s; when people's nostrils, wrinkles, and crevices in
general, seem to be getting gradually plastered up; when the very
fiddlers as well as the dancers get red in the face, the dancers having
advanced further still towards incandescence, and entered the cadaverous
phase; the fiddlers no longer sit down, but kick back their chairs and
saw madly at the strings, with legs firmly spread and eyes closed,
regardless of the visible world. Again and again did Dick share his
Love's hand with another man, and wheel round; then, more delightfully,
promenade in a circle with her all to himself, his arm holding her waist
more firmly each time, and his elbow getting further and further behind
her back, till the distance reached was rather noticeable; and, most
blissful, swinging to places shoulder to shoulder, her breath curling
round his neck like a summer zephyr that had strayed from its proper
date. Threading the couples one by one they reached the bottom, when
there arose in Dick's mind a minor misery lest the tune should end before
they could work their way to the top again, and have anew the same
exciting run down through. Dick's feelings on actually reaching the top
in spite of his doubts were supplemented by a mortal fear that the
fiddling might even stop at this supreme moment; which prompted him to
convey a stealthy whisper to the far-gone musicians, to the effect that
they were not to leave off till he and his partner had reached the bottom
of the dance once more, which remark was replied to by the nearest of
those convulsed and quivering men by a private nod to the anxious young
man between two semiquavers of the tune, and a simultaneous "All right,
ay, ay," without opening the eyes. Fancy was now held so closely that
Dick and she were practically one person. The room became to Dick like a
picture in a dream; all that he could remember of it afterwards being the
look of the fiddlers going to sleep, as humming-tops sleep, by increasing
their motion and hum, together with the figures of grandfather James and
old Simon Crumpler sitting by the chimney-corner, talking and nodding in
dumb-show, and beating the air to their emphatic sentences like people
near a threshing machine.

The dance ended. "Piph-h-h-h!" said tranter Dewy, blowing out his breath
in the very finest stream of vapour that a man's lips could form. "A
regular tightener, that one, sonnies!" He wiped his forehead, and went
to the cider and ale mugs on the