It vanished quickly, as did an extensive miscellaneous collection of the other good things, and notwithstanding continuous relays from the kitchen, the table presently showed signs of devastation. The bride and bridegroom, Anne, and Sophy, were out of my sight, but directly opposite, with Cousin Kate dividing them, were two young men, one fair, florid, and with curly pate, called Dick, the other dark, with long, straight, black hair, and a most lugubrious countenance, called Bob Link. Yet if that lugubrious countenance had not much signs of mirth in itself, it was the cause of mirth in others, for he never opened his lips but all those within hearing of him laughed. Bob Link was a medical student with Mr. Standish, and, as Cousin David explained, a regular wag.
Tea was a prolonged ceremony, and was only ended by the shrill sound of a violin, when somebody cried, "Come!" and again Cousin David executed his pas de terrier, with me in his hand, down the broad stone passage until we came to the Grange kitchen, which was a vast place with an open raftered roof, now hidden under garlands of Christmas green, and a white flagged floor which was cleared for a dance. It looked so bright and gay! Such a mighty fire of logs roared in the chimney, wide as an ordinary room, with cushioned settles in its arched recess; the great dresser glittered with metal trenchers and tankards, glinting back sparkles of light from the little oil lamps which had been ingeniously mixed amongst the evergreens where they shone like glowworms.
My young toes tingled to begin, and when the fiddles and other instruments of music tuned up in a frolicsome country dance, the swains began to pick out favourite partners. The bride and bridegroom stood top couple, and I don't know who came next, for while I was hoping and fearing whether anybody would ask me, Cousin David arrived and spun me up to the end of a long rank of girls. The fiddles started, and Sophy shrieked out franticly, "Now, Poppy, Poppy, be ready! It's hands across and back again, down the middle and up again—Cousin Mary and David, and you and George Standish!" and then away we went!
We shall never dance a country dance like that again! Cousin David emulated his royal Hebrew namesake, and I should have thought him a delightful partner if he would not quite so often have made me do my steps on nothing. That was glorious exercise for a frosty winter's evening, and made all our cheeks rosy and all our eyes bright.
When that set was finished, curly Mr. Dick came and asked me to dance the next with him, which I did, and then to the tune of "Merrily danced the Quaker's wife, and merrily danced the Quaker," Bob Link was my partner. That medical youth had missed his vocation in not going as clown to a circus, for the grotesquerie of his actions, and the inimitable solemnity of his visage, kept everybody in roars of laughter all through his performance, and we never had to meet and take hold of hands that he did not address me with some absurd speech that made me peal out just like the rest. I never sat out once. It was great fun. We had the "Lancers," in which everybody was perfect, and common quadrilles, and
