It was owing to this fortuitous train journey that one night, some weeks later, Mr. Archibald Blair found himself moving in what he considered very high society indeed. In the years when he had peddled papers on the street corners, or padded around with them on thin and sturdy legs of a Sabbath dawn, so that the world might have its news with its coffee and griddle-cakes for breakfast, Archie had amused himself and added to his mastery of his native tongue by reading an occasional account of a Galt House Ball.

"Social Event of the Season Magnificent Affair Given Last Evening To Mark The DÉbut into Society of" etc., etc.

And here he was himself, part and parcel of a Galt House Ball! It was quite amazing.

Archibald Blair was no snob; but to him, as to many another of the world's workers, "Society" represented a world apart, a sort of fairyland in which creatures of an order far superior to ordinary humans lived and moved and had their lovely being—feminine creatures, of course. About the male of the species he had no illusions. They were merely the same Charlies, Toms, and Georges one knew down town, and with whom one had played baseball or marbles or shinny, transformed by glad rags (the language is Archie's) into temporary black-tailed butterflies. They did not fool him for a moment. When he caught a familiar and surprised eye belonging to one of them, which he did more than once, he grinned and winked. In return, the owner of the eye called out, "Why, hello, Arch!" or, "Glad to see you, Blair!" in very friendly fashion, for Archibald was a popular youth among his acquaintance.

But they did not introduce him to their girls.

Archie was not chagrined. On the rare occasions when he took Miss Emma from the cashier's desk, or Miss Grace, the prettiest office stenographer, to a dance-hall, he was careful himself about whom he introduced to them. Fellows were often well enough with fellows, when they wouldn't do for one's lady-friends. Girls had to be choosy. (Again the language is Archibald's.)

He stood alone on the edge of the whirling throng with a pleased, unconscious smile on his face, watching for the girl he had come to see, wondering if it would be all right if he asked her to dance. In the society he had hitherto frequented—or rather sampled, and found not altogether satisfactory—a fellow danced only with the girl he had taken with him, or perhaps, if it had been arranged beforehand, with the partner of some friend, who in turn danced with his partner. Here things seemed to be done differently. A line of young men hovered on the edge of the dancers, and every now and then one would swoop in amongst them and seize the lady of his choice away from her partner seemingly by main force, a sort of modern Rape of the Sabines.

"Gee!" said Archibald to himself, watching. "Gee! But that takes a nerve."

However, life on the whole does take a nerve, as he had long since discovered.

He had, he supposed, as good a right to try it as the rest. The engraved card of invitation was in his pocket—nobody had taken it from him at the door. His broadcloth tails were as long and as neatly fitting as anybody's—the invitation having arrived at a fortunate time when the order he had landed in Philadelphia made it possible to buy himself a hitherto unnecessary dress suit. It is true that he had used up almost a box of lawn ties before he could get the proper touch to his bow, and even now the result should have proved indubitably that he was not a necktie drummer. He made a mental note to ask his friend Jakie Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishing at Morehouse's what he could do to keep the blamed thing from riding up on him. Still, his final view of himself in the washstand mirror had not been discouraging.

"Some boy," he had murmured to himself, in the absence of a less partial critic.

So now he tensed the muscles of his jaw, and waited his chance, nervously.

How wonderful they were, these slim, delicate creatures whirling by, with their white arms and backs, their tiny feet slippered in silver and gold, their soft laughter, their eager, luring eyes smiling over the shoulders of the fortunate youths who embraced them! Archibald grew quite dizzy with the scene, and stood at gaze as certain dazzled mariners may have gazed upon the Lorelei, to their undoing.

"This is the life!" he said to himself, decidedly. There was not a pay dance-hall in town that could touch it.

Other connoisseurs more experienced than Archibald Blair have looked with delight upon a Galt House Ball—and will look no more, alas! Along the broad corridor behind the ballroom picked experts were wont to congregate early in every season to inspect Louisville's latest contribution to the beauty of the race, comparing points and conformation, class, speed, and endurance, as knowingly as such things are later discussed at Churchill Downs. Indeed, Louisville may be said to be, in some matters, a city of experts. The youth who sells you your cigar, the newsie who provides you with an evening edition, should without a moment's hesitation be able to tell you the name of two things on demand: the Derby winner and the season's beauty.

So Archibald was in a measure prepared for what he saw. Anticipations of it had kept him awake at night. His trouble was in the midst of so much loveliness to fix his ravished attention upon the finding of one face.

When he found it at last, however, his eye did not again wander. He was a young man whose head rarely contained more than one idea at a time—a fact which perhaps accounted for his growing success in the selling end of the business.

He let her pass the first time out of sheer pleasure of the sight of her in motion. Joan was wearing, as she usually wore nowadays, an odd shade of blue, very much the color of the orchids at her waist. In the hand on her partner's arm she carried another bouquet, of violets; and the second time she passed she had exchanged this for a third, of pink roses. From which it may be gathered that Louisville was at last waking up to the attractions of our heroine.

