Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/46

Rh girl's dress. Underneath was written, "Could n't you just die waltzing!" In the second picture he presented the same fatuous figure of abstracted enjoyment, except that his head was tilted a little farther back, and his eyes were half closed. By this time the torn flounce had wound round and round his leg, and the girl, beginning to suffer from exposure, stood helplessly staring at the trailing yards; others were gazing with amusement or disgust at the rapt dancer. The picture was labeled, "Do you like to talk while you're waltzing?" The third and last exhibited the hero with head thrown far back, his wide flat smile fixed on the ceiling, his eyes closed in final ecstasy; the flounce had now wound his leg from the ankle to the thigh, a spiral bandage; the victim was reduced to a mere ballet skirt, and stood covering her face in shame. The title was, "What a heavenly dance!" Floyd laughed as he studied the pictures. "That's just the way I felt," he said, turning to Stewart. "Why did n't you tell me what you were doing? I'd have posed for you."

"Oh, I don't know," Stewart answered in some confusion. "You were busy, you know." He picked up the drawings and started toward the fire with them.

"Here! what are you going to do?" cried Floyd, running after him. "Don't burn them. Post 'em up on the wall here; give the other fellows a laugh. They're too good to burn."

He took them from Stewart and tacked them up in the place where they had been exhibited when he entered. Then he stood off and, surveying them again, said a little ruefully, "They do look like me, don't they?"

"Oh, not really,—not very much," one of the boys assured him.

Stewart detached himself from the group, and sitting apart in a corner began to read a magazine. After a while the others left the club, all except Floyd, who had stretched himself prone on the big window-seat and was working