humiliations to keep one meek. 

 The conscientious Vicar did not allow his partner to sit down once throughout the entire waltz, and I think the blind musician played at greater length than 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 

 Prev. P 11/151 next