"Now!" said Maida to Gilbert. "Are there enough people for your idea of being sociable, now? You are always the same old man, as fond of company as ever. Do you remember the country-dances and cotillions at Deacon Benson's? How we used to keep it up! And the walking home afterwards in the early morning--with the grass running dew, and taking the starch out of my flounces! But you don't remember that, I guess. Ah, those parties! They were just too sweet to last. I have never been at any, since, I cared so much for.... Do you know the cotillion now as well as you used to? My! how you did know it! We girls were always wishing to have you call the figures. Nobody could ever guess what you were going to make us do next. It kept up the interest, and was real exciting. When we'd expect to have 'ladies' chain,' it would be 'set to partners,' or 'ladies in the centre,' or 'first gentleman to the right,' or something quite unexpected. They don't dance cotillions here. I guess it's because they don't know how; though they pretend it's because they've gone out, and the upper circles don't dance them. It's all round-dancing here, except when it's lancers; and then they don't call the figures, so I never know what to do next." "Well, this is a round-dance. Come! No use sitting here the whole night." "I'll try," said Maida, delighted to be taken out, but with a misgiving. She did not dance often, and she felt doubtful whether she would acquit herself to the satisfaction of her hero. "Not too fast, please--not any faster than you can help. The waltz is apt to make me giddy," she ejaculated as they started off; but then she was in rapture, and said nothing more. Were not his arms around her? and was it not he whom she held and clung to as the room began to swim, and her sense of terra firma to grow vague and indistinct? "Don't hang on quite so altogetherly, Maida. And if you could keep your feet to the ground, it would _look_ better, you know. You're more hefty, as we used to say, than when you were a baby," Gilbert observed, as they swung and revolved laboriously round the room; but at length he got out of breath, and they had to stop. "Oh!" sighed Maida, with closed eyes, clinging to her partner for support because she was giddy, and also, perhaps, because she liked to do it. "I am quite run out! But it was lovely." "Come and sit down then, and rest," said the matter-of-fact Gilbert, "and get back your breath;" which was not just the form of answer which Maida had looked for. However, the music was ending and it could not be helped.