room with her, to the
time of the fascinating measure

'Which fashion hails, from countesses to queens,
And maids and valets dance behind the scenes.'

Picotee, who had been accustomed to unceiled country cottages all her
life, wherein the scamper of a mouse is heard distinctly from floor to
floor, exclaimed in a terrified whisper, at viewing all this, 'They'll
hear you underneath, they'll hear you, and we shall all be ruined!'

'Not at all,' came from the cautious dancers. 'These are some of the
best built houses in London--double floors, filled in with material that
will deaden any row you like to make, and we make none. But come and
have a turn yourself, Miss Chickerel.'

The young man relinquished Menlove, and on the spur of the moment seized
Picotee. Picotee flounced away from him in indignation, backing into a
corner with ruffled feathers, like a pullet trying to appear a hen.

'How dare you touch me!' she said, with rounded eyes. 'I'll tell
somebody downstairs of you, who'll soon see about it!'

'What a baby; she'll tell her father.'

'No I shan't; somebody you are all afraid of, that's who I'll tell.'

'Nonsense,' said Menlove; 'he meant no harm.'

Playtime was now getting short, and further antics being dangerous on
that account, the performers retired again downstairs, Picotee of
necessity following. Her nerves were screwed up to the highest pitch of
uneasiness by the grotesque habits of these men and maids, who were quite
unlike the country servants she had known, and resembled nothing so much
as pixies, elves, or gnomes, peeping up upon human beings from their
shady haunts underground, sometimes for good, sometimes for ill--sometimes
doing heavy work, sometimes none; teasing and worrying with impish
laughter half suppressed, and vanishing directly mortal eyes were bent on
them. Separate and distinct from overt existence under the sun, this
life could hardly be without its distinctive pleasures, all of them being
more or less pervaded by thrills and titillations from games of hazard,
and the perpetual risk of sensational surprises.

Long before this time Picotee had begun to be anxious to get home again,
but Menlove seemed particularly to desire her company, and pressed her to
sit awhile, telling her young friend, by way of entertainment, of various
extraordinary love adventures in which she had figured as heroine when
travelling on the Continent. These stories had one and all a remarka