"That's the most insulting music I ever heard, and I'm just mad enough to dance well. If nobody has any prior claim on this young soldier man, he's mine. Mr. Forbes, would you mind supporting your grandmother around the room once or twice?"
Forbes had counted on having this dance with Persis. He had wasted one important tango while Alice poured out her woes. To squander this dance on her mother was a grievous loss. There was nothing for him to do, however, but yield.
He bowed low and smiled. "Nothing would give me more pleasure."
Mrs. Neff returned his bow with an old-fashioned courtesy, as she beamed:
"Very prettily said! Old fashioned and nice. My first husband would have answered like that. Did Murray tell you that I had offered you the job of being my third husband?"
Forbes was exquisitely ill at ease. It is hard to parry banter of that sort from a woman. He bowed again and answered with an ambiguous smile:
"Fine! Then we may as well announce our engagement. Kind friends, permit me to introduce my next husband, Mr.--Mr.--what is your first name, darling?"
"Oh, I'm sure his first name can't be Mother. But we're missing the dance. Come along, hero mine!"
Forbes cast a farewell look of longing at Persis, who was regarding him with an amused bewilderment.
The blare of the band was as effectual as a Gabriel's trumpet opening graves. From the tables the dead came to life and took on stilts if not wings.
Big Bob Fielding and Winifred Mather set out at once in close embrace.
"Look at 'em! Look at 'em!" Ten Eyck chortled. "They're grappled like two old-time battleships on a heavy sea." Ten Eyck was the great-great-grandson of one of the first commissioned officers in the American navy, a rival even of Paul Jones. So now his comment was nautical. "Bob and Winifred remind me of the _Bonhomme Richard_ and the _Serapis_. And Winifred is like old John Paul Jones: when everybody else is dead her motto is: 'I've just begun to fight.'"
But Alice could not smile. She folded her hands and sighed. "It's awful to be a widow when they play that tango."
Persis provided for her at once. "Murray, you take Alice out and dance with her."
Ten Eyck saluted. "Come on, Alice, we'll go in for the consolation stakes."