different race, and not by any means distressingly young. In fact, the pretty girls whom we had picked out as the probable belles of the entertainment were sitting neglected round the room, talking apparently to their fathers and mothers. As soon, however, as the signal to go had been given, we realised that, in the practical Médoc, ‘handsome is that handsome does.’ The tall person whom we had lightly compared to a bolster, went away down the room as if there were a spiral spring inside the bolster-case, and her matronly _vis-à-vis_ advanced to meet her in a manner only comparable to ‘the way the divil went through Athlone, in standing leps,’ to quote Sergeant Mulvaney. We watched these gambols in undisturbed enjoyment for about a minute, and then suddenly my cousin was aware of a man standing in front of her, bowing, and silently holding out both hands. ‘He wants you to dance with him, and you will have to do it,’ whispered Madame A. to her, with unsympathetic ecstasy; ‘it is the custom of the vintage.’ In another moment my cousin was swept into the line of the top couples, and her partner, a pallid, oily youth of Jewish aspect, was whirling her down the room with such a coruscation of capers as would have done credit to a catherine-wheel. What exactly she looked like as, hopelessly conspicuous in [Illustration: ‘HE WANTS YOU TO DANCE WITH HIM, AND YOU WILL HAVE TO DO IT; IT IS THE CUSTOM OF THE VINTAGE.’] her white dress, she floundered, hopped, and jigged through the _mêlée_, time was not given to me to determine. A blue-clad figure was already bowing in front of me, and, as two warm, ungloved hands took mine, the only balm left in Gilead was the sight of Madame A. cleaving the flood of dancers in the arms of a little creature whom I took for a stout child of ten years old, till I subsequently saw his moustache.