fine ladies dress, and do they wear their hair high with great big
combs? Do they have long skirts and--"

"Hold up, you double-tongued chatterbox!" he interrupted; "I can't
answer forty questions at once. Yes, I danced till my legs ached
with women old and girls young; but how could I remember how they
were dressed and what their style of coiffure was? I know that
silk rustled and there was a perfume of eau de Cologne and
mignonette and my heart expanded and blazed while I whirled like a
top with a sweet lady in my arms."

"Yes, you must have cut a ravishing figure!" interpolated Madame
Roussillon with emphatic disapproval, her eyes snapping. "A bull in
a lace shop. How delighted the ladies must have been!"

"Never saw such blushing faces and burning glances--such
fluttering breasts, such--"

"Big braggart," Madame Roussillon broke in contemptuously, "it's a
piastre to a sou that you stood gawping in through a window while
gentlemen and ladies did the dancing. I can imagine how you looked
--I can!" and with this she took her prodigious bulk at a waddling
gait out of the room. "I remember how you danced even when you
were not clumsy as a pig on ice!" she shrieked back over her
shoulder.

"Parbleu! true enough, my dear," he called after her, "I should
think you could--you mind how we used trip it together. You were
the prettiest dancer them all, and the young fellows all went to
the swords about you!"