The guests were as varied as the wines, though hardly as select.  Mrs. Scully’s exuberant hospitality included, as already intimated, not only her own friends, but those of her fellow-boarders, so that from an early hour the rooms began to fill, and by nine o’clock there was hardly space for the dancers.  Hansoms and growlers rattled up in a continuous stream and discharged their burdens.  There was a carpet down from the kerb to the head of the lodging-house steps, “like r’yalty,” as the cook expressed it, and the greengrocer’s man in the hall looked so pompous and inflated in his gorgeous attire that his own cabbages would hardly have recognized him.  His main defect as a footman was that he was somewhat hard of hearing, and had a marvellous faculty of misinterpreting whatever was said to him, which occasionally led to remarkable results.  Thus, when he announced the sporting Captain Livingstone Tuck under the title of Captain Lives-on-his luck, it was felt that he was rather too near the truth to be pleasant.  Indeed, the company had hardly recovered from the confusion produced by this small incident when the two Bohemians made their appearance.

Mrs. Scully, who was tastefully arrayed in black satin and lace, stood near the door of the drawing-room, and looked very charming and captivating as she fulfilled her duties as hostess.  So thought the major as he approached her and shook her hand, with some well turned compliment upon his lips.

“Let me inthroduce me friend, Herr von Baumser,” he added.

Mrs. Scully smiled upon the German in a way that won his Teutonic heart.  “You will find programmes over there,” she explained.  “I think the first is a round dance.  No, thank you, major; I shall stand out, or there will be no one to receive the people.”  She hurried away to greet a party of new arrivals, while the major and Baumser wandered off in search of partners.

There was no want of spirit or of variety in the dancing at Morrison’s.  From Mr. Snodder, the exciseman, who danced the original old-fashioned trois-temps, to young Bucklebury, of the Bank, who stationed himself immediately underneath the central chandelier, and spun rapidly round with his partner upon his own axis, like a couple of beetles impaled upon a single pin, every possible variation of the art of waltzing was to be observed.  There was Mr. Smith, of the Medical College, rotating round with Miss Clara Timms, their faces wearing that pained and anxious expression which the British countenance naturally assumes when dancing, giving the impression that the legs have suddenly burst forth in a festive mood, and have dragged the rest of the body into it very much against its will.  There was the major too, who had succeeded in obtaining Mrs. Scully as a partner, and was dancing as old soldiers can dance, threading his way through the crowded room with the ease begotten by the experience of a lifetime.  Meanwhile Von Baumser, at the other end, was floundering about with a broad smile upon his face and an elderly lady tucked under his right arm, while he held her disengaged hand straight out at right angles, as if she had been a banjo.  In short, the fun was fast and furious, and waltz followed polka and mazurka followed waltz with a rapidity which weeded out the weaker vessels among the dancers and tested the stamina of the musicians.