“This is very slow work, sir, I think,” observed Dicky to his superior, with whom, bye-the-bye, he felt himself in a ballroom on the most perfect equality. “I vote we shove forward, and look out for partners. There are lots of pretty girls, and I flatter myself that if they were asked they would prefer us blue-jackets to the red-coats.”
“As to that I am not quite certain,” answered the lieutenant. “You see these soldier officers out here, at all events, are generally matrimonially inclined, while such would be a very inconvenient inclination for us to indulge in; and so not from superior merit but from the force of circumstances the soldiers are likely to carry the day.”
“That argument of yours is irresistible, but still I don’t see that it should make us give up our chance of a dance,” answered Glover, pushing a little more forward.
Like riflemen they advanced, skirmishing, one supporting the other. Dicky, however, was the most adventurous; without him, probably, Sims would have remained in the background. Sims had some modesty. Glover had the allowance with which, for wise ends, midshipmen are usually gifted.
“There’s a pretty girl! she hasn’t footed it for a long time; there’s nothing like trying it. I’ll go and ask her,” exclaimed Dicky, as if suddenly seized with an irresistible impulse; and before Sims could make any remark he had crossed the intervening space to where the lady at whom he had pointed was sitting, and was bowing and scraping, and smiling with the greatest self-confidence.
The young lady looked rather astonished, and not over well pleased, but this did not in any way abash Mr Glover. While he with praiseworthy perseverance was still scraping away, requesting the hand of the lady for a cotillion, a minuette, or a country-dance, a gentleman came up and spoke to her. Glover looked at her earnestly, and spoke a few words; she put out her hand, he took it, and wrung it till she almost cried out.
“Cousin Susan!” he exclaimed. “Well, I didn’t think it was you, and yet I ought to have known you among a thousand. But you know you were but a little girl when we last met, and now you are grown up and married. Well—but I’m so very glad!—how jolly! I didn’t expect to enjoy this ball; but now I shall like it very much.”
Thus Glover rattled on, and to the surprise of Morton and Sims, and his other shipmates, who had not overheard the conversation, was seen standing up to dance with an air of conscious superiority and perfect self-satisfaction. Sims was rather jealous. Morton was highly amused. Glover flew up and down the room, enjoying the dance to the full. What cared he for the heat. What mattered to him that he trod on the toes of innumerable rajahs and nabobs, who would gladly have stuck their jewel-hilted daggers into him, or given him an embrace with a tiger’s claw; an instrument worthy of Asiatic invention. His cousin, however, had soon introduced Glover to a more active partner, and so engrossed was he at first that he quite forgot to come back to his friends.
While Morton was watching the dancers an officer with a young lady stood up near him to join them. His eye was attracted to her countenance, and he was struck by its excessively pleasing expression. He looked and looked again: he thought her exquisitely beautiful, and while he looked he could not help half fancying that he had seen that countenance before. Still where it had been he could not discover; he had seen so few ladies during his sea-life that he was convinced he should, before long, remember. Yet what puzzled him was, that he felt so very familiar with the countenance. Eyes have a remarkable sympathy for each other; after a time the lady knew that she was observed—not with idle, careless admiration, but especially noticed. She looked up for a moment and observed a countenance of manly beauty and intelligence not easily forgotten. There were none in that vast assemblage to be compared to it, she thought, and yet she tried not to allow herself to dwell on the thought; her partner carried her off in the rapid dance.
Morton stood watching her with greater interest than he would have allowed even to himself.