Only the Northerners enjoyed Halliday. The Suez men turned away in disdain.
The music struck a quadrille, sweetly whining and hooting twice over before starting into doubtful history,
"In eighteen hundred and sixty-one—to the war! to the war!"
The dance springs out! Gray jackets and white trousers; tarlatan, flowers, and fans; here and there a touch of powder or rouge; some black broadcloth and much wrinkled doeskin. Jeff-Jack and Fannie move hand in hand, and despite the bassoon's contemptuous "pooh! pooh! poo-poo-pooh!" the fiddles declare, with petulant vehemence, that—
"In eighteen-hundred-and-sixty-one, the Yankees they the war begun, but we'll all! get! blind! drunk! when Johnnie comes marching home."
"You see we play the national—oh! no, I believe that's not one—but we do play them!" said a native.
John didn't march home, although when some one wanted a window open which had been decorated to stay shut, neither he nor his committee could be found. He came in, warm and anxious, just in time to claim Fannie for their schottische. At ten they walked out on the veranda and took seats at its dark end. She was radiant, and without a sign of the mild dismay that was in her bosom. When she said, "Now, tell me, John, why you're so sad," there was no way for him to see that she was secretly charging herself not to lie and not to cry.
"Miss Fannie," he replied, "you're breaking my heart."
"Aw, now, John, are you going to spoil our friendship this way?"
"Friendship!—Oh, Fannie!"