"
"And did you attend any parties and balls?" she inquired quickly,
ignoring his concluding remark. "Tell me about them. How do the
fine ladies dress, and do they wear their hair high with great big
combs? Do they have long skirts and--"
"Hold up, you double-tongued chatterbox!" he interrupted; "I can't
answer forty questions at once. Yes, I danced till my legs ached
with women old and girls young; but how could I remember how they
were dressed and what their style of coiffure was? I know that
silk rustled and there was a perfume of eau de Cologne and
mignonette and my heart expanded and blazed while I whirled like a
top with a sweet lady in my arms."
"Yes, you must have cut a ravishing figure!" interpolated Madame
Roussillon with emphatic disapproval, her eyes snapping. "A bull in
a lace shop. How delighted the ladies must have been!"
"Never saw such blushing faces and burning glances--such
fluttering breasts, such--"
"Big braggart," Madame Roussillon broke in contemptuously, "it's a
piastre to a sou that you stood gawping in through a window while
gentlemen and ladies did the dancing. I can imagine how you looked
--I can!" and with this she took her prodigious bulk at a waddling
gait out of the room. "I remember how you danced even when you
were not clumsy as a pig on ice!" she shrieked back over her
shoulder.
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