XI

THE DANCE IN THE FOREST

She did not go on the next morning.  That day had been chosen for the dance in the forest, one of the two merrymakings dearest to the hearts of those earliest Kentuckians.  The May party came first, with its crowning of the queen of love and beauty and its dance round the May-pole; and after that this festival of dancing and feasting under the golden trees.

Both of these were held as regularly as the opening of the spring flowers and the tinting of the autumn leaves.  No one ever asked why or when they were first begun; it was never the way of the Kentuckians to ask any questions about anything that they had always been used to.  And indeed, had they tried ever so hard, they could hardly have found in their own history the origin of these ancient customs.  Those must have been sought much farther back than the coming of those first settlers into the wilderness,—­as far back, perhaps, as the oldest traditions of the purest stock of the old English yeomanry from which these people were sprung.  For in their veins throbbed the same warm red blood, which, having little to do with the tilling of the soil or the building trade, had everything to do with the fighting of battles and the making of homes.  For in their strong simple hearts was the same love of country that bore England’s flag to victory, and the same love of the fireside that made peace as welcome as conquest.

And as these old English fighters had danced with their sweethearts on the greensward in the intervals between wars, so these fighters of the wilderness now went on with the dance in the forest just as if there had been no fierce conflict at hand.  They might be called to fight to-morrow and they would be ready, but they would dance to-day, just as their forefathers had done.  To go elsewhere than to the dance on the morning selected for it was, therefore, not to be thought of by any young person of the neighborhood.  Ruth had asked David to take her, explaining that William Pressley could not accompany her quite so early as she wished to go.  He had business which would detain him, she explained with a painful blush.  And then, when she had said this with a troubled look, she flashed round on the boy, demanding to know why William should not do whatever he thought best.

“William always has a good reason for everything he does, or doesn’t do.  He is never neglectful of any duty.  Never!” with her blue eyes, which were usually like turquoises, flashing into sapphires.  “He takes time to think—­time to be sure that he is right.  He isn’t forever rushing into mistakes and being sorry, like you and me!”

In another moment she laughed and coaxed, patting his arm.

“Do be ready, David, dear, and wear your nicest clothes,” she said, in her sweetest way.  “And no girl there will have a handsomer gallant than mine, than my Knight of the Oracle, my—­”