Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 3.djvu/188

 Such dashing little beaux and belles as did arrive, dressed in the most astonishing style,—the ladies with bits of bouquets and fans, satin slippers, and trailing skirts. The gentlemen had stiff collars, gay ties, wee boots and gloves, and twirled their eyeglasses as if they had been going to parties all their lives. Every one simpered and chatted, laughed and flirted, looked at each other's clothes, and whispered gossip round the room. Then a band of moss people, led by the green huntsman's horn, struck up the blithest dancing tune ever heard, and the little company began to spin round in couples like a party of teetotums. It was not the airy, graceful gambols Marnie had admired in her fairy-land, but it was the fashionable step, and therefore must be elegant. There seemed to be a good deal of romping, and the gentlemen twisted the ladies about till they looked quite flushed.

They kept up the dancing as hard as they could till supper-time, when every one ate as if exhausted. Where the supper came from, Marnie didn't know, but there it was,—ice, salad, cake, coffee, oysters, and wine, all complete, and the company made themselves uncomfortable eating all sorts of stuff at