ebutante. This
_was_ my debut, I suppose? My very first ball.)

"Then tell me what you were unprepared for in me."

"I was prepared for it at first, before I saw you. But----"

"What?"

"Well, if you will have it, for your flirting."

Suddenly I felt impish, and said, innocently, that I supposed it was
what girls came on board men-o'-war to do, so I had only done my best to
please. By this time we'd stopped dancing, and were sitting down. I'd
forgotten Dick Burden.

"It all depends upon the point of view," he answered, with rather a
disgusted air.

"My point of view is," said I, gravely, "that soldiers as _well_ as
sailors should approve of flirting, because flirtation is a warlike act;
a short incursion into the enemy's country, with the full intention of
getting back untouched."

"Ah, but what of the enemy?" suggested the Dragon.

"He can always take care of himself on such incursions."

"So that's the theory? And at nineteen you have enlisted in that army?"

"What army?"

"The great army of flirts."

I couldn't keep it up any longer, for I had really started in to
explain, not to joke. And you know, dear, that flirting as a profession
wouldn't be in my line at all.

"Do I look like a flirt?" I asked.

"No. You don't," said he. "And I was beginning to hope----"

"Please go on hoping, then," I said. "Because I didn't want to behave
badly. If I did, it was because I don't quite know the game yet. And I
wanted to tell you that I didn't really mean to be silly and
schoolgirlish, and disgrace you and Mrs. Norton."

Then it was his turn to apologize, and he did it thoroughly. He said
that I hadn't been silly, and so far from disgracing him, he was proud
of me--"proud of his ward." It was only that I seemed so much more
womanly and companionable than he'd expected, that he couldn't bear to
see in me, or think he saw, any likeness whatever to inferior types of
woman. Whereupon I had the impertinence to ask _why_ he'd expected me to
be inferior; but the only explanation I could get him to make was that
he didn't know much about girls. Which he had remarked before.

We'd sat out two dances before we--I mean I--knew it; and nobody had
dared to come near us, because a middy can't very well snatch a partner
out of a celebrity's pocket. And Dick, too, though he seems to have the
courage of most of his convictions, drew the line at that. But suddenly
I did remember. I smiled at a hovering laddie with the most