If my cousins had conscientious scruples against going to balls, and if the social position of the Seymours forbade any chance whatever of an invitation, the husband and wife were willing to talk of the approaching festival. They discussed it in no measured terms. They said it would be the most distinguished and splendid event of the neighbourhood for the year. They enumerated the distinguished and rich and powerful people who would attend. They talked of the grounds being lighted up with lamps, and the house one vast illumination from roof to cellar. They spoke of the dancing and the bounteous table and the plenteous wine and the strings of carriages coming up the drive, of the brilliant costumes, and the jewels and lovely women, of the fountain spouting on the lawn, and the band--the band of famous musicians from London, who, though they came by night to places like Bickerton in sober black cloth coats and played with fiddles, were yet entitled to wear in London magnificent red coats all slashed and braided and piped and gathered with cords and knots of gold; musicians who not only could play with marvellous skill on stringed, brown wood instruments while they sat on chairs, but had, in their natural sphere in London, great brazen and silver instruments to play upon as they rode through the crowded streets of the marvellous capital on jet black prancing chargers, whose bridles were of steel shining like silver, and upon whose forehead blazed burnished, brazen stars. [Illustration: "THEY SPOKE OF THE FAMOUS MUSICIANS."] In the novels I had read there had been descriptions of balls. I had no more thought when reading that it could ever be my luck to see one than I had considered my chance good of fighting North American Indians, or cutting out French sloops, or riding from London to York on Black Bess. Now, a ball had not only come within my ken, but had been brought to my very door. What could be easier than for me to slip out of my room when all the house was asleep, walk to Trafford Manor, enter the grounds, and behold the miraculous sight through a window or open door, and, when I had filled my soul with a scene of fairy-land realised, steal back to my room unnoticed by anyone in the house? The Hardings were, of course, much older than I. They were man and woman and I only a boy not yet in his teens, but they had no halo of parental awe, no parental authority or infallibility.