the Wad,' while
_they_ haven't a lilt to shake their bones to?"

"To be sure," said Murphy; "we'll have the deserters to our cause from
the enemy's camp before the first night is over;[20] wait till the girls
know where the fiddles are--and won't they make the lads join us!"

[20] In those times elections often lasted many days.

"I believe a woman would do a good deal for a dance," said Doctor
Growling; "they are immensely fond of saltatory motion. I remember,
once in my life, I used to flirt with a little actress who was a great
favourite in a provincial town where I lived, and she was invited to a
ball there, and confided to me she had no silk stockings to appear in,
and without them her presence at the ball was out of the question."

"That was a hint to you to buy the stockings," said Dick.

"No--you're out," said Growling. "She knew I was as poor as herself;
but though she could not rely on my purse, she had every confidence in
my taste and judgment, and consulted me on a plan she formed for going
to the ball in proper twig. Now, what do you think it was?"

"To go in cotton, I suppose," returned Dick.

"Out, again, sir--you'd never guess it; and only a woman could have hit
on the expedient; it was the fashion in those days for ladies in full
dress to wear pink stockings, and she proposed _painting her
legs_!"

"Painting her legs!" they all exclaimed.

"Fact, sir," said the doctor; "and she relied on me for telling her if
the cheat was successful----"

"And was it?" asked Durfy.

"Don't be in a hurry, Tom. I complied on one condition--namely, that I
should be the painter."

"Oh, you villain!" cried Dick.

"A capital bargain!" said Tom Durfy.

"But not a safe covenant," added the attorney.

"Don't interrupt me, gentlemen," said the doctor. "I got some rose-pink
accordingly, and I defy all the hosiers in Nottingham to make a tighter
fit than I did on little Jinney; and a prettier pair of stockings I
never saw."

"And she went to the ball?" said Dick.

"She did!"

"And the trick succeeded?" added Durfy.

"So completely," said the doctor, "that several ladies asked her to
recommend her dyer to them! So you see what a woman will do to go to a
dance. Poor little Jinney!--she was a merry minx. By-the-bye, she boxed
my ears that night, for a joke I made about the stockings. 'Jinney,'
said I, 'for fear your stockings should fall down when you're dancing,
hadn't you better let me paint a pair of