and they wandered up and down the waste parlours, and sat on tete-a-
tetes just to try them, apparently; and Miss Gage verified in the
mirrors the beauty which was reflected in all eyes. They amused
themselves with the extent of the richly-carpeted and upholstered
desolation around them, where only a few lonely and aging women
lurked about on sofas and ottomans; and they fell to playing with
their compassion for the plebeian spectators at the long verandah
windows trying to penetrate with their forbidden eyes to the hop
going on in the court far beyond the intermediary desert of the
parlours.

When they signified at last that they were ready for me to lead them
on to the dance, I would so much rather have gone to bed that there
are no words for the comparison. Then, when we got to the place,
which I should never have been able to reach in the world if it had
not been for the young energy and inspiration of Kendricks, and they
had put me in a certain seat with Miss Gage's wraps beside me where
they could find me, they went off and danced for hours and hours.
For hours and hours? For ages and ages! while I withered away amid
mouldering mothers, and saw my charges through the dreadful half-
dreams of such a state whirling in the waltz, hopping in the polka,
sliding in the galop, and then endlessly walking up and down between
the dances, and eating and drinking the chill refreshments that it
made my teeth chatter to think of. I suppose they decently came to
me from time to time, though they seemed to be always dancing, for I
could afterward remember Miss Gage taking a wrap from me now and
then, and quickly coming back to shed it upon my lap again. I got
so chilled that if they had not been unmistakably women's wraps I
should have bundled them all about my shoulders, which I could
almost hear creak with rheumatism. I must have fallen into a sort