own partner, and made off down the middle with this
fair one of Dick's--the pair appearing from the top of the room like two
persons tripping down a lane to be married. Dick trotted behind with
what was intended to be a look of composure, but which was, in fact, a
rather silly expression of feature--implying, with too much earnestness,
that such an elopement could not be tolerated. Then they turned and came
back, when Dick grew more rigid around his mouth, and blushed with
ingenuous ardour as he joined hands with the rival and formed the arch
over his lady's head; which presumably gave the figure its name;
relinquishing her again at setting to partners, when Mr. Shiner's new
chain quivered in every link, and all the loose flesh upon the
tranter--who here came into action again--shook like jelly. Mrs. Penny,
being always rather concerned for her personal safety when she danced
with the tranter, fixed her face to a chronic smile of timidity the whole
time it lasted--a peculiarity which filled her features with wrinkles,
and reduced her eyes to little straight lines like hyphens, as she jigged
up and down opposite him; repeating in her own person not only his proper
movements, but also the minor flourishes which the richness of the
tranter's imagination led him to introduce from time to time--an
imitation which had about it something of slavish obedience, not unmixed
with fear.

The ear-rings of the ladies now flung themselves wildly about, turning
violent summersaults, banging this way and that, and then swinging
quietly against the ears sustaining them. Mrs. Crumpler--a heavy woman,
who, for some reason which nobody ever thought worth inquiry, danced in a
clean apron--moved so smoothly through the figure that her feet were
never seen; conveying to imaginative minds the idea that she rolled on
castors.

Minute after minute glided by, and the party reached the period when
ladies' back-hair begins to look forgotten and dissipated; when a
perceptible dampness makes itself apparent upon the faces even of
delicate girls--a ghastly dew having for some time rained from the
features of their masculine partners; when skirts begin to be torn out of
their gathers; when elderly people, who have stood up to please their
juniors, begin to feel sundry small tremblings in the region of the
knees, and to wish the interminable dance was at Jericho; when (at
country parties of the thorough sort) waistcoats begin to be unbuttoned,
and