sing for a moment.

"Oh, am I, JUST!" she exclaimed. "The best time--but I don't know what
has become of my partner. See! I'm left all alone--the only time this
whole evening," she added proudly. "Have you seen him--my partner, sir?
I forget his name. I only met him this evening, and I've met SO many
I can't begin to remember half of them. He was a young man from
Bonneville--a clerk, I think, because I remember seeing him in a store
there, and he wore the prettiest clothes!"

"I guess he got lost in the shuffle," observed Annixter. Suddenly an
idea occurred to him. He took his resolution in both hands. He clenched
his teeth.

"Say! look here, Miss Hilma. What's the matter with you and I stealing
this one for ourselves? I don't mean to dance. I don't propose to make
a jumping-jack of myself for some galoot to give me the laugh, but we'll
walk around. Will you? What do you say?"

Hilma consented.

"I'm not so VERY sorry I missed my dance with that--that--little clerk,"
she said guiltily. "I suppose that's very bad of me, isn't it?"

Annixter fulminated a vigorous protest.

"I AM so warm!" murmured Hilma, fanning herself with her handkerchief;
"and, oh! SUCH a good time as I have had! I was so afraid that I would
be a wall-flower and sit up by mamma and papa the whole evening; and
as it is, I have had every single dance, and even some dances I had to
split. Oh-h!" she breathed, glancing lovingly around the barn, noting
again the festoons of tri-coloured cambric, the Japanese lanterns,
flaring lamps, and "decorations" of evergreen; "oh-h! it's all so
lovely, just like a fairy story; and to think that it can't last but for
one little evening, and that to-morrow morning one must wake up to the
every-day things again!"

"Well," observed Annixter doggedly, unwilling that she should forget
whom she ought to thank, "I did my best, and my best is as good as
another man's, I guess."

Hilma overwhelmed him with a burst of gratitude which he gruffly
pretended to deprecate. Oh, that was all right. It hadn't cost him much.
He liked to see people having a good time himself, and the crowd did
seem to be enjoying themselves. What did SHE think? Did things look
lively enough? And how about herself--was she enjoying it?

Stupidly Annixter drove the question home again, at his wits' end as to
how to make conversation. Hilma protested volubly she would never forget
this night, adding:

"Dance! Oh, you don't know how I love it! I