“Well,” said English Tommy, confidentially, “ye see, I’m trying to bump Katie! That’s Katie”—pointing to a fat girl in blue. “She’s my cousin, and we’re for ever fighting.”
There seemed at the time nothing very incongruous about this explanation. There was a hilarious informality about the whole entertainment that made it unlike any I had ever been at before. Every one talked and laughed at the full pitch of their lungs. An atmosphere of utmost intimacy pervaded the assemblage, and Christian names and strange nicknames were bandied freely about among the groups in the corners. The music was supplied by volunteers from the ranks of the chaperons, at the end of each dance the musician receiving a round of applause, varying in volume according to the energy and power of endurance displayed. The varieties of style and time thus attained were almost unimaginable, and were only equalled by the corresponding vagaries of the dancers, whose trampings and shufflings and runnings were to me as amazing as they were unexpected.
I could see Madam O’Neill sitting in state at the end of the room, surrounded by lesser matrons, her boredom only alleviated by the acute disfavour with which she viewed the revels.
“Do you know where Connie is, my dear?” she said, with pale asperity, as I came up to her after a dance. “I have not seen her for the last four dances.”
I was well aware that Connie and Captain Forster had long since established themselves in the conservatory, but Madam O’Neill was too full of her grievance to give me time to reply.
“I am perfectly horrified at what you must think of all this,” she went on. “Even here I never saw such a noisy, romping set. You know, we are quite in the backwoods here—all the nice people live at the other end of the county—and you mustn’t take these as specimens of Irish society.”
I was spared the necessity of replying by the appearance of Nugent.
“Nugent, where is Connie?” demanded the Madam again. “It is too bad of her to make herself so remarkable in a place like this.”
“Oh, she’s all right; she’s with Forster somewhere,” he answered, with the incaution of total indifference. “Here’s your host coming to take you in to supper, and I advise you to avoid the sherry. This is our dance, No. 11,” he said to me. “We had better not lose any more of it.”
END OF VOL. I.