The Dance (Gale)

THE DANCE
By Zona Gale

AFTER breakfast one morning Peleas and I were standing at the drawing-room window watching a snowstorm. It was an unassuming storm of little flakes and infrequent gusts, and hardly looked important enough to keep a baby indoors. But we who have old age and rheumatism and heaven knows what to think of, are obliged to forego our walk if so much as a sprinkling-cart passes.
This always makes Peleas cross, and I myself, that morning, was disposed to take exception, and to fail to understand, and to resort to all the ill-bred devices of well-bred people, who are too polite to be openly quarrelsome.
"What a bony horse!" remarked Peleas
"I don't think so," I said; "its ribs don't show in the least."
"It's bony," reiterated Peleas irritably. "It isn't well fed."
"Perhaps," said I, "that's its type. A good many people would say that a slender woman——"
"They're bony, too," went on Peleas decidedly. "I never saw a slender woman yet who looked as if she had enough to eat."
"Peleas!" I cried, aghast at such defection, "think of the women with lovely tapering waists "
"Bean-poles," said Peleas.
"And sloping shoulders——"
"Yes—pagoda-shaped shoulders," said Peleas.

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