e washerwoman's
dip. Everyone who is anyone will be here, if not on one night then on
another, in a jovial fraternity steeped in the spirit of democracy.
Revelry will be sustained on lemonade and a resinous astringent known
locally as beer, while a sense of doing the forbidden will be in the
air. For commercial reasons it will be needful to keep it in the air,
since in the proceedings themselves there will be nothing more occult,
or more inciting to iniquity, than a kindergarten game.

Hither Mr. Gorry Larrabin had brought Mademoiselle Odette Coucoul, to
teach her the new dances. As a matter of fact, he had just led her
back to their little table, inconspicuously placed in the front row,
after putting her through the paces of the camel-step. Mademoiselle
had found it entrancing, so much more novel in the motion than the
antiquated valses she had danced in France. Mr. Larrabin had retreated
like a camel walking backwards, while she had advanced like a camel
going forwards. The art was in lifting the foot quite high, throwing
it slightly backwards, and setting it down with a delicate
deliberation, while you craned the neck before you with a shake of the
Adam's apple. To incite you to produce this effect the jazz-band urged
you onward with a sob, a gulp, a moan, an effect of strangulation,
till finally it tore up the seat of your being as if you had been
suddenly struck sea-sick.

"Mon Dieu, but it is lofely," mademoiselle gurgled, laughing in her
breathlessness. "It is terr-i-bul to call no one a camel--_un
chameau_--in France; but here am I a--_chameau_!"

Gorry took this with puzzled amusement. "What's the matter with
calling anyone a camel? I don't see any harm in that."

Mademoiselle hid her face in confusion. "Oh, but it is terr-i-bul,
terr-i-bul! It is almost so worse as to call no one a--how you say zat
word in Eenglish?--a cow, n'est ce pas?--_une vache_--and zat is the
most bad name what you can call no one."

Looking across the room Gorry was struck with an idea. "Well, there's
a--what d'ye call it--_a vashe_--over there. See that guy with the
girl with the cream-colored hair--fella with a big black mustache,
like a brigand in a play? There's a _vashe_ all-righty; and yet I've
got to keep in with him."

As he explained his reasons for keeping in with the "vashe" in
question mademoiselle contented herself with shedding radiance and
paying no attention. Neither did she pay attention when he went on to
tell