Ninny! Barbarian!
"Better get one," she said cuttingly, somewhat in her _role_ of
dancing mistress.
"Can't we finish the waltz?" he suggested, crestfallen.
"No!" she said, and continued her solitary way downwards.
She was hurt. He tried to think of something to say that was equal to
the situation, and equal to the style of his suit. But he could not. In
a moment he heard her, below him, greeting some male acquaintance in the
most effusive way.
Yet, if Denry had not committed a wicked crime for her, she could never
have come to the dance at all!
He got a programme, and with terror gripping his heart he asked sundry
young and middle-aged women whom he knew by sight and by name for a
dance. (Ruth had taught him how to ask.) Not one of them had a dance
left. Several looked at him as much as to say: "You must be a goose to
suppose that my programme is not filled up in the twinkling of my eye!"
Then he joined a group of despisers of dancing near the main door.
Harold Etches was there, the wealthiest manufacturer of his years
(barely twenty-four) in the Five Towns. Also Shillitoe, cause of another
of Denry's wicked crimes.
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