At that moment two girls strolled past, turned, and giggled over their shoulders.
The girls were coming back, and suddenly, to Roland’s surprise, embarrassment and annoyance, Howard walked forward and raised his hat.
“All right, if your friend’s not too shy.”
And before Roland could make any protest he was walking, tongue-tied and helpless, on the arm of a full-blown shop girl.
“Well, you’re a cheerful sort of chap, aren’t you?” she said at last.
“Sorry, but you see I wasn’t expecting you!”
“Oh, get along, I know you; you’re all the same. Why, I was talking to a boy last week....”
To save her the indignity of a confession, Roland suggested that they should dance.
“All right, only don’t hold me too tight--sister’s looking.”
There was no need to talk while they were dancing, and he was glad to be able to collect his thoughts. It was an awkward business. She wasn’t on the whole a bad-looking girl; she was certainly too plump, but she had a nice smile and pretty hair; and he felt no end of a dog. But it was impossible to become romantic, for she giggled every time he tried to hold her a little closer, and once when his cheek brushed accidentally against hers she gave him a great push, and shouted, “Now, then, naughty!” to the intense amusement of another couple. Still, he enjoyed dancing with her. It would be something to tell the fellows afterwards. They would be sitting in the big study. Gradually the talk would drift round to girls. He would sit in silence while the others would relate invented escapades, prefaced by, “My brother told me,” or, “I saw in a French novel.” He would wait for the lull, then himself would let fall--oh! so gently--into the conversation, “a girl that I danced with in the castle grounds....”
The final crash of the band recalled him to the requirements of the moment, and the need for conversation. They sat on a seat and discussed the weather, the suitability of grass as a dancing floor, the superiority of a band over a piano. He introduced subject after subject, bringing them up one after another, like the successive waves of infantry in an attack. It was not a success. The first bars of a waltz were a great relief.
“How did you guess?” he asked. She answered him with a giggle.