We go with the crowd. The room is full to overflowing. Babies are deposited on the benches along the wall, dogs look in at the window. The air is heavy with mosquitoes and tobacco-smoke. But joy reigns. Nobody is too old or too obese to dance. Old Mr. Loutit and lame Jimmy Flett each secures a sonsy partner. There are three fiddlers, and these relieve each other in turn, for fiddling, beating time with your moccasin on the earthen floor, and "calling out" is hard work for one man. There are but two kinds of dances,—the Red River jig, and a square dance which probably had for honourable ancestors the lancers on the father's side and a quadrille on the mother's.
Endurance is a sign of merit in the Red River jig. A man or woman steps into the limelight and commences to jig, a dark form in moccasins slips up in front of the dancer, and one jigs the other down, amid plaudits for the survivor and jeers for the quitter.
It is the square dance that interests us, our attention being divided between watching the deft forms in the half light and listening to the caller-off. Louie-the-Moose first officiates. His eyes look dreamy but there is a general's stern tone of command in his words:
"Ladeez, join de lily-white han's,
Gents, your black-and-tan!
Ladeez, bow! Gents, bow-wow!
Swing 'em as hard's ye can.
"Swing your corner Lady,
Then the one you love!
Then your corner Lady,