of triumph in the fact. Not one of that group who had made their boast this day was here, while he was—sitting at Miss Billie's right hand, and able to look forward with vivid anticipation to a real acquaintance-making chat with her sometime after dinner. But a little to his discomfiture, flocks of young people began to arrive for dancing before the dessert was off the table. Here they came—Clayton, Spaulding, Underwood, every eligible and half-eligible in the community, piling in, bubbling with hilarity, breaking up that certain sense of privacy which even the large dinner-party had allowed, and snatching Billie out of his reach.
When the music started Henry experienced a lonely feeling. He had been flung into a serious mood, while these dancing dervishes of young people were frivolous; they were even frivolous about the affair of the afternoon; referring to it as Gaylord's necktie party and frankly congratulating Henry upon his part in it, whereas in the dinner table conversation it had been a subject noticeably taboo.
He stood smoking and looking on, in the party and not of it. He saw the older and heavier women lapse back into corners and members of Boland General drift out probably for a smoke or a chat upon the wide verandas; he saw Mr. Boland go off with Scanlon and after a bit Scanlon come and beckon Quackenbaugh; and he sensed vaguely that amidst all this blare of music and scrape of syncopated feet, with excited laughter and buzz of talk, the business, the great never-sleeping business of Boland General was moving steadily on.
But he had no patience with business just now—not much with anything but one. He marked where a slim
