Youths and girls, men and women staggered unsteadily round the gaily decorated scaffold-pole that had been lent by Mr. Ash, the builder. Lady Knob-Kerrick distinguished many of her tenants among the fringe of stumbling humanity, and two of her own domestics.
The principal object of the men dancers seemed to be to kiss each girl as she passed, and that of the girls to appear to try to avoid the caress without actually doing so. The dance ended prematurely, there being none of the dancers any longer capable of preserving an upright position.
A little to the right of the maypole Lady Knob-Kerrick beheld the Rev. Andrew McFie, who was endeavouring to give a representation of his native sword-dance to an enthusiastic group of admirers. On his head was a pink sun-bonnet, round his waist, to represent a kilt, was tied a girl's jacket. His trousers were tucked up above the knee. On the ground sat a girl producing, by the simple process of holding her nose and tapping her throat, strange piercing noises intended to represent the bagpipes.
In another part of the meadow Mr. Grint, the chapel butcher, and an elder of irreproachable respectability, was endeavouring to instruct a number of girls in the intricacies of a quadrille, which, as he informed them, he had once seen danced in Paris. It was this exhibition of
