The music achieved its final chord; and the stairs promptly filled with resting couples. Mrs. Gates came out of the parlour with an armful of gilt shepherds' crooks and wreaths of tissue-paper roses. She looked up at the long slant of young people, nodding and signalling; and went back to speak to the musicians. The "juhman" was about to begin. "I do think it's too funny for any use," said Kitty Oldham across her late partner to the nearest girl, "the way Britannia throws herself at _somebody's_ head. Simply monopolises him the _whole_ time." "Oh, they were just sitting out one dance," said the man with her, displaying an unexpected acuteness. "Never mind looking at me that way, Miss Kitty. I know whom you were talking about. J. B. just didn't want to dance it, I guess." "No wonder. Self-preservation's the first law of nature," said Kitty with undaunted pertness. "Funny they don't teach 'em to _dance_, on the other side, isn't it?" "Oh, she thinks she's dancing," said Kitty, lazily scornful. "It's a delusion they all have, I suppose. J. B.'s the only man around big enough for her--except Gwynne, and he's tall, but he's too slim. He's dropped out of the play--did you know?" "Why, no--what for?" "I don't know. If he'd been here to-night, I'd have asked him. He just walked off, and nobody said anything, for fear of putting their foot in it. I guess there never was a thing of the kind yet, that there wasn't a lot of fighting about. It's bound to be that way, you know. Nobody will be on speaking-terms before it's over." "Have they got someone to take his place?" "I believe Joe McHenry is going to do Matilda, and they're going to leave out Joe's old part--it wasn't much anyway, and somebody or other can take his speeches. Pretty nearly every man in town that can sing or act at all is in it already, you know. Archie says he doesn't know what they'd do, if anyone were to be taken sick." "But why do you suppose Gwynne----?" "Goodness knows! It's a bother, we'd fixed up all the programmes with his name on, and there isn't time to make a whole new lot now. You can't tell anything about it--there's a queer streak in all the Gwynnes, you know." CHAPTER SEVENTEEN