Vesper sat down beside her, and took the slightly dubious Narcisse on his knee, holding him closely when an expression of fear flitted over his delicate features, and encouraging him to sit upright when at last he became more bold.
"Another turn," shouted Agapit, when the music ceased, and they were again stationary. The whistle blew, and they all set out again; but no one wished to attempt a third round, and, giddily stumbling over each other, they dismounted and with laughing remarks wandered to another part of the grounds, where dancing was going on in two spruce arbors.
"It is necessary for all to join," he proclaimed, at the top of his voice, but his best persuasions failed to induce either Rose or Vesper to step into the arbors, where two young Acadiens sat perched up in two corners, and gleefully tuned their fiddles.
"She will not dance, because she wishes to make herself singular," reflected Mrs. Nimmo, bitterly, and Vesper, who felt the unspoken thought as keenly as if it had been uttered, moved a step nearer Rose, who modestly stood apart from them.
Agapit flung down his money,—ten cents apiece for each dance,—and, ordering his associates to choose their partners, signed to the fiddlers to begin.
Mrs. Nimmo forgot Rose for a time, as she watched the dancers. The girls were shy and demure; the young men danced lustily, and with great spirit, emphasizing the first note of each bar by a stamp on the floor, and beating a kind of tattoo with one foot, when not taking part in the quadrille.
"Do you have only square dances?" she asked Madame Pitre, when a second and a third quadrille were succeeded by a fourth.
"Yes," said the Acadienne, gravely. "There is no sin in a quadrille. There is in a waltz."
"Come seek the lunch-tables," said Agapit, presently bursting out on them, and mopping his perspiring face with his handkerchief. "Most ambrosial dainties are known to the cooks of this parish."