“Of course,” Andy was obliged to respond.
So the company were placed in two long lines by the omniscient Mr. Kirke, and the leaden dullness was lifting—lifting. With the first beginning of the tune an old spirit of merry-making that had been hiding in the bushes round Millsby Common for fifty years or more crept forth, heard the scraping of the fiddle, began to lose the stiffness in his joints before he reached the open windows, and was all a-caper, jocund, jovial, glorious, by the time Mrs. Atterton had tripped down the middle with the queer, surprising lightness of fat people, crossed hands with Mr. Thorpe, and returned panting and laughing to her place.
Andy was the next to go—clerical coat-tails flying, curls rising in spite of half a bottle of brilliantine, the Spirit of Ancient Revelry skipping behind him, pricking his cheeks, whispering in his ear, making him forget everything but that life was most jolly, and he was off across a shining space to clasp hands with Elizabeth.
Mr. Atterton chuckled, stamped to keep time with the rest, perceived Mrs. Jebb drooping in a corner, and led her triumphantly forth. It was a sight that remained long in the memory of Millsby parish, to see Mr. Atterton’s trim little figure bobbing up and down gaily in his place, while his grey hair hung in damp strands over his forehead, and he responded to the “eye-cornering” of Mrs. Jebb with reckless gallantry.
Dick Stamford had a tendency to put his arm round any pretty girl that came his way, pleading ignorance of the proper person and moment in a country dance, and Mrs. Stamford jogged enduringly forward to meet wiry little Mr. Will Werrit, making the best of it because she was above all things anxious to conciliate Mr. Atterton. She would have jogged toward a charge of light cavalry with the same stoic calmness if she could have saved her son from any danger by so doing. But the Spirit of Ancient Revelry never came near her. He knew quite well that she thought him an absolute and incomprehensible fool.
The schoolmaster hovered round, pulling, pushing, commanding, advising—miraculously at the bottom when he had been at the top a second before—and at last he flung up his arms distractedly—“Ladies! Ladies! You don’t want to waddle, you want to willow!”
The musicians stopped; with the last wail of the fiddle the Spirit of Ancient Revelry fled through the window and, creeping ever more slowly, lay down to sleep again in the bushes at the edge of the green; people remembered that they were enlightened products of the twentieth century, with a superior education and a purpose in life, and a chance to be as good as anybody if they didn’t give themselves away.
“To willow—that’s a new verb! How clever of Mr. Kirke, and how appropriate to the present style of dress,” said Mrs. Atterton artificially, putting up her eyeglass.
She had to do something to obliterate the fact that her toupee was over one eye, and that she had, for a quarter of an hour, totally forgotten that she possessed a back.
“This kind of thing suits neither you nor me, Mr. Deane,” said the churchwarden to Andy behind his hand; “but, of course, we didn’t like to disoblige Mr. Atterton.”