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Updated: July 9, 2025
Meanwhile, all the less distinguished couples had taken their places: Hetty was led out by the inevitable Mr. Craig, and Mary Burge by Adam; and now the music struck up, and the glorious country-dance, best of all dances, began. Pity it was not a boarded floor! Then the rhythmic stamping of the thick shoes would have been better than any drums.
Am I the life and soul of every company I come into? No, it cannot be said you are." That hard-faced gentleman a wit! Why, Nature wrote on his fanatic forehead fifty years ago, "Wit never comes, that comes to all." I should be as scandalized at a bon-mot issuing from his oracle-looking mouth as to see Cato go down a country-dance. God love you all!
There were five card-tables and twenty-five players, and eighteen dancers of both sexes. At one o'clock in the morning, all present Madame Thuillier, Mademoiselle Brigitte, Madame Phellion, even Phellion himself were dragged into the vivacities of a country-dance, vulgarly called "La Boulangere," in which Dutocq figured with a veil over his head, after the manner of the Kabyl.
I ought to have recollected, that under the close inspection of two such watchful salvages, our communication, while in repose, could not have been easy; that the period of dancing a minuet was not the very choicest time for conversation; but that the noise, the exercise, and the mazy confusion of a country-dance, where the inexperienced performers were every now and then running against each other, and compelling the other couples to stand still for a minute at a time, besides the more regular repose afforded by the intervals of the dance itself, gave the best possible openings for a word or two spoken in season, and without being liable to observation.
And stepping into the middle of the hall she made a sign to the musicians to play a country-dance. But when the first measures floated through the air, the company, as if by unanimous consent, hastened toward the door. One might have supposed the chateau on fire the guests did not withdraw, they actually fled.
In five minutes the eleven and half a dozen of the Wellesburn and Marylebone men got partners somehow or another, and a merry country-dance was going on, to which every one flocked, and new couples joined in every minute, till there were a hundred of them going down the middle and up again; and the long line of school buildings looked gravely down on them, every window glowing with the last rays of the western sun; and the rooks clanged about in the tops of the old elms, greatly excited, and resolved on having their country-dance too; and the great flag flapped lazily in the gentle western breeze.
"I must not boast of our music," said the captain, bowing to the ladies; "but finding that some of my men could play on various instruments, I formed them into a band, and perhaps the young ladies may be inclined to walk a minuet or to try a country-dance." No young ladies of the party were likely to decline such an offer.
This pilot was, of course, the "Prince Charming," selected and reared for her away in Saxe-Coburg that handsome Cousin Albert, once in a letter to the good uncle Leopold tacitly accepted by her in girlish thoughtlessness, as she would have accepted a partner in a joyous country-dance, and afterwards nearly as thoughtlessly thrown over and himself sent adrift. Prince Albert.
She paused a moment, as if she expected me to suggest something; and as I remained silent and rebuked, she bowed her head more graciously, and said, 'Not to affront you, however, a country-dance, if you please. What an ass was I, Alan, not to have anticipated her wishes!
She warned him that she could not dance anything but a country-dance; but he, of course, was willing to wait for that high felicity, meaning only to be complimentary when he assured her at several intervals that it was a "great bore" that she couldn't waltz, he would have liked so much to waltz with her.
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