“You were caught and carried away captive by a gay lady! And what could a gentleman do?” she asked, smiling.
“Will you dance this set with me, then, darling child?” he repeated.
“With real pleasure, Roland,” she answered, giving him her hand.
And he led her out.
In the sets that were now forming, the Grandiere girls, as well as all the other children, danced, and all the grown women sat down, except Miss Sibby, who conscripted Mr. Force to dance with her.
Wynnette, as a gentleman, led out the youngest Miss Grandiere. And, the two sets being complete, the music struck up, the dancing commenced,
“And all went merry as a marriage bell.”
The dancing concluded with the rollicking merry-go-round, called, in these days, the “Virginia Reel,” but in the olden times known as “Sir Roger de Coverly,” in which all hands—men, women and children, young and old—joined heartily, and none more heartily than Miss Sibby.
“Enjoy yourself as long as you can, sez I!” she hastily whispered into the ear of Le, as he whirled her around in the giddy maelstrom of that mad dance.
At ten o’clock the fiddlers had rest to their elbows and the banjo players to their hands, when they were marched off to the kitchen, to partake of good Christmas cheer.