When they stopped laughing Lawrence produced his cigarettes, and tossing one to Marley in a way that delicately conveyed a sense of intimacy and affection, he said:
"When you girls get your dishes done up we'll be back and see if we can't think up something to entertain you," and then he called Marley and with him and the other men strolled down to the lake.
The dance was proposed almost immediately. Marley had hoped up to the very last minute that something, possibly a miracle, would prevent it, but scarcely had the men finished their first cigarettes before Howard was saying:
"Well, let's be getting back to the girls. They'll want to dance."
Howard spoke as if the dancing would be a sacrifice on the part of the men to the pleasure of the girls, but they all turned at once, some of them flinging their cigarettes into the water, as if to complete the sacrifice, and started back. When they reached the pavilion, Payson and Gallard took instruments out of green bags, Payson a guitar and Gallard a mandolin, and Lawrence, bustling about over the floor, shoving the few chairs against the unplastered wooden walls, was shouting:
The first tentative notes of the strings twanged in the hollow room, and Lawrence was asking the girls for dances, scribbling their names on his cuff with a disregard of its white polished linen almost painful.
"I'll have to divide up some of 'em, you know, girls," he said. "Jim and Elmer have to play, and that makes us two men shy. But I'll do the best I can--wish I could take you all in my arms at once and dance with you."
The girls, standing in an expectant, eager little group, clutched one another nervously, and pretended to sneer at Lawrence's patronage.
Marley was standing with Lavinia near the door. He was trying to affect an ease; he knew by the way the other girls glanced at him now and then that they were speculating on his possibilities as a partner; he tried just then to look as if he were going to dance as all the other men were, yet he felt the necessity of confessing to Lavinia.
"You know," he said contritely, "that I don't dance."
She looked up, a disappointment springing to her eyes too quickly for her to conceal it. She was flushed with pleasure and excitement, and tapping her foot in time with the chords Payson and Gallard were trying on their instruments. Marley saw her surprise.