The chief success of the evening was achieved by Alfred, who overacted his part, uttered impromptu soliloquies, cut into other people’s speeches and played the clown in dumb show throughout a pathetic duet between Sallie and Martyn. The audience, as a whole, adored him. He was applauded at every impossible moment, and the servants, at the back of the hall, screamed with laughter whenever he spoke. Mumma was beaming. “I must say, Ahlfred has a great sense of the ridiculous,” she said appreciatively. “I hope we _all_ have, it’s such a help, to see the funny side--but Ahlfred especially, from the time he was quite a little fellow, has always been able to keep us in a perfect roar.” Finally the performers all sang “The Bulbul Ameer,” and Bill and Nancy took a call for “Author,” and then everybody said to everybody else how good it had all been, and the actors came off the stage still in costume and received compliments and congratulations. A blaring atrocity, known as a “sensational fox-trot,” opened the dance. Claire had engaged a jazz band, and at intervals, to a sound of clattering fire-irons, they suddenly yelled in brassy staccato: “Why--did--I kiss--that girl-- Why, oh! why, oh! why?” It was ugly, discordant, essentially vulgar, and when all that was admitted it had its value. It was _entrainant_. The brazen yelp of it had not torn the air more than three times before people were dancing. Mrs. Kendal planted herself firmly beside me with her kindest air and began: “Dancing has changed so much in the last four years. These modern dances don’t look to me like dancing at all.” “Give me a real old-fashioned waltz,” said General Kendal. And before I could say it for them--and it was on the tip of my tongue, too--they exclaimed together, “Now, the old Blue Danube--” “Look at that,” said Mrs. Kendal, and she shook her head and made a sound with her tongue against the roof of her mouth that quite adequately conveyed regret and disapproval. “That” was of course Mrs. Harter, dancing with Bill Patch. They were in their pseudo-oriental dresses, but Bill’s red head was unmistakable and so was Mrs. Harter’s dancing. They were together the whole evening. So were Chris and Nancy, Martyn and some unidentified young woman in mauve bead shoulder straps and a fragment of crimson chiffon, and Leeds and a very pretty widow who had come with their party. But nobody made distressed sounds about _them_. “She dances quite beautifully,” I pointed out firmly to Mrs. Kendal, who replied in a tone of concession: “If you call it dancing. I must say, I don’t think that either Puppa or I would very much care to see one of our girlies dancing like that.” The suggested test of Puppa and Mumma’s sensibilities appeared to me to be a very remote contingency indeed. At rather infrequent intervals one or other of the Miss Kendals lolloped cheerfully round the room with a stray partner, but, as Mrs. Kendal said: