usual. I began to wonder if her partner regarded my excellent Palestrina as a sort of Sandow exerciser, and whether he was trying to get some healthy gymnastics, if not amusement, out of their dance together.

"There!" he said at last, placing her on a chair beside me as a fulfilled duty; and feeling that she was expected to say "Thank you," Palestrina meekly said it.

"I have only danced once in the last twenty years," said the Vicar, "and that was with some choir boys." And the next moment the blind man began to play again, and he was footing it with conscientious energy with Miss Lydia Blind.

Young ladies who had sat long with their empty programmes in their hands now began to dance with each other with an air of overdone merriment, protesting that they did not know how to act gentleman, but declaring with emphasis that it was just as amusing to dance with a girl-friend as with a man.

The music, as usual, failed before the end of each figure of the dance, and the curate, who wore a pair of very smart shoe-buckles, remarked to me that the lancers was a dance that created much diversion, and I replied that they were too amusing for anything.

The Jamiesons' youngest brother, who is in a shipping-office in London, had come down to Stowel especially for this occasion. Once, some years ago, Kennie, as he is called, made a voyage in one of the shipping company's large steamers to South America. He landed at Buenos Ayres armed to the teeth, and walked about the pavement of that highly-civilized town, with its wooden pavements and plate-glass shop windows, in a sombrero and poncho, and with terrible weapons stuck in his belt. At the end of a week he returned in the same ship in which he had made the outward voyage, and since then he has had tales to tell of those wild regions with which any of the stories in the Boys' Own Paper are tame in comparison. In his dress and general appearance he even now suggests a pirate king. His tales of adventure are always accompanied by explanatory gestures and demonstrations, and it is not unusual to see Kennie stand up in the midst of an admiring circle of friends and make some fierce sabre-cuts in the air. He was dressed with a red cummerbund round his waist, and he drew attention to it by an apology to every one of his partners for having it on. "One gets into the habit of dressing like this out there," he said in a tone of excuse. The Pirate Boy was in great demand at the dance.

Pretty Mrs. Fielden, who had driven over from Stanby, beautifully dressed as usual, and slightly amused, ordered her carriage early, and had merely come to oblige those quaint old dears, the Miss Traceys.

Even at the house-warming Mrs. Fielden would have considered it quite impossible to sit out a dance. She brought an elderly Colonel with her, and she conducted him into a corner behind The Palm, and talked to him there till it was her turn to dance with the Vicar. Had it not been Mrs. Fielden, whose position placed her above criticism, the breath of envy might have whispered that it was hardly fair that one couple should occupy the favourite sitting-out place—two drawing-room chairs beneath The Palm—to the exclusion of others. But Mrs. Fielden being whom she was, the young ladies of Stowel were content to pass and repass the coveted chairs and to whisper admiringly, "How exquisite she is looking to-night!"

"Is there anything of me left?" she said to me, looking cool and unruffled when her dance with the Vicar was over. She had only made one short turn of the room with him, and her beautiful dress and her hair were quite undisturbed.

"You haven't danced half so conscientiously as his other partners have," I said.

"I wanted to talk about the parish," said Mrs. Fielden, "so I stopped. I think I should like to go and get cool somewhere."

"I will take you to sit under The Palm again, as Colonel Jardine did," I replied, "and you shall laugh at all the broad backs and flat feet of our country neighbours, and hear everybody say as they pass how beautiful you are."

Mrs. Fielden turned her head towards me as if to speak, and I had a sudden vivid conviction that she would have told me I was rude had I not been a cripple with one leg.

We sat under The Palm. Mrs. Fielden never rushes into a conversation. Presently she said,—

"Why do you come to this sort of thing? It can't amuse you."

"You told me the other day," I said, "that I ought to cultivate a small mind and small interests."

"Did I?" said Mrs. Fielden lightly. "If I think one thing one day, I generally think quite differently a day or two after. To-night, for instance, I think it is a mistake for you to lean against the Miss Traceys' new blue walls and watch us dance."

"I'm not sure that it isn't better than sitting at home and reading how well my old regiment is doing in South Africa. Besides, you know, I am writing a diary."

"Are you?" said Mrs. Fielden.

"You advised it," I said.

"Did I?"

When Mrs. Fielden is provoking she always looks ten times prettier than she does at other times.

"A good many people in this little place," I said, "have made up their minds to 'do the work that's nearest' and to help 'a lame dog over stiles.' I think I should be rather a brute if I didn't respond to their good intentions."

"I don't think they need invent stiles, though!" said Mrs. Fielden quickly; "wood-carving, and beating brass, and playing the zither——"

"I do not play the zither," I said.

"—are not stiles. They are making a sort of obstacle race of your life."

"Since I have begun to write the diary," I said, "I've been able to excuse myself attempting these things, even when tools are kindly brought to me. And, so far, no one has so absolutely forgotten that there is a lingering spark of manhood in me as to suggest that I should crochet or do cross-stitch."

"You know I am going to help to write the diary," said Mrs. Fielden, "only I'm afraid I shall have to go to all their tea-parties, shan't I, to get copy?"

"You will certainly have to go," I said.

"I'm dreadfully bored to-night; aren't you?" she said confidentially, and in a certain radiant fashion as distant as the Poles from boredom. "No one can really enjoy this sort of thing, do you think? It's like being poor, or anything disagreeable of that sort. People think they ought to pretend to like it, but they don't."

"I wish I could entertain you better," I said sulkily; "but I'm afraid I never was the least bit amusing."

Mrs. Fielden relapsed into one of her odd little silences, and I determined I would not ask her what she was thinking about.

Presently Colonel Jardine joined us, and she said to him: "Please see if you can get my carriage; it must be five o'clock in the morning at least." And the next moment I was made to feel the egotism of imagining I had been punished, when she bade me a charming "good-night." She smiled congratulations on her hostesses on the success of the party, and pleaded the long drive to Stanby as an excuse for leaving early. The Colonel wrapped her in a long, beautiful cloak of some pale coloured velvet and fur—a sumptuous garment at which young ladies in shawls looked admiringly—and Mrs. Fielden slipped it on negligently, and got into her brougham.

"Oh, how tired I am!" she said.

"It was pretty deadly," said the Colonel. "Did you taste the claret-cup?" he added, making a grimace in the dark.

"Oh, I found it excellent," said Mrs. Fielden quickly.

Margaret Jamieson now took her place at the piano, to enable the blind man to go and have some supper; but, having had it, he slept so peacefully that no one could bear to disturb him, so between them the young ladies shared his duties till the close of the evening.

Palestrina had suggested, as a little occupation for me, that I should write out programmes for the dance, and I had done so. Surely programmes were never so little needed before! Every grown man had left the assembly long before twelve