Archibald wished suddenly that he had sent her a bouquet himself, but decided that she might have thought it "fresh."

"Unless I was to send it just 'From a Friend'?" he thought, his eye brightening.

She had changed partners on each appearance, as well as bouquets; and the third time she was dancing with a portly gentleman who one-stepped so majestically, so benignly, that their passage down the room was a sort of royal progress.

"Why, the gay old guy!" thought Archibald, surprised; and decided that this was the moment for his grand coup. Girls like that should not have to dance with parties old enough to know better.

He stepped up to the couple as he had seen others do, and slapped Major Darcy on the back, remarking with the excessive nonchalance which is the result of nervousness, "So long, old top! Back to the tall timbers for you."

The Major turned and stared, really uncertain as to whether it could be himself who was thus addressed.

"It's Mr. Blair, Dad," explained Joan hurriedly, "who was so nice to me on the train; don't you remember?"

The Major still stared. But innate hospitality triumphed: and perhaps there was something disarming, too, in the wide-apart front teeth of Mr. Blair, which, as Joan had previously observed, gave him an oddly innocent expression.

"Very well, young top!" he murmured courteously, "I surrender my daughter to your mercies."

The two danced away, Blair holding his prize as if he did not know quite what to do with her now that he had got her.

"For goodness' sake, take hold of me!" she instructed after a moment. "I feel as if I were about to float out of your grasp. I won't break, you know!"

Archie obediently held her tighter, murmuring, "Pardon me!"

He danced surprisingly well, as if he were really listening to the music, Joan thought. She did not trouble to talk to him, therefore.

"So that was your father," he said after a long and anxious silence. "Why, he's a peach, hopping around like that at his age!"

"Rather more of a pear, don't you think? As to figure?" suggested Joan; for the Major's tendency to embonpoint had increased remarkably since his marriage.

Blair threw back his head and gently roared. He was one of the people who always made Joan feel herself a wit of the first water.

Yet she was a little sorry he had come to-night. She had sent him the card to her dÉbut ball by way of repaying an obligation. He had been very thoughtful on the train about getting her fruit and papers—almost too thoughtful; and had insisted, somewhat to Joan's embarrassment, on paying for the two meals they had taken together in the dining-car. She did not care to remain in debt to a stranger; hence the invitation. But she had not, somehow, expected him to take advantage of it.

Since he was here, however, she must do what she could for him. She knew what it was to be a stranger in a gay throng.

"Do you know any girls?" she asked.

"Not to speak to—though I've seen some of the young ladies on the street, of course. This is the first time I've ever been out in Society," he explained simply.

"Yes? I'm a dÉbutante too, you know. And how do you like Society, so far?"

"Fine, fine!" he told her. "Better even than I thought it was. Makes the movie pictures of it look sort of silly."

"You ought to go to the Horse Show next week if you find this sort of thing interesting. I hear it is to be something splendiferous!"

"I will," he assured her, earnestly.

"And now I'd better introduce you to some other people." She shook her head smilingly at a youth who was about to touch him on the shoulder. After all, one owes something to the duties of hospitality. "Though really you don't have to meet girls at a thing like this before you ask them to dance. I don't know the names of half the men I dance with."

"You don't?" he repeated incredulously, wondering what Miss Emma or Miss Grace would think of that! He decided not to tell them. "I reckon I'd rather be introduced first though, if you don't mind," he murmured—"I—I wouldn't know just what to call 'em."

Laughing, she stopped with the music, and on an impulse of sheer mischief guided him toward the exclusive young person who had once made her unhappy at the Country Club, one Miss Emily Carmichael. She was not too exclusive, it appeared, to come to the Darcy ball; which she did not seem to be thoroughly enjoying, however.

"Ask her to dance—she needs it," murmured Joan sotto voce as they approached.

"Sure thing," replied Archibald; and as soon as Joan had pronounced the formula: "Miss Carmichael, Mr. Blair," he said promptly, "Be pleased to have the pleasure of the next turn, Miss Carmichael."

Joan went off with another partner, chuckling. She felt that scores were even.

Blair's face fell at this desertion. "Oh, but say," he called after her, "can't I dance with you any more?"

"Whenever you like! Just come and tap my partner and carry me off as you did before. But," she added with a parting twinkle, "I don't believe I'd call him 'old top' again!"

Archibald flushed and understood. "All right," he said meekly. "I'll just call him 'Say,' instead."

He tapped her partner with some frequency after that, though not often enough to be annoying; and Joan also noticed amusedly that he danced a great deal with Miss Carmichael, who seemed quite willing. Exclusiveness was evidently in abeyance at a ball.

Sometimes when they passed each other she called out pleasantly, "Having a good time, dÉbutant?" and he answered in the vernacular of the moment, "Fine and dandy!"

She said, during one of their brief turns together, "You seem to be getting on beautifully with that girl I introduced you to."

"Who? Miss Carmichael? She's all to the mustard, isn't she! Asked me to come and eat supper with her to-night."

