Margaret Maliphant

								

"I hate that kind of thing," said Miss Thorne to me, in her out-spoken
way. "When are there ever men enough at a country dance unless you get
in the riffraff from behind the shop counters? We come to meet our
friends, not to whirl round with mere sticks."
I thought it was very nice of Miss Thorne, but I wished there were just
men enough to dance with me.
The music struck up again and Joyce went off with her partner. I felt
as though life indeed were altogether a disappointment; and it did
not give me any pleasure to hear Miss Thorne commenting upon Joyce's
beauty, nor laughing in her frank, good-natured way about the squire's
attentions, any the more than it amused me to hear fragments of the
gay descriptions with which Captain Forrester was making the time pass
for mother.
But, after all, I began to despair too soon; it was only the fourth
dance of the evening. Before it was over the squire came up to me.
"I have been so busy," said he, "I haven't been able to come before,
but I hope you haven't given all your dances away?"
Although I was new to the ways of the world, an instinct within taught
me to say, coolly, "Oh no, not all."
"What can you give me?" asked he. And he quoted three numbers further
on in the evening. "I think, being old friends, we might dance three
dances together," added he, with a smile.
"Oh yes," cried I. "I should like to dance them with you."
The squire was a beautiful dancer, although he was not a young man;
or rather, although he was not what I then considered a young man.
I fancied he did not smile at my enthusiastic reply. He even looked
rather grave. I was too simple to think of not giving him my programme.
I saw him glance at it and then at me. From that moment I did not lack
partners, and as far as the company could provide them, good ones.
To be sure I jostled round the room with a raw youth or two, and guided
a puffing gentleman through the maze, and let my toes be trodden upon
by a tall gentleman with glasses on his nose, who only turned round
when he thought of it; but on the whole I enjoyed myself, and it was
all thanks to my host. I scarcely knew a man when I went into the
room, and certainly, save for that one wild, delightful waltz, Captain
Forrester had taken no account of me, although he had sat close to me
half the evening, and one would have thought he would have noticed that
I was not dancing. But then, of course, he was preoccupied. I could not
make him out at all. All the evening I could not once catch him even
talking to Joyce, and I am quite sure that when I went in to supper he
had not asked her to dance once.
If I had been enjoying myself less I might have thought more of it, but
I was too happy to remember it until the breathing-time came, when I
went into the dining-room. Then, when I saw Captain Forrester sitting
in one of the best places with that horrid old Miss Farnham, and Joyce
at a side-table, with scarcely room to stand, and no one but my pet