Page:The Semi-detached House.djvu/154

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146
THE SEMI-DETACHED HOUSE.

The children assembled on the bank, and greeted it with spontaneous cheers, and Rose and Janet following to prevent them falling into the river in a mass, were met by the sight of Willis moving majestically and sadly through the mazes of a quadrille. They were speechless with astonishment. If the monument had suddenly made them a low bow, or if the great bell at St. Paul's had made a flippant remark in good English, it would not have seemed more unnatural than Willis dancing with a handsome looking girl, dressed in the smallest of bonnets and the yellowest of gowns.

"Grey gloves too, and no crape on his hat," said Rose, "he must be very near a proposal."

They fetched their mother to see this preternatural sight; and when Willis came to a triumphant termination of the grand rond, and was making a stiff bow to Miss Monteneros, he found himself confronted by his mother and sisters-in-law, and felt that the power of his gloom, the charm of his misery