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As to the shawl-dance, it was the most exciting thing that ever was beheld; there was such a whisking, and rustling, and fanning, and getting ladies into a tangle with artificial flowers, and then disentangling them again! And as to Mr. Augustus Cooper’s share in the quadrille, he got through it admirably.
Accordingly I changed my course, and followed them up. On coming upon them in a famous English camping-place I found the Lovells and the Boswells. Rhona, dressed in gorgeous attire, evidently purchased at some second-hand shop, was rehearsing the shawl-dance for a great occasion at a neighbouring fair. But no Winifred.
She played with skill on the harp and piano, and being passionately fond of music, it became her solace and amusement at an advanced age. In her youth dancing was equally a passion with her. The grace with which she executed the shawl-dance suggested to Madame de Staël the dance-scene in "Corinne."
"At this moment Mademoiselle Rina made her appearance in the costume of a shepherdess a boddice of silver, short silk petticoats, and a large Cashmere shawl twisted round her waist. She was really charming in this dress. I seized my bass. I fancied myself in the orchestra at Marseilles. "'What would you like me to play, Mademoiselle? "'Do you know the shawl-dance in the ballet of Clary?
I now wrote another letter to Winifred, and after a long delay, got a reply, but it consisted mainly of descriptions of the way in which she paddled in the Welsh brooks and of lessons in the shawl-dance which she was taking from Shuri Lovell, the mother of her Gypsy friend. So vividly did she describe these lessons that her pictures haunted me.
Augustus Cooper had ordered a new coat for the occasion—a two-pound-tenner from Turnstile. It was his first appearance in public; and, after a grand Sicilian shawl-dance by fourteen young ladies in character, he was to open the quadrille department with Miss Billsmethi herself, with whom he had become quite intimate since his first introduction. It was a night! Everything was admirably arranged.
Biddy's slightly agitated perception travelled directly to their shoes: they suggested to her vaguely that the wearers were dancers connected possibly with the old-fashioned exhibition of the shawl-dance. By the time she had taken in so much as this the mellifluous young man had perceived and addressed himself to her brother. He came on with an offered hand.
The leafy dingle was recalling Graylingham Wilderness and 'Fairy Dell, where little Winifred used to play Titania to my childish Oberon, and dance the Gypsy 'shawl-dance' Sinfi's mother had taught her! So much was I occupied with these reminiscences that I had not observed that during our absence our camp had been honoured by visitors.
For him I danced the "Gavotte," the "shawl-dance," as taught to do by Monsieur Mallet, at the great dancing-school on Chestnut Street, or jumped Jim Crow to his infinite amusement and the unmitigated disgust of Evelyn, to whom his physical infirmity made him any thing but attractive.
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