ses of society.

In addition to the local musicians present, a man who had a thorough
knowledge of the tambourine was invited from the village of Tantrum
Clangley,--a place long celebrated for the skill of its inhabitants as
performers on instruments of percussion. These important members of the
assembly were relegated to a height of two or three feet from the ground,
upon a temporary erection of planks supported by barrels. Whilst the
dancing progressed the older persons sat in a group under the trunk of
the tree,--the space being allotted to them somewhat grudgingly by the
young ones, who were greedy of pirouetting room,--and fortified by a
table against the heels of the dancers. Here the gaffers and gammers,
whose dancing days were over, told stories of great impressiveness, and
at intervals surveyed the advancing and retiring couples from the same
retreat, as people on shore might be supposed to survey a naval
engagement in the bay beyond; returning again to their tales when the
pause was over. Those of the whirling throng, who, during the rests
between each figure, turned their eyes in the direction of these seated
ones, were only able to discover, on account of the music and bustle,
that a very striking circumstance was in course of narration--denoted by
an emphatic sweep of the hand, snapping of the fingers, close of the
lips, and fixed look into the centre of the listener's eye for the space
of a quarter of a minute, which raised in that listener such a
reciprocating working of face as to sometimes make the distant dancers
half wish to know what such an interesting tale could refer to.

Fancy caused her looks to wear as much matronly expression as was
obtainable out of six hours' experience as a wife, in order that the
contrast between her own state of life and that of the unmarried young
women present might be duly impressed upon the company: occasionally
stealing glances of admiration at her left hand, but this quite
privately; for her ostensible bearing concerning the matter was intended
to show that, though she undoubtedly occupied the most wondrous position
in the eyes of the world that had ever been attained, she was almost
unconscious of the circumstance, and that the somewhat prominent position
in which that wonderfully-emblazoned left hand was continually found to
be placed, when handing cups and saucers, knives, forks, and glasses, was
quite the result of accident. As to wishing to excite envy in