and made no remark. She gave up temporarily the management of Thomas's left leg. "Shall we sit out?" said Dolly. "It is hot, isn't it?" She fanned herself with a very small program and tossed her hair back from her face. It was such lovely hair. "Hair is beastly stuff, isn't it?" she said. "Wouldn't you love to be a boy? Oh, I promised mother not to say I 'beastly'; that's one of the things I would like to be a boy for, because boys may do such an awful lot of things." I soon found out that Dolly liked boys better than girls. She loved horses and dogs. She hated and detested bearing-reins. She didn't want to come out. She thought grown-ups silly, except some--