Page:Henry B. Fuller - Bertram Cope's Year, 1919.djvu/70

 straightforward outlet for superfluous physical energy. Also, peasants in a ring—about a Maypole or something. Also, I very much like square dances and reels. There were enough that night for a quadrille, with somebody for the piano and even somebody to 'call off,'—but whoever sees a quadrille in these days? However, I mustn't burn any more gas on this topic.

"I sat out several dances between Mrs. Phillips and Mr. Randolph. He thought he had done enough for her, and she thought I had done enough for them all. And one of the young business-men did enough for that springy, still-young Mrs. Ryder. Once, indeed, Mrs. Phillips asked me if I wouldn't like to try a third dance with her (she goes at it with a good deal of old-time vivacity and vim); but I told her she must know by this time that I was something of a bungler. 'I wouldn't quite say that,' she returned, smiling; but we continued to sit there side by side on a sort of bench built against the wall, and she seemed as well pleased to have it that way as the other. She did, however, speak about a little singing. I told her that she must have found me something of a bungler there, too, and reminded her that I couldn't play the accompaniments of my best songs at all. Arthur, my dear boy, I depend on you for that, and you must come down here and do it.

"No singing, then. But Mrs. Phillips was not quite satisfied. Wouldn't I recite something? Heavens! Well, of course I know lots of poems—c'est mon métier. I repeated one. Then other volunteers were