ll-rooms.

It is all very well to cry out against dances that don't begin till near
midnight as absurd and reprehensible; but, after all, their lateness is
easily accounted for. In May and June from six to half-past seven in the
evening are the pleasantest of hours for driving in the Park or
strolling to see others drive there. Nobody willingly goes home till
those pleasant hours are over; so no wonder that dinners tend to begin
at a quarter- or even half-past eight; that they consequently are not
over much before eleven; and that people who have, after that, to look
in and gossip for ten minutes at somebody or other's drum, do not find
themselves at the ultimate evening engagement, the ball, much before the
stroke of twelve. The balls of the London season will not become much
earlier, methinks, until some thorough revolution takes place in the
likings and habits of the folk who give and go to them.

Suppose, then, the arrival accurately timed, or, at any rate, any fault
on the side of over-earliness corrected by a judicious waste of minutes
in the cloak- and tea-rooms down stairs. At the top of the inevitable
staircase, or just inside her drawing-room, our hostess stands ready
with smile and hand-shake for each and every guest announced by the
sonorous butler. Many of the younger men (who have received cards by one
or other of the side-winds above spoken of) she has very likely never
seen or heard of till this moment; but no matter--they and she are
equally equal to the occasion. Perhaps the lady who has sent the
stranger a card "with her compliments" hears him announced, and stepping
forward introduces him to the hostess. If not, the hardly formidable
ordeal of a polite bow and a hand-shake passes him on into the
ball-room, where, once arrived, he looks about for friends, and
proceeds to engage dances, and (let us hope) enjoy them without the
slightest sense of strangeness in the strange house, provided only that
he has chanced upon a fair sprinkling of his own set there. Who the
master of the house may be he probably, if an average careless Gallio,
knows little and cares less. Indeed, _Paterfamilias_ is usually content
to sink his own personality and be a nonentity for the nonce on the
night of his wife's dancing-party.

The suite of drawing-rooms, usually two rooms occupying the whole of the
first floor, have been gutted of furniture and stripped of carpets to
form the ball-room. The floor is hardly ever of polish