The room is almost lined with mirrors.  I can even perceive myself over my partner’s shoulder as I dance.  I can ascertain that my loveliness still continues.

How pleasant it is, after all, to be young! and how delightful to be pretty!

Does Barbara always feel like this?  It seems to me as if I had never danced so lightly—­on so admirably slippery and springy a floor, or with any one whose step suited mine better.  His style of dancing is, indeed, very like Bobby’s.  I tell him so.  This leads to an explanation as to who Bobby is, which makes us extremely friendly.

We are standing still for a moment or two to take breath—­we are long-winded, and do not often do it; but still, once in a way, it is unavoidable—­and everybody else is whirling and galloping, and prancing round us, like Bacchantes, or tops, or what you will, when, looking toward the door, I catch a glimpse of the three missing young men.  They are dodging behind one another, and each nudging and pushing the other forward.  Clearly, they are horribly ashamed of themselves; and, from the little I see of them, no wonder!

“Here they are!” I cry, in a tone of excitement.  “Look! do look!” for, having at length succeeded in urging Mr. Parker to the front, they are making their entry, hanging as close together as possible, and with an extremely hang-dog air.

My partner has opened his eyes and his mouth.

“What are they?” he says, in a tone of extreme disapprobation. “Who are they?  Are they Christy Minstrels?”

“Oh, do not!” cry I, in a choked voice, “I do not want to laugh, it will make them so angry—­at least not Mr. Parker, but the others.”

As I speak, they reach me, that is, Algy and Mr. Parker do.  Musgrave has slunk into a corner, and sits there, glaring at whoever he thinks shows a disposition to smile in his direction.

I have done Mr. Parker an injustice in accrediting him with any mauvaise honte.  On the contrary, he clearly glories in his shame.

“Not half so bad, after all, are they?” he says in a voice of loud and cheerful appeal to me, as he comes up.  “I mean considering, of course, that they were not meant for one, they really do very decently, do not they?”

I have put up my fan to hide the irresistible contortions which lips and mouth are undergoing.

“Very!” I say, indistinctly.

Almost everybody has stopped dancing, and is staring with unaffected wonder at them.  Their heads are heavily floured, and their cheeks rouged.  They have also greatly overdone the burnt hair-pin, as a huge smouch of black under each of their eyes attests.

They have all three got painfully tight knee-breeches, white stockings, and enormously long, broad-skirted coats, embroidered in tarnished gold.  Algy’s is plum-color.  The arms of all three are very, very tight.  Had our ancestors indeed such skinny limbs, and such prodigious backs?