Every night there were (in the language of the play-bills of provincial theatres) "singing and dancing, with a variety of other entertainments;" the "other entertainments" occasionally consisting (as is scandalously affirmed) of a very favourite class of entertainment--popular at all times, but running mad riot at the Christmas season--wherein two performers of either sex take their places beneath a white-berried bough, and go through a species of dance, or _pas de fascination_, accompanied by mysterious rites and solemnities that have been scrupulously observed, and handed down to us, from the earliest age. [Illustration] Mr. Verdant Green, during the short--alas! _too_ short--Christmas week, had performed more polkas than he had ever danced in his life; and, under the charming tuition of Miss Patty Honeywood, was fast becoming a proficient in the _valse à deux temps_. As yet, the whirl of the dance brought on a corresponding rotatory motion of the brain, that made everything swim before his spectacles in a way which will be easily understood by all bad travellers who have crossed from Dover to Calais with a chopping sea and a gale of wind. But Miss Patty Honeywood was both good-natured and persevering: and she allowed our hero to dance on her feet without a murmur, and watchfully guided him when his giddy vision would have led them into contact with foreign bodies. It is an old saying, that Gratitude begets Love. Mr. Verdant Green had already reached the first part of this dangerous creation, for he felt grateful to the pretty Patty for the good-humoured trouble she bestowed on the awkwardness, which he now, for the first time, began painfully to perceive. But, what his gratitude might end in, he had perhaps never taken the trouble to inquire. It was enough to Mr. Verdant Green that he enjoyed the present; and, as to the future, he fully followed out the Horatian precept-- Quid sit futurum cras, fuge quærere; ... nec dulces amores Sperne, puer, neque tu choreas. [Illustration]