ce. Most likely it
will be the latter, and between "cream" and "water" [ices] her voice is
almost sure, despite the certainty of consequential thirst, to be for
"cream." But hardly has the _preux chevalier_ successfully struggled at
the buffet for the creamy spoonful when harp and horn are heard
preluding to the next dance up stairs, and everybody must hurry back
from passage, stairs or tea-room to find or await his or her next
partner.

When the ball is at its fullest is the time for the really first-rate
dancer to turn his talent to the best advantage. Nearly all London
ball-givers have such an immense circle of acquaintances that, for some
shorter or longer period of the evening, their parties are pretty sure
to be overcrowded. Soon after midnight, it may be, all the world and his
wife will just have arrived together, and the abomination of suffocation
sets in. The staircase is congested and impassable: the dancing area in
the ball-room is encroached upon till a space about as big as a
dining-table is all the dancers have to dance in. At which crisis it
wants no little skill and practice in a man to steer his partner deftly
and without collisions through the intricate _melee_. It can be done,
though, to a degree hardly credible till practically tested, the really
greatest difficulties being, in point of fact, rather to start and stop
than to avoid bumpings when once fairly underweight; but ladies suffer
sufficiently from dizzy or clumsy partners to make them often, in a
crowd, prefer to give their "rounds" to a man whose steering is good,
rather than to one whose feet are less dexterous than his tongue.

At some unperceived moment toward one o'clock couples descending to the
ice-room find the dining-room door wide open, the signal that the supper
period has commenced. First, one or two make up their minds that the
discovery is opportune, and enter shyly in the face of an expectant line
of waiters drawn up behind the buffet. Note the arrangement of the room
while there is yet space to grasp its details, for ten minutes hence, be
sure, the place will be so thronged, with such an all-pervading
hurry-scurry going on, that there will be no chance of noting anything.
Facing you as you enter, down the length of one side of the room, runs a
long buffet-table, the nearer side spread with the apparatus of eating
and drinking, the centre laden with every variety of comestibles,
interspersed at intervals with tall _epergnes_ an