But I'm certain the shoe was on the other foot; there wasn't a girl in town would go anywhere else to shop when they could enjoy the fun of teasing me; so that if I made a few blunders, I also brought custom.
Cold weather came again, and I was one year older.

There was a grand ball on the twenty-second of February, to which I invited Hetty Slocum, who accepted my escort.

We expected to have lots of fun.

The ball-room was in the third story of the Spread-Eagle Hotel.

There was to be a splendid supper at midnight in the big dining-room; hot oysters "in every style," roast turkey, chicken-pie, coffee, and all the sweet fixings.
It turned out to be a clear night; I took Hetty to the hotel in father's fancy sleigh, in good style, and having got her safely to the door of the ladies' parlor without a blunder to mar my peace of mind, except that I stepped on her slippered foot in getting into the sleigh, and crushed it so, that Hetty could hardly dance for the pain, I began to feel an unusual degree of confidence in myself, which I fortified by a stern resolution, on no account to get to blushing and stammering, but to walk coolly up to the handsomest girls and ask them out on the floor with all the self-possessed gallantry of a man of the world.
Alas! "the best-laid plans of mice an' men must aft gang," like a balky horse--just opposite to what you want them to.