Mrs. Mornington, in black lace and diamonds, with a black ostrich fan, loomed with commanding bulk on the threshold of the dancing-room. She wanted no steward, no master of the ceremonies to help her. Alone she did it! Mr. Mornington walked about and pretended to be useful; but it was Mrs. Mornington who did everything. She received the guests, she introduced the few strange young men to the many local young ladies. As for the local young men, whom she had seen grow up from sailor suits and mud-pies to pink coats which marked them members of the South Sarum Hunt, her dominion over these was absolute. She drove them about with threatening movements of her large black fan. She would not allow them rest or respite, would not let them hang together in corners to discuss the hunters they were summering, or the hunters they were thinking of buying, or the probable changes in the management of the kennels, or any other subject dear to the minds of rustic youth. "You have come here to dance, Billy Walcott, and not to talk of those wretched old screws of yours," said Mrs. Mornington. "You can have that all out in the saddle-room to-morrow when you are smoking with your grooms. Let me look at your programme, Sidney. Not half full, I declare. Now go over to Miss Rycroft this instant, and engage her for the next waltz." "Come now, Mrs. Mornington, that's rather too rough on me. A man mayn't marry his grandmother; and surely there's some kind of law to forbid his dancing with a woman who looks like his great-aunt." "Sidney, love, to oblige me. The dear old thing has gone to the expense of a new frock----" "She might have bought a little more stuff while she was about it," murmured the youth. "On purpose for my dance, and _somebody_ must give her a waltz. Come, boys, who shall it be?" "Let's go into the garden and toss up," said Sidney Heathfield; but the other youths protested that they were engaged for every dance, and Sidney, who had come late, and whose programme was only half full, had to submit. "I'll do it, Mrs. Mornington," he said, with serio-comic resignation, "on condition you get me a dance with Miss Vincent afterwards." "If I do, she will have to cheat somebody else. Her programme was full a quarter of an hour after she came into the room. My niece is a success." Young Heathfield made his way to a distant bench, where an elderly young lady of expansive figure, set off by a pink-gauze frock, had been sitting for an hour and a half, smiling blandly upon her friends and acquaintance, with a growing sense of despair. What had come over the young men of the present generation, when good dancers were allowed to sit partnerless and forlorn? It all came of the absence of men of standing and mature age at evening parties. Sensible men were so disgusted by the slang and boldness of chits just escaped from the schoolroom that they held themselves aloof, and ball-rooms were given over to boys and girls, and to romping galops and kitchen lancers.