Of all the balls given by the members of the Hit-im and Hold-im shire hunt, none had perhaps excitcd greater interest than the one about to take place, not only on account of its own intrinsic merits as a ball, but because of the many tender emotions waiting for solutions on that eventful evening. Among others it may be mentioned that our fat friend the Woolpack, whose portrait adorns page 241, had confided to Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, who kept a sort of register-office for sighers, his admiration of the fair auburn-haired Flora Yammerton; and Mrs. Rocket having duly communicated the interesting fact to the young lady, intimating, of course, that he would have the usual “ten thousand a year,” Flora had taken counsel with herself whether she had not better secure him, than contend with her elder sister either for Sir Moses or Mr. Pringle, especially as she did not much fancy Sir Moses, and Billy was very wavering in his attentions, sometimes looking extremely sweet at her, sometimes equally so at Clara, and at other times even smiling on that little childish minx Harriet. Indeed Mrs. Rocket Larkspur, in the multiplicity of her meddling, had got a sort of half-admission from that young owl, Rowley Abingdon, that he thought Harriet very pretty, and she felt inclined to fan the flame of that speculation too.
Then Miss Fairey, of Yarrow Court, was coming, and it was reported that Miss de Glancey had applied for a ticket, in order to try and cut her out with the elegant Captain Languisher, of the Royal Hollyhock Hussars. Altogether it was expected to be a capital ball, both for dancers and lookers-on.
People whose being’s end and aim is gaiety, as they call converting night into day, in rolling from party to party, with all the means and appliances of London, can have little idea of the up-hill work it is in the country, getting together the ingredients of a great ball. The writing for rooms, the fighting for rooms—the bespeaking of horses, the not getting horses—the catching the train, the losing the train—above all, the choosing and ordering those tremendous dresses, with the dread of not getting those tremendous dresses, of their being carried by in the train, or not fitting when they come. Nothing but the indomitable love of a ball, as deeply implanted in a woman’s heart as the love of a hunt is in that of a man, can account for the trouble and vexation they undergo.
But if ’tis a toil to the guests, what must it be to the givers, with no friendly Grange or Gunter at hand to supply everything, guests included, if required, at so much per head! Youth, glorious youth, comes to the aid, aud enters upon the labour with all the alacrity that perhaps distinguished their fathers.
Let us now suppose the absorbing evening come; and that all-important element in country festivities, the moon shining with silvery dearness as well on the railway gliders as on the more patient plodders by the road. What a converging there was upon the generally quiet town of Hinton; reminding the older inhabitants of the best days of Lord Martingal and Mr. Customer’s reigns. What a gathering up there was of shining satins and rustling silks and moire antiques, white, pink, blue, yellow, green, to say nothing of clouds of tulle; what a compression of swelling eider-down and watch-spring petticoats; and what a bolt-upright sitting of that happy pride which knows no pain, as party after party took up and proceeded to the scene of hopes and fears at the Fox and Hounds Hotel and Posting House.
The ball-room was formed of the entire suite of first-floor front apartments, which, on ordinary occasions, did duty as private rooms—private, at least, as far as thin deal partitions could make them so—and the supper was laid out in our old acquaintance the club-room, connected by a sort of Isthmus of Suez, with a couple of diminutive steps towards the end to shoot the incautious becomingly, headforemost, into the room.
Carriages set down under the arched doorway, and a little along the passage the Blenheim was converted into a cloak-room for the ladies, where the voluminous dresses were shook out, and the last hurried glances snatched amid anxious groups of jostling arrivals. Gentlemen then emerging from the commercial room rejoined their fair friends in the passage, and were entrusted with fans and flowers while, with both hands, they steered their balloon-like dresses up the red druggetted staircase.
