“Brat!” cry I, eagerly, snatching at his coat-sleeve, like a drowning man at a straw.  “Will you be our vis-a-vis?”

“All right,” replies the Brat, gayly, “but I have not got a partner yet.”

Off he goes in search of one, and Ashton and I remain tete-a-tete. I suppose I ought to take his arm, and lead him to the top of the room.  After a moment of hot hesitation, I do this.  Here we are, arrived.  Oh, why did I ask him so soon?  Two or three minutes elapse before the Brat’s return.

“How nicely you have all done the decorations!”

“I am glad you think so, my lady.”

“They are better than ours at the church.”

“Do you think so, my lady?”

A pause.  Everybody is choosing partners.  Tou Tou, grinning from ear to ear, is bidding a bashful button-boy to the merry dance.  Father—­do my eyes deceive me?—­father himself is leading out the house-keeper.  Evidently he is saying something dignifiedly humorous to her, for she is laughing.  I wish that he would sometimes be dignifiedly humorous to us, or even humorous without the dignity.  Barbara, true to her life-long instincts, is inviting the clergyman’s shabby, gawky man-of-all-work, at whom the ladies’-maids are raising the nose of contempt.  Mr. Musgrave is soliciting a kitchen-wench.

“Are there as many here as you expected?”

“Quite, my lady.”

Another pause.

“I hope,” with bald affability, in desperation of a topic, “that you will all enjoy yourselves!”

“Thank you, my lady!”

Praise God! here is the Brat at last!  Owing, I suppose, to the slenderness and fragile tenuity of his own charms, the Brat is a great admirer of fine women, the bigger the better; quantity, not quality; and, true to his colors, he now arrives with a neighboring cook, a lady of sixteen stone, on his arm.

We take our places.  While chassezing and poussetting, thank Heaven, a very little talk goes a very long way.  My mind begins to grow more easy.  I am even sensible of a little feeling of funny elation at the sound of the fiddles gayly squeaking.  I can look about me and laugh inwardly at the distant sight of Tou Tou and the button-boy turning each other nimbly round; of father, in the fourth figure, blandly backing between Mrs. Mitchell and a cook-maid.

We have now reached the fifth.  At the few balls I have hitherto frequented it has been a harmless figure enough; hands all round, and a repetition of l’ete. But now—­oh, horror! what do I see?  Everybody far and near is standing in attitude to gallopade.  The Brat has his little arm round the cook’s waist—­at least not all the way round—­it would take a lengthier limb than his to effect that; but a bit of the way, as far as it will go.  An awful idea strikes me.  Must Ashton and I gallopade too?  I glance nervously toward him.  He is looking quite as apprehensive at the thought that I shall expect him to gallopade with me, as I am at the thought that he will expect me to gallopade with him.  I do not know how it is that we make our mutual alarm known to each other, only I know that, while all the world is gallopading round us, we gallopade not.  Instead, we take hands, and jig distantly round each other.