Everybody wanted to dance with me at the same time, and the girls
kissed me into a lovely, warm cheerfulness. The girls in Hayesboro are
the sustaining kind of friends, like pound-cake, sweetened and
beautifully frosted. "Has he consented to let the hero kiss the poor
thing's hand before he goes to fight the case of the miners?" Julia
whispered, warmly, as she took a few tango steps with me in her arms
before Billy Robertson claimed her and Tolly picked me up to juggle with
me in his new Kentucky version of the fox-trot.

"I'm expecting a letter to-morrow," I answered her as Tolly slid me away
three steps, skidded two, and slid back four. And then, having begun, I
danced; all of me danced; even my heart, which had started out as heavy
as lead, got into the feather class before I went around the room three
times. It is strange how even great responsibilities melt away before
dance music like icicles on the southern side of the house. It was in a
perfectly melted condition that I at last dropped from Tolly's grasp
into a pair of new arms which cradled me against a broad breast with
such gentleness that I might have thought it was mother come to the
dance if I hadn't caught a whiff of cedar woodsiness when I turned my
nose into a miniature brier-patch of blue-berried cedar in the
buttonhole of the coat against which my face was pressed as my feet
caught step with a pair of smart shoes bearing a smear of moss loam on
one side.

"Sam!" I gasped, with emotional indignation that had a decided trace of
joy.

"Yes, I feel that way, too," answered Sam, roughing my hair slightly
with his chin as both his hands were employed holding me to him while we
slid and skidded and slid again. "I don't forgive you; I never shall," I