I labored with Daniel for ten minutes, using every encouragement and argument I could think of, and finally threatened him that I would bring up the whole Rumbullion party, Miss Pilgrim included, telling them that he had invited them to look at his conchological cabinet, unless he instantly shook the ice out of his manner and accompanied me downstairs. The dreadful menace had the desired effect. He knew that I would not scruple to fulfil it; and at the same time that it made him surrender, it also provoked him with me to a degree which gave his eyes and cheeks as fine a glow as I could have wished for the purpose of a favorable impression. The stimulus of wrath was good for him, and there was little tremor in his knees when he descended the stairs. Well-a-day! So Daniel and Billy were rivals!
The latter gentleman met us at the foot of the staircase.
"Oh, there you are, Daniel!" he said cheerily. "I was just going to look after you and Uncle Teddy. We've wanted you for the dances. We've had the lancers twice, and three round dances; and I danced the second lancers with Lottie. Now we're going to play some games—to amuse the children, you know," he added loftily, with the adult gesture of pointing his thumb over his shoulder at the extension room. "Lottie's going to play, too; so will you and Daniel, won't you, uncle? Oh, here comes Lottie now! This is my brother, Miss Pilgrim—let me introduce him to you. I'm sure you'll like him. There's nothing he don't know."
Miss Pilgrim had just come to the newel-post of the staircase and, when she looked into Daniel's face, blushed like the red, red rose, losing her self-possession perceptibly more than Daniel.
The courage of weak warriors and timid gallants mounts as the opposite party's falls, and Daniel made out to say in a firm tone that it was long since he had enjoyed the pleasure of meeting Miss Pilgrim.
"Not since Mrs. Cramcroud's last sociable, I think," replied Miss
Pilgrim, her cheeks and eyes still playing the telltale.
"Oho! so you don't want any introduction!" exclaimed Master Billy. "I didn't know you knew each other, Lottie?"
"I have met Mr. Lovegrove in society. Shall we go and join the plays?"
"To be sure we shall!" cried Billy. "You needn't mind—all the grown people are going, too."
On entering the parlor we found it as he had said. The guests being almost all well acquainted with each other, at the solicitation of jolly little Miss Bloomingal, sister Lu had consented to make a pleasant Christmas kind of time of it, in which everybody was permitted to be young again and romp with the rompiest. We played blindman's buff till we were tired of that—Daniel, to Lu's delight, coming out splendidly as blindman, and evincing such "cheek" in the style he hunted down and caught the ladies as satisfied me that nothing but his eyesight stood in the way of his making an audacious figure in the world. Then a pretty little girl, Tilly Turtelle, who seemed quite a premature flirt, proposed "doorkeeper"—a suggestion accepted with great eclat by all the children, several grown people assenting.