Page:Stewart Edward White--The Rose Dawn.djvu/203

Rh "The third and the seventh—and supper," he announced. As a matter of fact he had the supper dance already engaged, but his active brain had assured him of escape. He bowed again, and gave way to others who were already gathering around.

Daphne's card was soon filled. Everybody in Arguello knew her as a child. There was an alluring piquancy in this sudden emergence as a woman. By the time she and the Peytons had escaped from the swirling group near the receiving station and made their way toward the chairs along the wall, her card was full and the success of her evening assured.

All balls of those days were opened by what was known as a Grand March, a pretty and stately ceremony wherein the dancers paced in column two by two. The column turned and twisted and tied itself into knots and convolutions and extracted itself therefrom: the couples divided into other columns of single file which drew apart and performed even more complicated figures, and drew together again in such mysterious and miraculous fashion that each man found himself again with his partner after apparently hopeless separation. It took some leading, the Grand March. No hopeless amateur need apply. Ben Sansome opened all balls in San Francisco as a matter of understood social right, but here waived that privilege in favour of the son of the house. And the son of the house did it very well, without hesitation or blunder. Dan Mitchell stood by the door surveying it with approving, professional eye. Dan was dressed in his baggy blue serge suit, and he had a quid of tobacco stowed away in his cheek—which was why he stood by the door. Already he had sampled Boyd's champagne, an especial concession to his necessity of getting back to the office before the Trumpet was put to bed.

"I'd like to see the German," he confided to Jim Paige. "But she certainly is an eight-gauge, double-barrelled party."

He watched lazily for a few minutes more, then faded away. At the Trumpet office he called in his assistant. "Cort," he ordered, "that party of Boyd's is the real thing. She's making history. Send up Miss Mullins to get all the women's dresses and decorations, and then bring the notes to