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"Ef I c'd 'a' got on my scuffs," said Captain Leezur, his sun-visage showing against the crimson back of an easy-chair, "I don't know but what I sh'd been 'most tempted ter jine the darnce myself. But no; I couldn't pervail with 'em so long sence I've wrarstled with 'em so I come right 'long in my felts."
But the darnce was spoilt, an' the gals was so disgusted that they went off with their fellers while the weather held up. They reckoned some of us bullickies did it for a lark. An' arter that Dave'd come ridin' past, an' sing out to know if we knew of a good cure for a smokin' chimbly, an' them sorter things. But he always got away before we could pull him off of his horse.
At last he felt it was hardly right for an Oxford man, and a triple blue at that, to be discussed in this contemptuous way by a larrikin and his "donah," so he broke into the discussion, perhaps a little abruptly, but using his most polished style. "I ah asked this lady to dance, and if she er will do me the honour," he said, "I " "Oh! you arst 'er to darnce?
I remember wonst I was drivin' along a lonely bit o' track, an' it was a grand mornin', an' I felt great, an' I got singin' an' practisin' a recitation that I allers meant to give at a bush darnce some night. An' Tom looked at me very hard an' he says, "What are yer shoutin' an' swearin' an' darncin' an' goin' on at the bullicks like that for, Jimmy? They seem to be workin' all right."
"I'm in no state to be worried just now and I've no notion of having the police in here because some of their dam' plain-clothes men have heard my attendant saying 'charnce' and 'darnce' like any Britisher especially with this English spy running round loose. By the way, you'll have to be registered? Has my sister seen about it yet?" I said she was attending to it.
"We carn't darnce without a tune." "Carn't we?" said Jonah, in derision, and began to hum the words of the waltz that he had been playing: White Wings, they never grow weary, They carry me cheerily over the sea; Night comes, I long for my dearie I'll spread out my White Wings and sail home to thee.
A crowd collected as if by magic, and the spectacle of two gentlemen in evening dress trying to kick in the door of a shilling dancing saloon afforded it unmitigated delight. "'Ere's two toffs got done in all right," said one. "What O! Won't she darnce with you?" said another; and somebody from the back threw banana peel at them. Charlie recovered his wits first.
Crips was not a diffident man; he did not distress himself with scruples; fear of failure in an enterprise of this kind never worried him. He walked across the grand ball-room, swaggering in his rags, lifted his hat to a Watteau shepherdess who was laughing at him from a settee in a recess, and said: "Would yer darnce with er poor man, kind lydie?" Again the crowd laughed.
And what right 'ad you to arst 'er to darnce, you lop-eared rabbit?" interrupted the larrikin, raising his voice as he warmed to his subject. "I brought 'er 'ere. I paid the shillin'. Now then, you take your 'ook," he went on, pointing sternly to the door, and talking as he would to a disobedient dog. "Go on, now. Take your 'ook." The Englishman said nothing, but his jaw set ominously.
Three of us chased him on horseback one day, but we didn't ketch him. So we made up our minds to git back on Dave some way or other, an' it come about this way. About six months arter the smoked-out darnce, four or five of us same fellers was campin' on th' Pipeclay agen, an' it was a dry season. It was dryer an' hotter than it was cold 'n' wet the larst time.
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