e to look at him:
but Dawson, for some unaccountable reason, was usually suspicious of
advice from that quarter; so he "stooped to conquer" and lost all. The
shako tumbled from its precarious perch, and hung ignobly suspended by
the cap-lines. A lancer with a pair of grey spectacles, and a shako
hanging round his neck, would have been a very fancy dress indeed: so he
was endeavouring, at the risk of choking himself, to disentangle, by
main force, the complication of knots which we had woven with some dim
hope of the result. In vain did we exhort him to take it patiently, and
remind him how preposterous it was to expect, that what had taken our
united ingenuity half an hour to arrange "to please him," could be
undone in a minute. "Cut the cursed things, can't you?" implored he. No
one had a knife. "I do believe Branling, you are tying that knot
tighter: I had much rather not have your assistance." Branling protested
his innocence. At last we did release him, and he entered the room with
a look most appropriately crest-fallen, shako in hard, solacing himself
by displaying its glories as well as could be effected by judicious
changes of its position.

I soon found Clara, looking more radiantly beautiful than ever I had
seen her, in a sweet dress of Stuart tartan. I had to make my apologies,
which were most sincerely penitent ones, for not being in time to claim
my privilege of dancing the first quadrille with her. She smiled at my
evident earnestness, and good-humouredly added, that the next would be a
much more pleasant dance, as the room was now beginning to fill. It was
a pleasant dance as she said: and the waltz that followed still more
delightful: and then Clara, with a blush and a laugh, declined my
pressing entreaties until after supper at all events. I refused her
good-natured offer of an introduction to "that pretty girl in blue" or
any other among the stars of the night: and sat down, or leant against
the wall, almost unconsciously watching her light step, and sternly
resisting all attempts on the part of my acquaintances to persuade me
to dance again. Of course all the dancing characters among our party
were Clara's partners in succession; and both Gordon and Dawson, who
came to ask what had put me into the sulks, were loud in their encomiums
on her beauty and fascination; even Branling, no very devoted admirer of
the sex, (he saw too much of them, he said, having four presentable
sisters,) allowed that she was