"At last," thought Considine, "I shall catch Jordan alone, and get over that talk I have been so long wanting to have with him;" and he pressed his breast pocket to make sure of the documents he had carried about so long, in hopes of catching the busy man in a moment of leisure. Jordan noticed the movement, and was defensively on the alert at once.
"Considine, old fellow! Not dancing?"
"My dancing days are over. But I say, Jordan, I wish you would give me just a few minutes quiet----"
"Over? What an idea! The springiest man of our set! Without the first sign of either gout or rheumatism! And you would give up dancing, and ticket yourself a fogy before your time? No! no! Couldn't think of it. Yonder are a score of ladies, all your friends, sitting down after supper, and waiting to be asked to dance. Every woman likes to be danced with after supper, if only to show the world that men don't look upon her as too old. Come along! Let me find you a partner, though you know every one here."
"But I never valse."
"It is Lancers this time. I am going to dance myself. Mrs. Martindale. A very old friend. Knew her before either of us were married. We always have a dance when we meet. Come along!--Miss Stanley! Here is a gentleman so desirous of dancing with you, and too modest to ask. Pray take pity on him."
Miss Matilda looked up in a little surprise, but smiled on seeing Considine.
"You are a sad wag, Mr. Jordan. It seems scarcely fair that we grown-up people should crowd out the young ones. However, as Mr. Considine is so kind----" and she rose, and taking his arm they joined the dancers.
Age is not a question to be decided by almanacs or the comparison of dates. How many generations of roses have bloomed and disappeared since the aloe was sown, a hundred years ago, which now is only opening its flower. The willow has fallen into battered decrepitude, while the oak, its slow-growing contemporary hard by, has barely reached his prime. Life should not be measured by the tale of years, but by itself--by the measure of oil unburnt, which remains within the lamp. There be some, who, making bonfire of their store--lighting the candle at both ends in the gusty weather--have consumed it mostly ere the seventh lustrum has run out, and go darkling thenceforth with nothing but a smoky wick and a guttering remnant; and there are others who have dwelt where the winds were still, and have shaded their lamps and trimmed them, like prudent virgins, whose light grows clearer as they pass along, and accompanies them with a tranquil radiance far down into the valley where the shadows are, and the inevitable end. It is the excitements and the cares which devour our strength, the unsatisfied greeds which eat inward, the ill-regulated pleasures which exhaust. Work never killed a man; or, if it did, he was a weakling, or he had mistaken his trade.
"Only look!" cried Amelia Jordan, touching her neighbour, Martha Herkimer, with her fan, "I think I may flatter myself that my juvenile party is a success, when the contagious gaiety has caught even that superannuated couple. I should feel flattered, but I confess I am not fond of frisky grey beards. There is a time for everything, even for sitting still and watching the young ones. I wonder at Considine; and really Matilda might have had more sense than yield to his absurdity."