Page:Possession (Roche, February 1923).pdf/119

 bigging had kissed his partner, and she was protesting loudly that she would dance with him no more, the while she still jigged on and courted another kiss. Only Hugh McKay looked glum, standing in a corner, gnawing his knuckle, for Phœbe hung exultantly on the shoulder of a young fisherman whose eyes shone in his tanned face, blue as the winter lake. Derek felt sorry for Hugh and when the waltz was over he went to Phœbe and said sternly:

"You must go and dance with Hugh, Phœbe. He's getting very huffish."

"Huffish, is he? Oh, the very idear! How can he be huffish after the way I bear with him month in and month out? Oh, he's an unnatural lover if ever there was one!"

But she went to him and, though at first he refused her belated compliance, he was before long dancing in sulky submission.

After supper, which was hot and substantial, Hobbs took Miss Carss away, lest the increasing roughness should offend her. He told Derek he was glad to see him mixing with his "help." "I'm a good mixer, myself," he said.

As the evening wore on the room became very hot, the music wilder, the dancers more abandoned to pleasure. The faces of the men grew red, their collars sagged, the eyes of the girls grew languorous, it seemed that their hair must fall down; the rhythmic beat of their feet on the floor, the swaying of their healthy bodies, their clasped, hot hands held them in a spell. Mrs. Machin had gone to bed. An epidemic of kissing broke out. Derek and Edmund slipped quietly into the passage, and went upstairs to the cold little study.

"Have you had enough?" Derek asked.

"I've never spent such a Christmas!" declared Edmund, thumping him joyously on the shoulder. "I've enjoyed every minute of it. There's something about those simple, coun-