Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/255

Rh floor-manager sang out, "Ladies' choice!" or something that meant the same thing, and to my surprise and terror, Mrs. Elliott made a bee-line for me and asked me to assist her in dancing a quadrille. I had no more idea of a quadrille than I had of something that was invented yesterday, and I begged her to excuse me, telling her that I knew nothing whatever of dancing. She declared, however, that I had looked on long enough to learn and that I would go through all right. I hung back like a balky horse at the foot of a slippery hill, but between Mrs. Elliott and the prompter I was almost dragged out on the floor.

The reader may be able to conceive a faint idea of my situation. I was now twenty-three years old, and this was the first time I had been in civilization since I had left St. Louis, a boy of fifteen. Here I was, among those swell people, gorgeous in "purple and fine linen," so to speak; ladies in silks, ruffles and quirlymacues, gentlemen in broadcloth, gold lace and importance, and I in only buckskin from head to foot. I would have freely given everything I possessed to have been out of that, but my excuses failed utterly, and finally I went into it as I would an Indian fight, put on a bold front and worked for dear life.

I found it quite different to what I had expected Instead of making light of me, as I feared they would, each lady in the set tried to assist me all she could.

When on the floor it seemed to me that every man, woman and child were looking at me, as indeed they were, or rather at my suit of buckskin, that, worked full of beads and porcupine quills, was the most beautiful suit