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“D’yuh want to work?” she enquired, with a much more intimate address than the occasion demanded.

“That’s what I came up here to avoid,” Mauney laughed as he looked down into her sharp, black eyes.

“But you’d help me, wouldn’t you?” she pouted. “Go fetch some o’ them benches, like a good boy.”

After he had obeyed, and while the crowd of people were slowly moving back toward the kitchen, drawn by the lure of the violin music, she came up with him again, fanning her flushed face with her handkerchief. She was not more than twenty and wore a pleated, white silk gown that gave attractive exposure of her arms and bosom, smooth and firm like yellowed ivory, and contrasted markedly with her jet-black hair, decorated by a comb of brilliants.

“Well,” she said, tilting her head sidewise, and according him an angled glance, “I s’pose you’re goin’ to give me yer first dance, ain’t yuh, Maun?”

A subtle compliment was conveyed in this unconventional invitation, and Mauney, surprised at his own susceptibility, at once agreed. Together they strolled toward the kitchen verandah where already a crowd was assembled. The windows and doors of the kitchen were all removed, and Mauney, peering above the mass of eager heads, saw a broad strip of yellow floor, reflecting the light of several oil-lamps set in wall brackets. As yet no dancing had begun, but Alexander Dent, a corpulent man of sixty with a heavy, pasty face, was perched on top of the kitchen stove, where, seated on a chair, his body swung to the rhythm of his bow.