On the rest of the stools, running end to end along the other wall, sat about twenty more or less blooming chaps.
It was evident that something was seriously wrong. None of the girls spoke above a hushed whisper. None of the men spoke above a hushed oath. Now and again two or three sidled out, and if you had followed them you would have found that they went outside to listen hard into the darkness and to swear.
‘Tap, tap, tap.’
The rows moved uneasily, and some of the girls turned pale faces nervously towards the side-door, in the direction of the sound.
‘Tap—tap.’
The tapping came from the kitchen at the rear of the teacher’s residence, and was uncomfortably suggestive of a coffin being made: it was also accompanied by a sickly, indescribable odour—more like that of warm cheap glue than anything else.
In the schoolroom was a painful scene of strained listening. Whenever one of the men returned from outside, or put his head in at the door, all eyes were fastened on him in the flash of a single eye, and then withdrawn hopelessly. At the sound of a horse’s step all eyes and ears were on the door, till some one muttered, ‘It’s only the horses in the paddock.’
Some of the girls’ eyes began to glisten suspiciously, and at last the belle of the party—a great, dark-haired, pink-and-white Blue Mountain girl, who had been sitting for a full minute staring before her, with blue eyes unnaturally bright, suddenly covered her face with her hands, rose, and started blindly from the room, from which she was steered in a hurry by two sympathetic and rather ‘upset’ girl friends, and as she passed out she was heard sobbing hysterically—
‘Oh, I can’t help it! I did want to dance! It’s a sh-shame! I can’t help it! I—I want to dance! I rode twenty miles to dance—and—and I want to dance!’
A tall, strapping young Bushman rose, without disguise, and followed the girl out. The rest began to talk loudly of stock, dogs, and horses, and other Bush things; but above their voices rang out that of the girl from the outside—being man comforted—