Page:Comin' Thro' the Rye (1898).djvu/94

86 "Does she not?" I ask eagerly; "that is Dolly, my sister."

"You are not a bit alike!"

"I know we are not," I say, looking at her with pride; "my sisters are all pretty, every one; I am the only unpresentable one out of the whole lot. Now, if you were to see Alice—"

"I have seen her," he says, "she is quite lovely. But you are every bit as good as Dolly, or—nicer."

"Oh, no!" I say, laughing; "you need not bother about saying anything like that to me, please; I am quite used to being plain. Nurse comforts me by saying that the ugliest children sometimes grow into the best-looking folk, but I know better."

"George," says Mrs. Floyd, bearing down upon us with all sails spread, "you promised to help me give the children their tea; are you coming?"

So we go in and eat cake and drink coffee, and by-and-by, having washed our hot faces and hands, and smoothed our tumbled locks, we assemble in a large room, forty souls odd, for the purpose of dancing. The Floyds' governess sits down to the piano; but alas! whether it is the painful consciousness of their extreme neatness, or whether they are really unequal to the duties of "footing" a polka, all the little boys present hang together in groups, and look askance at the rows of shiny-cheeked, smooth-headed dansels, who are waiting to be fetched out.

This uncomfortable state of things having lasted for some time the female wit (as is usual when things are at a dead lock) comes to the rescue, and Madge Weston, a black-browed miss of twelve, rises from her seat and walks across the room to the halting army. "I shall dance with you, Clem," she says decidedly; and, taking the biggest boy by the arm, she leads him away. The spell once broken, each little girl walks boldly up to the boy that is goodliest in her eyes, and bears him off triumphantly, though some of them utter feeble protests, and show a tendency to hang back. And