rs. Norton could find immorality in a hard-boiled egg if
she looked for it.

At last we went above, or whatever you call it on a ship, and everything
had been made beautiful with flags and bunting; but _nothing_ was as
beautiful as those sailor men themselves, especially the middies. I felt
like their mother (I hope that's not unmaidenly?) and should have loved
to smooth their hair and pat them on the cheek--of which, by the way,
they had plenty!

A good many were introduced to me; and Dick brought his aunt very early,
because, he said, he didn't want to find all my dances gone. You can
believe I hadn't saved any for _him_! But as a matter of fact, I had
kept back two, thinking Sir Lionel might ask me; for after his many
kindnesses I shouldn't have liked to seem not to want to dance with him,
you see. When he didn't ask at first, I supposed it might be because he
wasn't a dancing man (horrid expression!--sounds like a trained bear);
but presently I saw him waltzing with Lady Knaresbrook; and he danced
beautifully, as if he'd done nothing else all those years in Bengal.
Then I said to myself: "He's vexed with me because he thinks I behaved
badly at dinner, and perhaps I did." And I almost hoped he would suggest
sitting out a dance, so that we could talk.

But then Dick came; and when he found I had two dances he wanted them
both. "There are things I must tell you," he said. And mother, it's easy
to see that the creature has some talent as a detective, because he
guessed at once why I'd been saving those dances.

"It's no good keeping anything up your sleeve for Pendragon," said he,
in his perky way, as if he were on an equality with the
ex-Lieutenant-Governor of East Bengal. "He won't ask you to dance. He
thinks you're a little girl, and is leaving you to little boys, like me,
which is quite right. The only woman he's ever taken any interest in for
the last fifteen years is Aunt Gwen. And you can't say he doesn't show
good taste."

I couldn't, especially as Mrs. Senter was looking like the heroine of a
novel which you'd be sure to forbid my reading; so I gave him the
dances, partly for that reason and partly because I was cowardly enough
to want to hear what he had to tell. Just at the moment he couldn't say
more, though, because a sweet brown lamb of a middy came and whirled me
away. So it went on for half the evening, until it was nearly time for
Dick Burden's first dance, and I was sitting down to breathe (after