“Slugs or no seem me the poor angel’s more hot than cold. Lord love, he’s afire! . . . The wad’s catched in his coat!” That such was the case became painfully apparent to the deceased at the same moment. He sprang to his feet and bounded round and round the group, uttering ghastly howls and belaboring himself behind in a fruitless endeavor to extinguish the smoldering cloth. The onlookers were helpless with laughter; they leaned against each other and sobbed. Teresa in particular shook so violently it hurt her. Somebody suggested a bucket of water, between chokes, but nobody volunteered to fetch it; to do so would be to miss the fun. “The stream,” hiccoughed Bohenna, holding his sides. “Sit ’ee down in stream, Dan, my old beauty, an’ quench thyself.” A loud splash in the further darkness announced that the unhappy musician had taken his advice. The apple trees fully secured for twelve months, the party returned to the kitchen, but the incident of Dan had dissipated the somewhat pious tone of the preceding events. Teresa, tears trickling down her cheeks, set going a fresh round of eggy-hot. Ortho pounced on Tamsin Eva, the prettiest girl in the room, carried her bodily under the kissing bush and saluted her again and again. Other men and boys followed suit. The girls fled round the kitchen in mock consternation, pursued by flushed swains, were captured and embraced, giggling and sighing. Jiggy Dan, sniffing hot liquor as a pointer sniffs game, limped, dripping, in from the stream, was given an old petticoat of Martha’s to cover his deficiencies, a pot of rum, propped up in a corner and told to fiddle for dear life. The men, headed by Ortho, cleared the kitchen of furniture, and then everybody danced old heel and toe country dances, skipped, bowed, sidled, passed up and down the middle and twirled around till the sweat shone like varnish on their scarlet faces. The St. Gwithian choir flung themselves into it heart and soul. They were expected at Monks Cove to sing carols, were overdue by some hours, but they had forgotten all about that. Teresa danced with the best, with grace and agility extraordinary in a woman of her bulk. She danced one partner off his feet and all but stunned another against the corner of the dresser, bringing most of the crockery crashing to earth. She then produced that relic of her vagabondage, the guitar, and joined forces with Jiggy Dan. The fun became furious. The girls shook the tumbled hair from their eyes, laughed roguishly; the men whooped and thumped the floor with their heavy boots. Jiggy Dan, constantly primed with rum by the attentive Martha, scraped and sawed at his fiddle, beating time with his toe. Teresa plucked at the guitar till it droned and buzzed like a hive of melodious bees. Occasionally she sang ribald snatches. She was in high feather, the reaction from nine months’ abstinence. The kitchen, lit by a pile of dry furze blazing in the open hearth, grew hotter and hotter.