when the fiddlers' chairs have been wriggled, by the frantic bowing
of their occupiers, to a distance of about two feet from where they
originally stood.

Fancy was dancing with Mr. Shiner. Dick knew that Fancy, by the law of
good manners, was bound to dance as pleasantly with one partner as with
another; yet he could not help suggesting to himself that she need not
have put quite so much spirit into her steps, nor smiled quite so
frequently whilst in the farmer's hands.

"I'm afraid you didn't cast off," said Dick mildly to Mr. Shiner, before
the latter man's watch-chain had done vibrating from a recent whirl.

Fancy made a motion of accepting the correction; but her partner took no
notice, and proceeded with the next movement, with an affectionate bend
towards her.

"That Shiner's too fond of her," the young man said to himself as he
watched them. They came to the top again, Fancy smiling warmly towards
her partner, and went to their places.

"Mr. Shiner, you didn't cast off," said Dick, for want of something else
to demolish him with; casting off himself, and being put out at the
farmer's irregularity.

"Perhaps I sha'n't cast off for any man," said Mr. Shiner.

"I think you ought to, sir."

Dick's partner, a young lady of the name of Lizzy--called Lizz for
short--tried to mollify.

"I can't say that I myself have much feeling for casting off," she said.

"Nor I," said Mrs. Penny, following up the argument, "especially if a
friend and neighbour is set against it. Not but that 'tis a terrible
tasty thing in good hands and well done; yes, indeed, so say I."

"All I meant was," said Dick, rather sorry that he had spoken
correctingly to a guest, "that 'tis in the dance; and a man has hardly
any right to hack and mangle what was ordained by the regular
dance-maker, who, I daresay, got his living by making 'em, and thought of
nothing else all his life."

"I don't like casting off: then very well; I cast off for no dance-maker
that ever lived."

Dick now appeared to be doing mental arithmetic, the act being really an
effort to present to himself, in an abstract form, how far an argument
with a formidable rival ought to be carried, when that rival was his
mother's guest. The dead-lock was put an end to by the stamping arrival
up the middle of the tranter, who, despising minutiae on principle,
started a theme of his own.

"I assure you, neighbours," he said, "the heat of my frame no tongue can
tell!" H