“Frank, he generally calls off,” explained old Mrs. Powers.  “It’s in his family to.  His father always did before him.”  She looked around her, discerned something intelligible in what looked like crowding confusion to Vincent and told him hurriedly, “Look-y-here, we’ll have to git a move on, if we git into a set.  They’re all full here.”  Frank appeared in the doorway, alone, and lifted a long high arm. “One couple needed in the far room!” he proclaimed with stentorian dignity and seriousness.

“Here we are!” shouted old Mrs. Powers, scrambling her way through the crowd, and pulling Vincent after her.  He could see now that the couples about him were indeed in their places, hand in hand, facing each other, gravely elate and confident.  The younger ones were swinging their bodies slightly, in time to the sharply marked beat of the fiddle, and in the older ones, the pulse throbbed almost visibly as they waited.

He felt the breath of pines on him, resinous, penetrating, stimulating.  He was in a small, square room with a low ceiling, dense and green with pine-boughs, fastened to the walls.  The odor was as strange an accompaniment to dancing as was that furiously whirling primitive iteration of the fiddle.

“Over here!” cried Mrs. Powers, dragging masterfully at her partner.  She gave a sigh of satisfaction, caught at his hand and held it high.  “All ready, Frank,” she said.

Facing them, near the doorway stood Frank and Nelly, their heads up, Nelly’s small high-heeled shoe thrust forward, their clasped hands held high.  Vincent felt his blood move more quickly at the spectacle they made.  On one side stood Marise Crittenden, her fingers clasped by the huge knotted hand of ’Gene Powers, and on the other was rounded, rosy old Mr. Bayweather holding by the hand the oldest Powers child, a pretty blonde girl of twelve.

Frank’s voice pealed out above the jig-jig-jigging of the fiddle. “Salute your partners!”

Vincent had a qualm of a feeling he thought he had left behind him with his boyhood, real embarrassment, fear of appearing at a disadvantage.  What in the world did their antiquated lingo mean? Was he to kiss that old woman?

Mrs. Powers said reassuringly, “Don’t you worry.  Just do what the others do.”

As she spoke she was holding out her skirts and dipping to a courtesy.  A little later, he caught at the idea and sketched a bow such as to his astonishment he saw the other men executing.  Was he in old Versailles or Vermont?

He felt his hand seized by the old woman’s.  Such a hearty zest was in her every action that he looked at her amazed.

“Balance to the corners, right!” chanted Frank, sending his voice out like a bugle so that it might be heard in all the rooms.

With perfect precision, and poise, the men and women of the couples separated, stepped swayingly, each towards the nearest of the couple to their right, and retreated.