Moodily, though. My first hilarity was extinguished. _Bon enfant_ though I am I cannot go on being _bon enfant_ forever--I must have, so to speak, the encouragement of a bottle at intervals; and I was thinking of taking Edelgard away and giving her, before the others returned to their caravans, a brief description of what maturity combined with calf-like enjoyment looks like to bystanders, when Mrs. Menzies-Legh passing on the arm of a partner caught sight of my face, let her partner go, and came up to me. “I suppose,” she said (and she had at least the grace to hesitate), “it would be no good asking--asking you to--dance?” I stared at her in undisguised astonishment. “Are you not dreadfully bored, standing there alone?” she said, as I did not answer. “Won’t you--” (again she had the grace to hesitate)--“won’t you--dance?” Pointedly, and still staring amazed, I inquired of her with whom, for really I could hardly believe---- “With me, if--if you will,” said she, a rather lame attempt at a smile and a distinctly anxious look in her eyes showing that at least it was only a momentary aberration. Momentary or not, however, I am not the man to smile with feigned gratification when what is needed is rebuke, especially in the case of this lady who of all others needed one so often and so badly. “Why,” I exclaimed, not caring to conceal my opinion, “why--this is matriarchy!” And turning on my heel I made my way at once to my wife, stopped her whirlings, drew her away from her partner’s arm (Jellaby’s, by the way), made her take her husband’s and without a word led her out of the room. But, as I passed the door I saw the look of (I should think pretended) astonishment of Mrs. Menzies-Legh’s face give way to the appearance of the dimple, to a sudden screwing together of the upper and lower eyelashes, and my friends will be able to form a notion of how complete was the havoc England had wrought in all she had been taught to understand and reverence in her youth when I tell them that what she was manifestly trying not to do was to laugh. CHAPTER XIX Essentially, as I have already pointed out, _bon enfant_, I seldom let a bad yesterday spoil a promising to-day; and when on peeping through my curtains next morning I saw the sun had turned our forbidding camp of the night before into a bland warm place across which birds darted singing, a cheery whistle formed itself on my lips and I became aware of that inward satisfaction our neighbours (to whom we owe, I frankly acknowledge, much besides Alsace and Lorraine) have aptly named the _joie de vivre_.