Now they had cleared the room as much as they could, and were standing together in the middle of the floor. It had hurt Agnes a little to have to upset the room, even in so pleasant a cause as this. She had spent so long in planning it all out, and now you might have thought, from the look of things, that it was the night before a sale. The new chair, that had sat so smugly on the hearth, had been pushed into a corner to look on, as well as the little footstool that she had covered with red cloth. This was the chair’s first lesson in life, if she had known; it would never be quite such a smug outsider, after this.... But she had liked to see it neatly on the hearth, just as she had preferred the table spread with food, and this sudden dismantling hurt her homely pride. Yet the comfort and order had done nothing to cheer the poor old man who was looking for a home. He hadn’t even begun to look happy until it was done away. She felt a moment’s terrible qualm for the sanctuary upstairs.... “Now, then, folks—get yourselves set!” Kit stopped his tuning and threw up his head, his eyes roving commandingly over the room. He refused a chair and settled himself firmly against the table edge. His face had hardened a little, and his mouth was stern. He was master now, as he had always been when he played, half-god and artist, never the hireling of the crowd. Gentle as he was in everything else, he was always supremely the autocrat in this. Once he had quitted a ball at its very height, because the dancers had gone against his will. Now, as he motioned the couple into place, the sweep of his bow was like the sweep of a sword.... “Baint it fine to see him so pleased?” Agnes whispered, as she took her stand. Just for a moment they felt foolish standing there, this serious, new-wed couple with their brand-new house. But the dancing that was bred in them soon got the better of that, as well as the growing atmosphere of the past. Almost at once they threw themselves into their parts as Kit had thrown himself into his. Thomas became the fiercely-diffident youth, whose feet had always been nimbler than his tongue; Agnes, the spoilt favourite of a crowded ball. She turned to the old man with a smile that had won her many a tune before to-day. “Be it a reel, Mr. Fiddler? I hope it’s a reel.” “Ay, it’s a reel,” he conceded with a lordly nod, though he had settled to give them a reel from the very start.