en I got my sight back, I looked apprehensively at Bee, to see if I
had gone beyond the limit which her own perfectly ladylike manner always
sets for me; but to my surprise her foot was tapping the floor, and
there was a gleam in her eyes which told the mischievous Jimmie that the
music was getting into Bee's blood. Jimmie wrenched my little finger
under the table and whispered:

"For two cents, Bee would do the skirt dance!"

"Ask her," I whispered back.

He jogged her elbow and said:

"Give 'um the skirt dance, Bee. You could knock 'um all silly with the
way you dance."

Bee needed no urging. It was quite evident she had made up her mind to
do it before we asked. She arose with a look of determination in her
eyes, which would have carried her through a murder. When Bee makes up
her mind to do a thing, she'll put it through, good or bad, determined
and remorseless, from giving a dinner to the poor to robbing a grave,
and nobody can stop her, or laugh her out of it any more than you can
persuade her to do it, if she doesn't want to. Nobody is responsible for
Bee's acts but herself. Therefore, I recall that scene with a peculiar
and exquisite joy which the truly good never feel.

Bee's travelling-skirt was tailor-made, tight at the belt, and of ample
fulness around the bottom. She had on a shirt-waist, a linen collar, the
Charvet tie, a black hat with a few gay coloured flowers on it, and a
lace petticoat from the Rue de la Paix. At the first strains of the
skirt dance from the delighted band Bee seized her skirts firmly and
began the dance which is so familiar to us, but which those Tyrolese
peasants had never seen before. Jimmie says he would rather see Bee do
the skirt dance than any professional he ever saw on any stage. He says
that her kicks are such poems that he forgives her everything when he
thinks of them, but when she danced that night, Jimmie was so tickled
by the excitement and polite interest she created in her primitive
audience, that he stretched himself out on the bench in such shrieks of
laughter that even Bee grinned at him, while I simply passed away. She
sat down, flushed, breathless, but triumphant.

Instantly she was surrounded by every young fellow in the room,
imploring her to dance with him, and at once Bee became the belle of the
ball. And, if you will believe it, when Mrs. Jimmie and I went outside
to get a breath of air, Bee, the ladylike; Bee, the conservative;
haughty, intolerant B