heresies, we touched upon this especial sub-division of fauna very
lightly, and, I now suspect, with some self-consciousness.


2

All this was at a summer resort, which was called the Green
Chalybeate. Stella and I and others of our age attended the hotel hops
in the evening with religious punctuality, for well-meaning elders
insisted these dances amused us, and it was easier to go than to argue
the point. At least, that was the feeling of the boys.

Stella has since sworn the girls liked it. I suspect in this statement
a certain parsimony as to the truth. They giggled too much and were
never entirely free from that haunting anxiety concerning their
skirts.

We danced together, Stella and I, to the strains of the last Sousa
two-step (it was the _Washington Post_), and we conversed, meanwhile,
with careful disregard of the amenities of life, since each feared
lest the other might suspect in some common courtesy an attempt
at--there is really no other word--spooning. And spooning was absurd.

Well, as I once read in the pages of a rare and little known author,
one lives and learns.

I asked Stella to sit out a dance. I did this because I had heard Mr.
Lethbury--a handsome man with waxed mustachios and an absolutely
piratical amount of whiskers,--make the same request of Miss Van
Orden, my just relinquished partner, and it was evident that such