ost solicitously did our good
old host present Eustace to every one, and it was curious to watch the
demeanour of the different classes--the Horsmans mostly cordial, Hippa
and Pippa demonstratively so; but the Stympsons held aloof with the
stiffest of bows, not one of them but good-natured Captain George
Stympson would shake hands even with me, and Miss Avice Stympson, of
Lake House, made as if Harold were an object invisible to the naked
eye, while the kind old earl was doing his best that he should not feel
neglected. Eustace had learnt dancing for that noted ball at
Government House, but Harold had disavowed the possibility. He had
only danced once in his life, he said, when Dermot pressed him, "and
that counted for nothing." To me the pain on the bent brow made it
plain that it had been at the poor fellow's wedding.

However, he stood watching, and when at the end of our quadrille Dermot
said, "Here lies the hulk of the Great Harry," there was an amused air
about him, and at the further question, "Come, Alison, what do you
think of our big corroborees?" he deliberately replied, "I never saw
such a pretty sight!" And on some leading exclamation from one of us,
"It beats the cockatoos on a cornfield; besides, one has got to kill
them!"

"Mr. Alison looks at our little diversion in the benevolent spirit of
the giant whose daughter brought home ploughman, oxen, and all in her
apron for playthings," said Viola, who with Eustace had found her way
to us, but we were all divided again, Viola being carried off by some
grandee, Eustace having to search for some noble damsel to whom he had
been introduced, and I falling to the lot of young Mr. Horsman, a nice
person in himself, but unable to surmount the overcrowing of the elder
sisters, who called him Baby Jack, and publicly ordered him about.
Even at the end of our dance, at the sound of Hippa's authoritative
summons, he dropped me suddenly, and I found myself gravitating towards
Harold like a sort of chaperon. I was amazed by his observing, "I
think I could do it now. Would you try me, Lucy?"

After all, he was but five-and-twenty, and could hardly look on
anything requiring agility or dexterity without attempting it, so I
consented, with a renewal of the sensations I remembered when, as a
child, I had danced with grown-up men, only with alarm at the
responsibility of what Dermot called "the steerage of the Great Harry,"
since collision with such momentum as ours m