But it appeared that they were only going as far as the parlours for the present; for when they re-entered the hotel, they turned into them, and sat down there quite as if that had been the understanding. When I arrived with the wraps, I was reminded of something, and I said, "Have you two been dancing together the whole evening?"They looked at each other as if for the first time they now realised the fact, and Kendricks said, "Why, of course we have! We didn't know anybody.""Very well, then," I said; "you have got me into a scrape.""Oh, poor Mr. March!" cried the girl. "How have we done it?""Why, Mrs. March said that Mr. Kendricks would be sure to know numbers of people, and I must get you other partners, for it wouldn't do for you to dance the whole evening together."She threw herself back in the chair she had taken, and laughed as if this were the best joke in the world.
He said hardily, "You see it HAS done."
"And if it wouldn't do," she gasped, "why didn't you bring me the other partners?""Because I didn't know any," I said; and this seemed to amuse them both so much that I was afraid they would never get their breath.
She looked by and by at her dancing-card, and as soon as she could wipe the tears from her eyes she said, "No; there is no other name there"; and this seemed even a better joke than the other from the way they joined in laughing at it.
"Well, now," I said, when they were quiet again, "this won't do, my young friends. It's all very well for you, and you seem to like it;but I am responsible for your having passed a proper evening under my chaperonage, and something has got to be done to prove it." They saw the reasonableness of this, and they immediately became sober.
"Kendricks," I asked, "can't you think of something?"No, he said, he couldn't; and then he began to laugh again.
I applied to her in the same terms; but she only answered, "Oh, don't ask ME," and she went off laughing too.
"Very well, then," I said; "I shall have to do something desperate, and I shall expect you both to bear me out in it, and I don't want any miserable subterfuges when it comes to the point with Mrs.
March. Will you let me have your dancing-card Miss Gage?" She detached it, and handed it to me. "It's very fortunate that Mr.
Kendricks wrote his name for the first dance only, and didn't go on and fill it up.""Why, we didn't think it was worth while!" she innocently explained.
"And that's what makes it so perfectly providential, as Mrs. March says. Now then," I went on, as I wrote in the name of a rising young politician, who happened just then to have been announced as arriving in Saratoga to join some other leaders in arranging the slate of his party for the convention to meet a month later, "we will begin with a good American."I handed the card to Kendricks. "Do you happen to remember the name of the young French nobleman who danced the third dance with Miss Gage?""No," he said; "but I think I could invent it." And he dashed down an extremely probable marquis, while Miss Gage clapped her hands for joy.
"Oh, how glorious! how splendid!"
I asked, "Will you ever give me away the longest day you live?""Never," she promised; and I added the name of a South American doctor, one of those doctors who seem to be always becoming the presidents of their republics, and ordering all their patients of opposite politics to be shot in the plaza.
Kendricks entered a younger son of an English duke, and Icontributed the hyphenated surname of a New York swell, and between us we soon had all the dances on Miss Gage's card taken by the most distinguished people. We really studied probability in the forgery, and we were proud of the air of reality it wore in the carefully differenced handwritings, with national traits nicely accented in each.
