“For mercy’s sake, don’t bother me now!” cried John; “I am too dry to talk.” (Turning to a bronze-faced mulatto boy, “Why, you cursed little imp, cannot you bring me the whisky punch I ordered?”) “To dance a cotillon lasting three hours! Those girls’ feet don’t seem ever to get tired.”
“And a German cotillon, too,” rejoined a tall gentlemanly figure, who appeared to be a Southerner; “if it had not been for the mazurka, which some of our ladies still object to, because there is too much whirling and dancing on the heels in it, I should not have had a moment’s rest. I wonder how the women can stand it!”
“And then the gallopade! why, that alone wears out a pair of shoes,” cried the Bostonian; “the mazurka only requires heeling.”
“They ought to make you president of the savings’ bank!” observed the Southerner.
“That is,” said John, “if he understands saving other people’s money as well as his own.”
By this time the waiter returned with the punch, a huge lump of cheese, and a basket of biscuits, which was immediately seized upon and devoured, as if the persons present were the half-starved crew of some American whaler just returned from a three years’ cruise round Cape Horn.
“I say, Jim,” said John, “did you taste the wine?”
“I did,” replied Jim; “but I could not swallow it. It was not worth three dollars a dozen.”
“I believe it was Sicily madeira.”
“Heaven knows what sort of madeira it was; I took to the toddy.