Alice protested: "But we can't leave you alone."
Persis beckoned to a lonesome-looking acquaintance at another table, and he came to her with wings outstretched. She locked pinions with him, and they were away.
Ten Eyck put his arms up like racks; Alice hung herself across them, and they romped away. As they performed it, the dance was as harmless as a game of tag.
As Persis was twirled past Forbes now and again, her eyes would meet his with a gaze of deep inquiry.
And he was thinking so earnestly of her that at some indefinitely later period he was almost surprised to find that Mrs. Neff was in his arms, and that they were footing it intricately through a restless maze. He realized, also, that he had not spoken to her yet. He cast about in his mind for a topic of conversation, as one whips a dark trout-pool, and brought up a question:
"That Vacation Savings Fund--may I ask what it is?"
"You may, indeed, young man," she answered, and talked glibly as she danced, occasionally imitating a strain of music with mocking sounds. "It's an attempt a lot of us old women have been making to teach the poor woiking goil what we can't learn ourselves; namely, to save up money--_la-de-de-da-de-da!_ The poor things slave like mules and they're paid like slaves--_te-dum-te-dum!_--yet most of them never think of putting a penny by for a rainy day, or what's more important--_ta-ra-rum!_--a sunny day.
"So Willie Enslee's mother, and Mrs. Clifton Ranger, and the Atterby girls, and a gang of other busybodies got ourselves together and cooked up a scheme--_la-de-de-da-de-da!_--to encourage the girls to stay home--_ta-ra-rum!_--from a few moving-picture fêtes and cut down their ice-cream-soda orgies a little, and put the pennies into a fund to be used in giving each of them--_te-dum-te-dum_--a little holiday when her chance came--_te-di-do-dee!_"
"Splendid!" said Forbes. "Did it work out?"
"Rather. We started with forty girls, and now we've got--how many do you suppose?"
"Eight thousand! And they've saved fifty thousand dollars!"
"That's wonderful!" Forbes exclaimed, stopping short with amazement. Instantly they were as battered and trodden by the other dancers as a planet would be that paused in its orbit.