Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/624

 CHILDREN Fio. 2, The butterfly figure. This begins by the girls loosing the mechanical butterflies The Chariot-driving Figure is a good one to begin with. The two leaders, wearing golden fillets on their heads, enter the ring, each driving a prancing steed, which curvets to the music of a lively galop. The boy leader drives a little girl between bell-bedecked ribbon reins, and the girl leader a small boy. They drive round the ring, touching boys and girls with their ribbon-lashed whips, and each boy or girl so touched leaves his or her place and joins the driven team, until the boy is driving half a dozen girls and the girl half a dozen boys. The two teams are now driven triumphantly round the room side by side, and with a sudden jerk of the reins both teams come to a standstill, and, casting aside the intervening ribbons, each boy dances off with the little girl he finds beside him. After each set figure comes a presentation of favours to every one present, so that all may join in the dance. The leaders come in bearing bunches of airballs of every imaginable hue. These they proceed swiftly to distribute. Then the boys and girls run about the room matching airballs and so choosing partners. Those whose airballs match in colour waltz away together with the balls floating by strings above their heads as they dance. A Butterfly Chase The Butterfly Figure may follow. Six or eight girls are called out to stand in a row at one end of the ballroom, each one armed with a previously well-wound-up little Japan- ese paper butterfly, the elastic secured by a pin. Each butterfly is numbered, and the Fig. 3. The same figure, showing the boys capturing the butterfli Fig. 4. The boy who succeeds in capturing the bait receives the girl angler as his partner girls wear corresponding numbers pinned to their frocks. A corresponding number of boys stand in a row at the other end of the room, and as the music strikes up the pins which hold the butterflies are withdrawn, and away they flutter high up to the ceiling and then slowly down again, to be captured eagerly by the boys, who run forward to claim the owners of the butterflies as their partners for the next dance. A Strawberry Bait A distribution of zoological favours follows — ^the animals from a huge Noah's Ark, or penny toy animals, further decked by gay bows of ribbon and a safety-pin, by which they can be fastened to the wearers' jackets and frocks — and then comes the Fishing-rod and Strawberry Figure.