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After a minuet had been paced to the gentle music of the lute and clavichord, a schottische succeeded to the martial skirl of the pipes. For this dance Arran had craftily arranged that Maxwell should have as partner the fair Agnes Herries, and as he watched them his brow relaxed its tension.
My father was certainly not what in the ordinary acceptation of the term would be called “a good dancer.” I doubt whether he had ever received any instruction in “the noble art” other than that which my sister and I gave him. In later years I remember trying to teach him the Schottische, a dance which he particularly admired and desired to learn.
He would have preferred a big drum whereby to inspirit the dancers, but failing that, clashed the bells of the tambourine in their ears. "The tambourine is such fun!" the dancers always said, who, out of breath from polka, or schottische, or galop, paused at his side. "A dance at your house would not be the same thing at all without your tambourine, Mr. Day."
He came in, warm and anxious, just in time to claim Fannie for their schottische. At ten they walked out on the veranda and took seats at its dark end. She was radiant, and without a sign of the mild dismay that was in her bosom. When she said, "Now, tell me, John, why you're so sad," there was no way for him to see that she was secretly charging herself not to lie and not to cry.
Stephen's dancing, compared with Claude's, was as the deliberate motion of an ox to the hopping of a neat little robin. When Claude took a girl's hand in the "grand right-and-left," it was as if he were about to try on a delicate glove; the manner in which he "held his lady" in the polka or schottische made her seem a queen.
Indeed, he had to set his teeth hard on that word to keep more from tumbling out. Miss Bridger seemed all at once anxious over something. "You waltz and two-step and polka and schottische, don't you?" Her eyes, as she looked up at him, reminded Billy achingly of that time in the line-camp when she asked him for a horse to ride home. They had the same wistful, pleading look.
The noise came seething up from the tents barrel-organs each grinding out a different tune, criers, the bands of the various dancing-booths, and the measured tread of a schottische or polka. The women wandered up and down in clusters, casting long looks into the refreshment-tents where their men were sitting; and some of them stopped at the tent-door and made coaxing signs to some one inside.
This over and the dancers out of breath, Goggles announced a quadrille the colonel and St. George helping to form the sets. Then followed the schottische, then another polka until everybody was tired out, and then with one accord the young couples rushed from the hot room, hazy with the dust of lint from the linen crash, and stampeded for the cool wide stairs that led from the great hall.
One night Dad came in for supper rather later than usual. He'd had a hard day, and was done up. To make matters worse, when he was taking the collar off Captain the brute tramped heavily on his toe, and took the nail off. Supper was n't ready. The dining-room was engaged. Dan was showing Sal how the Prince of Wales schottische was danced in the huts Out Back.
I think the 'Highland Schottische' is the best of any for children who haven't learned dancing; they can all jump about somehow and the music is inspiriting. The vicar's daughters are coming to hammer at the piano. Oh, Mr. Mangan," she continued, still appealing to him, "do you think you could tell them a thrilling folk-story? wouldn't that be better?"