"I am sure your little dance will be delightful."
"I hope it will not be dull. I am straining every nerve to make it a success. I shall have the house full of nice young people, and I shall have decent music. Only four men, but they will be very good men, and four will make quite enough noise in my poor little rooms."
Mrs. Mornington's "poor little rooms" included a drawing-room thirty feet long, opening into a spacious conservatory. There was a wide bay at the end of the room which would accommodate the grand piano and the four musicians. Allan had to make a tour of inspection with the mistress of the house before he left, and to express his approval of her arrangements.
"There will be a comfortable old-fashioned sit-down supper," she said finally. "I have asked a good many middle-aged people, and there will be nothing for them to do but eat."
CHAPTER VI.
LIKE THE MOTH TO THE FLAME.
A small dance in a bright airy country house on a balmy summer evening is about as pleasant a form of entertainment as can be offered to the youthful mind not satiated by metropolitan entertainments, by balls in Park Lane, where the flowers alone cost the price of an elderly spinster's annuity, Bachelors' balls, and Guards' balls, American balls in Carlton Gardens, patrician balls in grand old London houses, built in the days when rank was as much apart from the herd and the newly rich as royalty; when rank and royalty moved hand-in-hand on a plateau of privilege and splendour as high above the commonality as Madrid is above the sea.
Matcham, which gave itself the airs common to all village communities, pretended to make very light of Mrs. Mornington's dance; a summer dance, when everybody worth meeting was, or ought to be, in London. Happily for Mrs. Mornington, the inhabitants of Matcham were a stay-at-home race—who had neither money nor enterprise for much gadding. To go to Swanage or Budleigh Salterton for a month or so while the leaves were falling was the boldest flight that Matcham people cared about.
There was always so much to do at home—golf, tennis, shooting, hunting, falconry, fishing for the enthusiasts of rod and line, and one's garden and stable all the year round, needing the eye of master and mistress. Except for the absence of the great shipbuilder's family, at Hillerby Height, three miles on the other side of Salisbury, the circle of Matcham society was complete, and the answers to Mrs. Mornington's cards were all acceptances.
Allan went cheerfully enough to the party, but he did not go very early, and he had something of the feeling which most young men entertain, or affect, about dances, the feeling that he was sacrificing himself at the shrine of friendship. He danced well, and he did not dislike dancing—liked it, indeed, when blest with a good partner; but it is not often that a young man can escape the chances of partners that are not altogether good, and Allan felt very doubtful as to the dancing capacities of Matcham. Those healthy, out-of-door young women, who went to about half a dozen dances in a year, would hardly waltz well enough to make waltzing anything but toil and weariness.