repository assured each other ardently that their true loves
owned their hearts; two school-children with corkscrew curls held a
heated argument--in rhyme--on the benefits of temperance; and, most
surprising and thrilling of all, Mr Jevons, the butler from The Manor,
so far descended from his pedestal as to volunteer "a comic item" in the
shape of a recitation, bearing chiefly, it would appear, on the
execution of a pig. The last remnant of stiffness vanished before this
inspiring theme, and the audience roared applause as one man, whereupon
Mr Jevons bashfully hid his face, and skipped--literally skipped--from
the platform.

"Who'd have thought it! Butlers are human beings, after all!" gasped
Darsie, wiping tears of merriment from her eyes. "Ralph, do you suppose
Jevons will dance with me to-night? I _should_ be proud!"

"Certainly not. He has one square dance with the mater, and that
finishes it. You must dance with me instead. It's ages since we've had
a hop together--or a talk. I'm longing to have a talk, but I don't want
the others to see us at it, or they'd think I was priming you in my own
defence, and the mater wants to have the first innings herself. We'll
manage it somehow in the interval between the dances, and I know you'll
turn out trumps, as usual, Darsie, and take my part."

Ralph spoke with cheerful confidence, and Darsie listened with a sinking
heart. The merry interlude of supper was robbed of its zest, as she
cudgelled her brains to imagine what she was about to hear. Ralph was
evidently in trouble of some sort, and his parents for once inclined to
take a serious stand. Yet anything more gay and debonair than the
manner with which the culprit handed round refreshments and waited on
his father's guests it would be impossible to imagine. Darsie watched
him across the room, and noted that wherever he passed faces brightened.
As he cracked jokes with the apple-cheeked farmers, waited assiduously
on their buxom wives, and made pretty speeches to the girls, no onlooker
could fail to be conscious of the fact that, in the estimation of the
tenants, "Master Ralph" was as a young prince who could do no wrong.

For reasons of his own, Ralph was tonight bent on ingratiating himself
to the full. For the first half-hour of the dance he led out one
village belle after another, and it was not until waltz number five had
appeared on the board that he returned to Darsie's side.

"At last I've a momen