"She did?" exclaimed Joan, surprised.

"Yes. You see I know her brother—put on gloves with him sometimes at the Y. M. C. A. And it seems he's told her about me," explained Archie.

"Oh!" Joan looked with new interest at his broad shoulders, his straight, supple back. She understood suddenly the lift and spring and untiring ease of his dancing, which was not grace exactly, but something just as good. He was an athlete. She began to feel quite pleased with her protÉgÉ. With a little pruning as to speech and general behavior, he would make a rather presentable ballroom adjunct. His manner with women was really nice.

One other besides Joan watched Archie's progress with interest. At the door of the dressing-room Ellen Neal, in her Sunday costume of claret-colored serge with collar and cuffs of homemade Battenberg lace, gazed proudly out upon the scene of her nurseling's triumphs, having been unable to resist Mrs. Darcy's invitation to assist on so memorable an occasion. She had removed countless evening wraps and carriage slippers, assisted deftly, albeit with prim lips, at the powdering of countless backs and bosoms, and now followed with adoring eyes a certain slim blue figure that appeared and disappeared among the dancers.

"Land," she thought. "If her mama could only see her now! The swellest among the swell! And with a dress on her little back that cost that woman a hundred dollars, if it cost a cent. She's got as many partners as any of 'em—and why wouldn't she, then, I'd like to know?"

Archibald had promised to look her up during the evening, but boylike had forgotten the old friend in quest of the new. She forgave him for it, though she would have liked very much to exchange impressions with somebody. Her pride was bursting for utterance.

Presently he came and stood quite near her, with only the width of the corridor between them. His back was turned as he stood looking out over the ballroom floor.

"Sst" called Ellen. "Psst! Mr. Archie!" She dared not leave her post for fear people would come for wraps or powder, and find only a colored woman to wait on them, which would never do. (Ellen continued to regard the colored race as a cross between the monkey and the magpie, with leanings toward the magpie.)

"Psst! Hey there!" she called.

But Archie's mind was far away from Ellen Neal, and he did not hear her. He was anathematizing Jakie Florsheimer of the Gents' Furnishings at the moment for not having suggested white kid gloves to him. More than once his clumsy bare hand, struggle against it as he might, had come in contact with the delicate bare shoulder of one of his partners; and Archibald felt that if such a catastrophe should occur when he was dancing with Miss Darcy, the earth might just as well open and engulf him permanently. She would never forgive him—and indeed why should she? A man ought to have known by instinct about those reverential gloves.

So he stood frowning out upon the ballroom, heedless of Ellen's hisses; and in this way the old woman happened to be the unnoted witness of a rather curious scene.

Mrs. Darcy came tripping down the corridor alone, for the moment, having been out to inspect preparations for supper. She did not believe in leaving so important a matter as supper entirely to the hands of paid assistants, no matter how well paid. She was resplendent in rose brocade and spangles, her small plump feet encased in cloth-of-gold, a little fishtail train of cloth-of-gold whisking behind her. Her hair positively glittered, it was so golden, and her face was overspread with a rosy bloom that always intrigued her step-daughter because of its unnatural evenness, as if she had not simply rouged, but dipped her face in a permanent elixir of youth that outdid youth itself. Joan had never caught her with her face bare, as it were, even at the most unlikely hours.

Mrs. Darcy paused at sight of a young man standing by himself, gazing out with a wistful frown at the gaiety before him; and her hospitable heart smote her. She tapped his arm with her fan.

"Kind o' lonesome?" she said. "Come on in and dance with me."

He turned with a start. His eyes took her in from top to toe, and suddenly narrowed. "No, thanks," he said curtly. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

Effie May drew back. She looked, as Ellen expressed it to herself, "flabbergasted."

"Why! Who do you think I am?"

He continued to stare at her with those narrowed, steady eyes.

"I don't know, and I don't care. It's easy enough to see what you are! You'd better go, hadn't you?" suggested Archibald grimly. "This is a private affair. Invitation only."

By this time the startled lady had recovered her poise. "You're making a mistake, young man," she replied quietly, "This happens to be my private affair. I am Mrs. Darcy."

It was his turn to be flabbergasted.

"Her mother?"

"Miss Darcy's step-mother," said Effie May, with some dignity.

She continued to meet his gaze, which did not lower, though he had gone quite pale.

"The joke's on me," he muttered at last. "It's I who'd better go, I guess. Pardon me!"

She inclined her head without speaking.

He still continued to look at her, as if puzzled. "My mistake," he said again. "If your husband wants me at any time, my name is Blair, Mrs. Darcy—Archibald Blair."

"He won't want you," said Effie May. "Good night."

Ellen Neal, aghast, watched him turn on his heel and leave.

"Land!" she said to herself. "Land sakes! He's gone and done for himself now, the young idjit!"

When she turned again, she saw Mrs. Darcy refreshing herself with a glass of "Dick Fizz" at the punch bowl. She seemed to need it.