e ..."; and the row of self-conscious boys bowed, gloved
hands upon severely jacketed chests, while as many little girls, aware
of doing the thing correctly and of not looking fools in the doing of
it, spread white tarletan skirts in starchy semi-circles by way of
reply.

It was the weekly dancing class, when Mr. Pierre Sebastian Eliot, who on
other days taught French at the Grammar School, undertook to instruct
the boys in what he referred to as "the divine art of Terpsichore," a
habit which had earned for himself the simple nickname of "Terps." The
class was held in a spacious room used for balls, both subscription and
private, at the "George" Inn, and to it came not only those Grammar
School boys whose parents paid for this polite "extra," but also the
maidens from the gentle families of St. Renny and the neighbourhood.

Ishmael was dancing opposite Hilaria Eliot, and his enjoyment of it lay
in knowing that Killigrew, who had basely tried to trip him up shortly
before, was suffering pangs of envy. After some four years of knowing
her, Killigrew was suddenly in love with Miss Eliot and didn't mind who
knew it. In fact, to be accurate, Killigrew's emotion was chiefly based
on a desire to be different from the rest of his world, and what was
the good of being different unless people knew it?

Thus Killigrew--to Ishmael, who was growing vaguely aware of a
difference from his fellows that he could not remedy, the argument would
have had no force. Killigrew was neither of those St. Rennyites who
despised girls, nor of those who held the cult of the doctor's daughter,
that dizzy exemplar of fashion, nor of those others--a small band these
latter, made up of the best boys in the school, little and big--who
admired and liked Hilaria as a "good sort." Killigrew was determined to
be different, and so, like Burns, "battered" himself into love. If
Ishmael had been disposed to feel a tender sentiment for her himself, he
could not have cherished it with any comfort, being already cast by
Killigrew for the confidant of passion. Thus it came about that, though
in after years those stolen meetings between Hilaria and a ring of boys
would flash into his memory as being romance in essence, at the time
they held no more thrill for him than might be imparted by some new
novel--contraband in the perpetual war against grown-ups--that she would
bring to read aloud to them in some hollow of the moor. Always it was
from the angle of the thir