Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/298

290 "And do you like him?"

There is a confident, half-teazing ring in his voice as he asks the question, and I turn my head away ruffled and hurt. Shall I talk over George's true, honest love?

"Nell!" he says, coming round to the other side and looking into my averted face, "did you hear me?"

"Yes."

"Confess now that you do not care a straw for this—this Lubin?"

"Do I not!" I answer, roused by his tone and the slighting allusion to my absent lover, who is so leal to me, and to whom I "There you are quite mistaken; I like him very much indeed; next to my own people I don't know any one whom"

"Next to your own people?" he says, with a queer smile. "Would you not put the man you loved before?"

"That would entirely depend on who he was! If he were a selfish person"

"If? Have you not made up your mind then?"

But I do not answer him. I slip from his side and run fleetly away, and reach the ball-room before he can overtake me: certainly it was a narrow escape that time. My partner for the dance meets me as I enter, and I walk through the Lancers absently enough; fortunately, however, he has the gift of the gab in high perfection, and I am only required to throw in an occasional yes and no. We have for our vis-à-vis a very stout lady and a very active little gentleman, and looking upon them, I am irresistibly reminded of an elephant labouring after a flea, she is so slow, he so spry; I am sure he takes a dozen steps to her one. On my left is a broad-faced young man, who wears a perpetual and uneasy smile, that neither seems able to expand into a grin or depart in peace; I have a great mind to make a face at him as we advance in the figure, and see whether it deepens or vanishes.