The two lay smoking on their backs on a fresh and springy bed of balsam boughs, a fragrant mattress skilfully thatched by Ed, their boots off before the warm blaze, while they talked on of many things—among them two dances over in New Russia Valley that Ed was sorry Joe had not been up to go to.
The dance Ed recounted “over to Jedwins’ folks Christmas night” was a great success. More than a dozen sleighs had brought the crowd. The Williams boys fiddled; the coonskin coats were piled as high as the ceiling. They had moved out the stove in the square kitchen of the log cabin, and had danced until broad daylight.
As Ed continued his narrative, Joe could almost hear the tramping, swishing feet, for he had gone to many of these dances; hear the laughter and the rough jokes; could see a score of rosy-cheeked, healthy girls sitting in the room off the kitchen, and being beckoned to by their partners to dance; and the jigs they played, swift jigs to stir the blood—“The Pride of Michigan” and the “Cat in the Cabbage” scraped out with a will, with a speed and a rhythm that is characteristic of these backwoods fiddlers; and above the music the shouts: “Alley mand left! Alley mand right! Dos a dos! First lady in the centre, and all hands around and swing your own!”
They pounded the floor; often they broke it in places, and in every hip pocket was a flask.
“Let’s have a song, Ed,” pleaded Joe, kicking up the fire into a shower of sparks, and returning to the fragrant bed of balsams, and though Ed tried to beg off, Joe insisted.
Finally Ed cleared his throat and began in a sing-song drone:
“Willy Jones—hez gone an’—’listed.
Willy to—the war hez gone.
He left his little wife, all to hum,
All to hum—to grief and mourn.”