Page:Tales of two countries.djvu/79

Rh This was the most astounding thing that had ever happened to Ola: that there could be more than one opinion about his brother's singing, and that she, his "future wife," did not seem to admire it! And yet it was not quite unpleasant to him to hear it.

Again there was a silence, which Ola sought in vain to break.

"Don't you care for dancing?" she asked.

"Not with every one," he blurted out.

She laughed: "No, no; but gentlemen have the right to choose."

Now Ola began to lose his footing. He felt like a man who is walking, lost in thought, through the streets on a winter evening, and who suddenly discovers that he has got upon a patch of slippery ice. There was nothing for it but to keep up and go ahead ; so, with the courage of despair, he said: "If I knew—or dared to hope—that one of the ladies—no—that the lady I wanted to dance with—that she would care to—hm—that she would dance with me, then—then—" he could get no further, and after saying "then" two or three times over, he came to a stand-still.

"You could ask her," said the fair one.

Her bracelet had come unfastened, and its clasp was so stiff that she had to bend right forward and pinch it so hard that she became quite red in the face, in order to fasten it again.

"Would you, for example, dance with me?" Ola's brain was swimming.