"Bosh!" he exclaimed with indignation. "Do you mean to tell me that after romping together all the afternoon in the hay, and getting their skins full of my champagne, they won't amalgamate, as you call it? Why, they'll be calling each other by their Christian names before supper time." But the sisters showed no signs of yielding. "I tell you what it is, girls," said their father in anger, "you're a pair of ungrateful minxes. Don't 'pa' me," he added at the duet of deprecation that followed. "My daughters are going to dance with a lord," he continued with tragic fervour, "and their poor old father isn't good enough for them." Mr. Sleek did not go to business that morning. A terrible ceremony that lasted a good hour and a half was gone through. Mr. Sleek's list, which had originally contained over a hundred names, was shorn of its fair proportions, till but a little handful of the least objectionable remained. With the eloquence of a Cicero and the skill of an attorney-general, Miss Sleek "showed cause" against everybody. Though he fought hard he had to yield, for the girls were two to one. But he did not give in without a struggle, and he fought loyally for the absent Dabbler, but the girls were inexorable. "Mr. Dabbler is too dreadful, papa. I'm sure he'd forget himself, and he would insist on dancing." Now both the Misses Sleek had a vivid recollection of poor Dabbler's terpsichorean efforts at a certain Guildhall ball. Not contented with walking through his square dances, as is the lazy custom now-a-days, Mr. Dabbler had _danced_ them with a vigour and ingenuity which would have assuredly brought down the house at a transpontine theatre. Even at the Guildhall, Dabbler's style was peculiar to himself, and productive of amazement and delight to all but his partners and those who figured in the same set. Dabbler was a vigorous dancer. When he set to his partner, he performed a sort of cellar-flap breakdown; when he stood in the middle of the quadrille while his _vis-à-vis_ advanced and retired with the two ladies, he still continued dancing. "To dance implies that a man is glad," and Dabbler was a cheerful-minded fellow enough, but no lady danced with him a second time. The eyes of the Misses Sleek flashed with unaffected rage and horror at the terrible remembrance of that dreadful night in the City. There was nothing for it but to yield, and Mr. Sleek, when he had had time to cool, came to the conclusion that perhaps after all his daughters were right. Romping among the haycocks may be very good fun, but the elaborate toilettes in which he found his daughters arrayed on the eventful afternoon effectually convinced him that the romping, if romping there was to be, would be entirely confined to the few juveniles who graced the entertainment with their presence.