or a way of escape, but suddenly
remembering the certain peril in the street decided, as she edged as
far as possible from the marchese, to sit out the difficulties of the
moment.

CHAPTER VIII

To natives, a dressed or undressed dancer is nothing more than a
plaything, or something to help pass the hour; he will look at and
criticise her with much less enthusiasm than he would a she-camel, and
remunerate her or her owner according to the measure of pleasure he has
found in her posturing.

But it is difficult, wellnigh impossible, to describe the feeling of
the occidental women when three orientals of their own sex, without a
vestige of clothing, suddenly one after the other, like ducks, sidled
into the room.

They were none of them in their first youth, and the dragoman, after
watching their movements, decided once and for all to withdraw his
patronage from the house, and sat wondering how much he dared try to
extract from his patron's pockets for such an exhibition, while Jill,
who felt as though she had been suddenly struck between the eyes, sat
hypnotised by the undulating forms before her, until she was overcome
by a frantic desire to bury her face in a cushion and to give way to
unrestrained hysterical laughter. This same feeling has been known to
overcome one in Church when a hen, side-tracking through the open door,
takes a constitutional up the aisle on a Sunday morning in the country;
also it has been known to seize you in its grip at a levee, when your
predecessor's shoe-buckles, not having been properly adjusted, flip up
and down like shutters as their owner, in solitary state, stalks up the
audience chamber; worse and stronger still is it when your revered
bishop uncle, of whom you have great expectations, insists at morning
prayers upon those things which have been left undone, when before your
earthly eyes gapes the cotton dress of Eliza the cook, whose
comfortable dorsal proportions have forbidden the matutinal union of a
couple or so of buttons and buttonholes.

Try as she would she could not overcome it, neither could she remove
her gaze from the three females who, poor things, were but doing their
best to add to the family coffers. Up and down, and round and round
they went, the string band twanging an accompaniment, until the gauze
scarf of the middle lady catching in the hanging chandelier put an end
to their rhythmical swayings, while like hens with a suspended cherry
they hopped in