med--

"Now, I will dance with you! You do leap and hop so high and
trippingly! Never mind her; she is only a parson's niece!"

"Madam!" exclaimed Charles, in a tone of surprised displeasure; but
she only nodded archly at him, and said, "I must dance with him; he
can jump so high."

"Let her have her way," whispered Lucy, "she is but a child, and it
will be better not to make a pother."

He yielded, though with visible annoyance, asking Anne if she would
put up with a poor deserted swain, and as he led her off muttering,
"That fellow's friskiness is like to be taken out of him at
Oakwood."

Meanwhile the small creature had taken possession of her chosen
partner, who, so far as size went, was far better suited to her than
any of the other men present. They were dancing something original
and unpremeditated, with twirls and springs, sweeps and bends,
bounds and footings, just as the little lady's fancy prompted,
perhaps guided in some degree by her partner's experience of
national dances. White and black, they figured about, she with
floating sheeny hair and glistening robes, he trim and tight and
jetty, like fairy and imp! It was so droll and pretty that talkers
and dancers alike paused to watch them in a strange fascination,
till at last, quite breathless and pink as a moss rosebud, Alice
dropped upon a chair near her husband. He stood grim, stiff, and
vexed, all the more because Peregrine had taken her fan and was
using it so as to make it wave like butterfly's wings, while poor
Charles looked, as the Doctor whispered to his father, far more
inclined to lay it about her ears.

Sir Philip laughed heartily, for both he and the Doctor had been so
much entranced and amused as to be far more diverted at the lad's
discomfiture than scandalised at the bride's escapade, which they
viewed as child's play.

Perhaps, however, he was somewhat comforted by her later
observation, "He is as ugly as Old Nick, and looks like always
laughing at you; but I wish you could dance like him, Mr. Archfield,
only then you wouldn't be my dear old great big husband, or so
beautiful to look at. Oh, yes, to be sure, he is nothing but a
skipjack such as one makes out of a chicken bone!"

And Anne meanwhile was exclaiming to her mother, "Oh, madam! how
could they do such a thing? How could they make poor Charley marry
that foolish ill-mannered little creature?"

"Hush, daughter, you must drop that childish name," said Mrs.
Woodf