ce afore the public eye; for there's none can take his
wind in a hornpipe."

In fact, it was high time that somebody comforted Young Zeb, for his
heart was hot. He had brought home the chest of drawers in his cart,
and spent an hour fixing on the best position for it in the bedroom,
before dressing for the dance. Also he had purchased, in Mr. Pennyway's
shop, an armchair, in the worst taste, to be a pleasant surprise for
Ruby when the happy day came for installing her. Finding he had still
twenty minutes to spare after giving the last twitch to his neckerchief,
and the last brush to his anointed locks, he had sat down facing this
chair, and had striven to imagine her in it, darning his stockings.
Zeb was not, as a rule, imaginative, but love drew this delicious
picture for him. He picked up his hat, and set out for Sheba in the
best of tempers.

But at Sheba all had gone badly. Ruby's frock of white muslin and
Ruby's small sandal shoes were bewitching, but Ruby's mood passed his
intelligence. It was true she gave him half the dances, but then she
gave the other half to that accursed stranger, and the stranger had all
her smiles, which was carrying hospitality too far. Not a word had she
uttered to Zeb beyond the merest commonplaces; on the purchase of the
chest of drawers she had breathed no question; she hung listlessly on
his arm, and spoke only of the music, the other girls' frocks, the
arrangement of the supper-table. And at supper the stranger had not
only sat on the other side of her, but had talked all the time, and on
books, a subject entirely uninteresting to Zeb. Worst of all, Ruby had
listened. No; the worst of all was a remark of Modesty Prowse's that he
chanced to overhear afterwards.

So when the fiddles struck up the air of "Randy my dandy," Zeb, knowing
that the company would call upon him, at first felt his heart turn sick
with loathing. He glanced across the room at Ruby, who, with heightened
colour, was listening to the stranger, and looking up at his handsome
face. Already one or two voices were calling "Zeb!" "Young Zeb for a
hornpipe!" "Now then, Young Zeb!"

He had a mind to refuse. For years after he remembered every small
detail of the room as he looked down it and then across to Ruby again:
the motion of the fiddle-bows; the variegated dresses of the women; the
kissing-bush that some tall dancer's head had set swaying from the low
rafter; the light of a sconce gleaming on Tre