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 Nobody was offended by the crassness of Jabez' exhortation. It was what they had all been waiting for. This crude joviality and the smell of corn whiskey that was beginning to pervade the atmosphere soon cured the young fellows of their bashfulness, and there was much pulling and pushing of the girls from their seats, which they pretended to wish to retain.

Jabez had stationed himself in a corner and was tuning his fiddle.

"Naow then, all aboard! Form a line daown the middle; a lady an' a gent, a lady an' a gent. Gents to the right, ladies to the lef'. Swing yer partners."

He broke into the tune of one of the square dances familiar in that neighborhood, and the feet of the young men and girls followed him. Awkwardly and haltingly enough they stepped the first figure. The girls, with their angularities sticking out of their skimpy, ill-fitting dresses, moved at first as though from the pulling of wires. The young men slumped and floundered, lost their partners and got tangled up in the chain of dancers and had to be untangled again. As they warmed to the music, however, the feet lightened, the arms limbered, and self-consciousness was forgotten.

The men about the stove kept the fire well stoked and the room grew hotter and hotter, especially to the dancers. Dance followed upon dance. Tobacco smoke and the fumes of corn whiskey filled the stale air. The cheeks of every one were blazing from the heat and closeness. The children in the chairs were all asleep, leaning against their mothers. The older men in the corner by the stove watched the dancers and talked and spat tobacco juice into the wood box. They spat so much tobacco juice that the wood was covered with it. Fortunately it was the spitters who had the job of putting the wood into the stove, so it was their own affair. For the dancing girls in their slippers and light dresses, their feet and hearts beating time to the music, the spit encrusted wood box did not exist. With the beautiful ability of youth to ignore the ugly and sordid, however near at hand, they danced and laughed