By eight o’clock the Olneyites had assembled in full force; but it was not until the train came in and brought the elite from Camden that the party was fairly commenced.  There was a hush when the three ladies with veils on their heads went up the stairs, and a greater hush when they came down again—­Mrs. Judge Miller, splendid in green moire-antique, with diamonds in her ears, while Marcia Fenton and Ella Backus figured in white tarletan, one with trimmings of blue, the other with trimmings of pink, and both with waists so much lower than Ethelyn’s that Mrs. Markham thought the latter very decent by comparison.

It took the ladies a few minutes to inspect the cut of Mrs. Miller’s dress, and the style of hair worn by Marcia and Ella, whose heads had been under a hairdresser’s hands, and were curiosities to some of the Olneyites.  But all stiffness vanished with the sound of Jerry Plympton’s fiddle, and the girls on the west side of the room began to look at the boys on the opposite side, who were straightening their collars and glancing at their “pumps.”

Ethelyn did not intend to dance, but when Judge Miller politely offered to lead her to the floor, saying, as he guessed her thoughts, “Remember the old adage, ‘among the Romans, and so forth,’” she involuntarily assented, and even found herself leading the first cotillion to the sound of Jerry Plympton’s fiddle.  Mrs. Miller was dancing, too, as were both Marcia and Ella, and that in a measure reconciled her to what she was doing.  They knew something of the lancers there on the prairie, and terrible Tim Jones offered to call off “if Miss Markham would dance with him and kind of keep him goin’ straight.”

Tim had laid a wager with a companion as rough as himself, that he would dance with the proud beauty, and this was the way he took to win the bet.  The ruse succeeded, too, Richard’s eyes and low-toned “Ethelyn!” availing more than aught else to drive Ethelyn to the floor with the dreadful Tim, who interlarded his directions with little asides of his own, such as “Go it, Jim,” “Cut her down there, Tom,” “Hurry up your cakes.”

Ethelyn could have screamed out with disgust, and the moment the set was over she said to Richard, “I shall not dance again to-night.”

And she kept her word, until toward the close of the party when poor Andy, who had been so unfortunate as to find everybody engaged or too tired, came up to her as she was playing an accompaniment to Jerry’s “Money-musk,” and with a most doleful expression, said to her, timidly: 

“Please, sister Ethie, dance just once with me; none of the girls wants to, and I hain’t been in a figger to-night.”