To give brilliancy to the gay scene, no doubt!—­No, my clear!  Society is inspecting you, and it finds undisguised surfaces and strong lights a convenience in the process.  The dance answers the purpose of the revolving pedestal upon which the “White Captive” turns, to show us the soft, kneaded marble, which looks as if it had never been hard, in all its manifold aspects of living loveliness.  No mercy for you, my love!  Justice, strict justice, you shall certainly have,—­neither more nor less.  For, look you, there are dozens, scores, hundreds, with whom you must be weighed in the balance; and you have got to learn that the “struggle for life” Mr. Charles Darwin talks about reaches to vertebrates clad in crinoline, as well as to mollusks in shells, or articulates in jointed scales, or anything that fights for breathing-room and food and love in any coat of fur or feather!  Happy they who can flash defiance from bright eyes and snowy shoulders back into the pendants of the insolent lustres!

—­Miss Mahala Crane did not have these reflections; and no young girl ever did, or ever will, thank Heaven!  Her keen eyes sparkled under her plainly parted hair and the green de-laine moulded itself in those unmistakable lines of natural symmetry in which Nature indulges a small shopkeeper’s daughter occasionally as well as a wholesale dealer’s young ladies.  She would have liked a new dress as much as any other girl, but she meant to go and have a good time at any rate.

The guests were now arriving in the drawing-room pretty fast, and the Colonel’s hand began to burn a good deal with the sharp squeezes which many of the visitors gave it.  Conversation, which had begun like a summer-shower, in scattering drops, was fast becoming continuous, and occasionally rising into gusty swells, with now and then a broad-chested laugh from some Captain or Major or other military personage,—­for it may be noted that all large and loud men in the unpaved districts bear military titles.

Deacon Soper came up presently, and entered into conversation with Colonel Sprowle.

“I hope to see our pastor present this evenin’,” said the Deacon.

“I don’t feel quite sure,” the Colonel answered.  “His dyspepsy has been bad on him lately.  He wrote to say, that, Providence permittin’, it would be agreeable to him to take a part in the exercises of the evenin’; but I mistrusted he did n’t mean to come.  To tell the truth, Deacon Soper, I rather guess he don’t like the idee of dancin’, and some of the other little arrangements.”

“Well,” said the Deacon, “I know there’s some condemns dancin’.  I’ve heerd a good deal of talk about it among the folks round.  Some have it that it never brings a blessin’ on a house to have dancin’ in it.  Judge Tileston died, you remember, within a month after he had his great ball, twelve year ago, and some thought it was in the natur’ of a judgment.  I don’t believe in any of them notions.  If