dancers below, and the committee-men, in dangling badges with edges of
silver fringe, stood behind their chairs and poured out champagne for
them lavishly, and tore up the wine-check which the barkeeper brought
with it, with princely hospitality.

The entrance of the invited guests created but small interest, and
neither the beauty of the two English girls nor Lester's well-known
features, which smiled from shop-windows and on every ash-barrel in the
New York streets, aroused any particular comment. The employees were
much more occupied with the Lancers then in progress, and with the
joyful actions of one of their number who was playing blind-man's-buff
with himself, and swaying from set to set in search of his partner, who
had given him up as hopeless and retired to the supper-room for crackers
and beer.

Some of the ladies wore bonnets, and others wore flowers in their hair,
and a half-dozen were in gowns which were obviously intended for dancing
and nothing else. But none of them were in _décolleté_ gowns. A few wore
gloves. They had copied the fashions of their richer sisters with the
intuitive taste of the American girl of their class, and they waltzed
quite as well as the ladies whose dresses they copied, and many of them
were exceedingly pretty. The costumes of the gentlemen varied from the
clothes they wore nightly when waiting on the table, to cutaway coats
with white satin ties, and the regular blue and brass-buttoned uniform
of the hotel.

"I am going to dance," said Van Bibber, "if Mr. Pierrot will present me
to one of the ladies."

Paul introduced him to a lady in a white cheese-cloth dress and black