family 'twas never less than 'taters,' and very often 'pertatoes'
outright; mother was so particular and nice with us girls there was no
family in the parish that kept them selves up more than we."

The hour of parting came. Fancy could not remain for the night, because
she had engaged a woman to wait up for her. She disappeared temporarily
from the flagging party of dancers, and then came downstairs wrapped up
and looking altogether a different person from whom she had been
hitherto, in fact (to Dick's sadness and disappointment), a woman
somewhat reserved and of a phlegmatic temperament--nothing left in her of
the romping girl that she had seemed but a short quarter-hour before, who
had not minded the weight of Dick's hand upon her waist, nor shirked the
purlieus of the mistletoe.

"What a difference!" thought the young man--hoary cynic pro tem. "What a
miserable deceiving difference between the manners of a maid's life at
dancing times and at others! Look at this lovely Fancy! Through the
whole past evening touchable, squeezeable--even kissable! For whole half-
hours I held her so chose to me that not a sheet of paper could have been
shipped between us; and I could feel her heart only just outside my own,
her life beating on so close to mine, that I was aware of every breath in
it. A flit is made upstairs--a hat and a cloak put on--and I no more
dare to touch her than--" Thought failed him, and he returned to
realities.

But this was an endurable misery in comparison with what followed. Mr.
Shiner and his watch-chain, taking the intrusive advantage that ardent
bachelors who are going homeward along the same road as a pretty young
woman always do take of that circumstance, came forward to assure
Fancy--with a total disregard of Dick's emotions, and in tones which were