The party walked round the Gardens unmolested nor have we grounds for supposing they assumed airs of state in the style of a previous generation.  Only, as it happened, a gentleman of the party was a wag; no less than the famous, well-seasoned John Rose Mackrell, bent on amusing Mrs. Kirby-Levellier, to hear her lovely laughter; and his wit and his anecdotes, both inexhaustible, proved, as he said, ’that a dried fish is no stale fish, and a smoky flavour to an old chimney story will often render it more piquant to the taste than one jumping fresh off the incident.’  His exact meaning in ‘smoky flavour’ we are not to know; but whether that M. de St. Ombre should witness the effect of English humour upon them, or that the ladies could permit themselves to laugh, their voices accompanied the gentlemen in silvery volleys.  There had been ‘Mackrell’ at Fleetwood’s dinner-table; which was then a way of saying that dry throats made no count of the quantity of champagne imbibed, owing to the fits Rose Mackrell caused.  However, there was loud laughter as they strolled, and it was noticed; and Fleetwood crying out, ‘Mackrell!  Mackrell!’ in delighted repudiation of the wag’s last sally, the cry of ‘Hooray, Mackrell!’ was caught up by the crowd.  They were not the primary offenders, for loud laughter in an isolated party is bad breeding; but they had not the plea of a copious dinner.

So this affair began; inoffensively at the start, for my lord was good-humoured about it.

Kit Ines, of the mercurial legs, must now give impromptu display of his dancing.  He seized a partner, in the manner of a Roman the Sabine, sure of pleasing his patron; and the maid, passing from surprise to merriment, entered the quadrille perforce, all giggles, not without emulation, for she likewise had the passion for the dance.  Whereby it befell that the pair footed in a way to gather observant spectators; and if it had not been that the man from whom the maid was willy-nilly snatched, conceived resentment, things might have passed comfortably; for Kit’s quips and cuts and high capers, and the Sunday gravity of the barge face while the legs were at their impish trickery, double motion to the music, won the crowd to cheer.  They conjectured him to be a British sailor.  But the destituted man said, sailor or no sailor,—­bos’en be hanged! he should pay for his whistle.

Honourably at the close of the quadrille, Kit brought her back; none the worse for it, he boldly affirmed, and he thanked the man for the short loan of her.—­The man had an itch to strike.  Choosing rather to be struck first, he vented nasty remarks.  My lord spoke to Kit and moved on.  At the moment of the step, Rose Mackrell uttered something, a waggery of some sort, heard to be forgotten, but of such instantaneous effect, that the prompt and immoderate laugh succeeding it might reasonably be taken for a fling of scorn at himself, by an injured man.  They were a party; he therefore proceeded to make one, appealing to English sentiment and right feeling.  The blameless and repentant maid plucked at his coat to keep him from dogging the heels of the gentlemen.  Fun was promised; consequently the crowd waxed.