I was immediately gratified by the spectacle of Philippa, clasped to the heart of the gentleman who had been kind to her at dinner, and moving with him in slow and crab-like sidlings round the carpet. Her eyes met mine with passionate appeal; they reminded me of those of her own fox-terrier, Minx, when compelled to waltz with my younger son. The furniture and the elder ladies had been piled up in corners, and the dancing element had been reinforced by a gang of lesser McRorys and their congeners, beings who had not been deemed worthy of a place at the high table. Immured behind the upright piano sat Mrs. McRory, thumping out the time-honoured "Blue Danube" with the plodding rhythm of the omnibus horse. I furtively looked at my watch; we had dined at 7.30, and it was now but a quarter to ten o'clock. Not for half an hour could we in decency withdraw, and, finding myself at the moment beside Miss Larkie McRory, it seemed to me that I could do no less than invite her to take the carpet with me. I am aware that my dancing is that of ten years ago, which places it in the same scrap-heap class as a battleship of that date, but Miss McRory told me that she preferred it, and that it exactly suited her step. It would be as easy to describe the way of a bird in the air as to define Miss McRory's step; scrap-heap or no, it made me feel that I walked the carpet like a thing of life. We were occasionally wrecked upon reefs of huddled furniture, and we sustained a collision or two of first-rate magnitude: after these episodes my partner imperceptibly steered me to a corner, in which I leaned heavily against whatever was most stable, and tried to ignore the fact that the floor was rocking and the walls were waving, and that it was at least two years since I had exceeded in this way. It was in one of these intervals that Miss McRory told me that she was going hunting next day, and that he--her long hazel-grey eyes indicated Mr. Irving, now slowly and showily moving a partner about the room--had got a horse for her to ride, and she had never hunted before. She hoped to goodness she wouldn't fall off, and (here she dealt me the fraction of a glance) she hoped I'd pick her up now and again. I said that the two wishes were incompatible, to which she replied that she didn't know what incompatible meant; and I told her to ask Mr. Irving whether he had found that salt and champagne were compatible. "I thought you only wore that old eyeglass for show," replied Miss McRory softly, and again looked up at me from under her upcurled Irish eyelashes; "it was out of spite he drank it! A girl did that to my brother Curly at a dance, and he poured it down her back." "I think Mr. Irving treated you better than you deserved," I replied paternally, adventuring once more into the tide of dancers.