Page:Dale - A Marriage Below Zero.djvu/24

18 would have ventured to talk to me as did these men, whom I had never seen before, and with the utmost assurance. It seemed to me that when strangers gave utterance to such ridiculous remarks, they were guilty of nothing less than impertinence.

When they were not unpleasantly self-satisfied, they were absurdly bashful. No girl is ever so contemptuously ill at ease as a bashful man, for whom I have never been able to feel any compassion.

One of our young hereditary legislators asked me to dance, and willing to put him at his ease, for his arms seemed to embarrass him, and his blushes amounted to a positive infirmity, I consented. He seemed to me to be a foolish young peacock, one of those men who Carlyle says attain their maximum of detestability at twenty-five, and ought to be put in a glass case until that period, after which they are supposed to improve. He danced well. I have since learned that most social peacocks do. The poetry of motion seems to accompany lack of brains. When once my