they might dance and forget? So the mothers came early
and stayed late, and the primary sessions of the dances fulfilled all the
functions of the latter-day mothers' congresses--there were infant ailments
to be discussed, there were the questions of food and of teething, of
paregoric and of flannel bands, which, strange heresy, seemed to be "going
out," according to the latest advices from those compendiums of all
domestic information, the "Woman's Pages" of the daily papers.

Inasmuch as these more than punctual debaters must be cooked for, there
was, to speak plainly, "feeling" on the part of the housekeeper at the
Bentons'. Wasn't it enough for folks to come to a dance and get a good
supper, and go away like Christians when the thing was over, instead of
coming a day before it began and lingering on as if they had no home to go
to? This, at least, was the housekeeper's point of view, a crochety one,
be it said, not shared by the brothers Benton, whose hospitality was as
genuine as it was primitive. To this same difficult lady the infants, who
were too tender in years to be separated from their mothers, were as
productive of anxiety as their elders. A room had been set apart for their
especial accommodation, the floor of which, carefully spread with
bed-quilts and pillows, prevented any great damage from happening to the
more tender of the guests; and they rolled and crooned and dug their small
fists into each other's faces while their mothers danced in the room
beyond.

By nightfall the Benton ranch gleamed on the dark prairie like a
constellation. Lights burned at every window; a broad beam issued from the
door and threw a welcoming beacon across the darkness and silence of the
night. The scraping of fiddles mingled with the rhythmic scuffle of feet
and the singsong of the words that the dancers sung as they whirled
through the figures of the quadrille and lancers. About the walls of the
room where the dancing was in progress stood a fringe of gallants, their
heads newly oiled, and proclaiming the fact in a bewildering variety of
strong perfumes. Red silk neckerchiefs knotted with elaborate carelessness
displayed to advantage bronzed throats; new overalls, and of the shaggiest
species, amply testified to the social importance of the Benton dance.

As yet the dancing was but intermittent and was engaged in chiefly by the
mothers with large progeny, who felt that after the arrival of a greater
number of guests, and