Jean Carnie assumed the privilege of a bride, and seized his lordship; Christie, who had a mind to dance with him too, took Flucker captive, and these four were one reel! There were seven others.
The principle of reel dancing is articulation; the foot strikes the ground for every _accented_ note (and, by the by, it is their weakness of accent which makes all English reel and hornpipe players such failures).
And in the best steps of all, which it has in common with the hornpipe, such as the quick "heel and toe," "the sailor's fling," and the "double shuffle," the foot strikes the ground for every _single_ note of the instrument.
All good dancing is beautiful.
But this articulate dancing, compared with the loose, lawless diffluence of motion that goes by that name, gives me (I must confess it) as much more pleasure as articulate singing is superior to tunes played on the voice by a young lady: Or the clean playing of my mother to the piano-forte splashing of my daughter; though the latter does attack the instrument as a washerwoman her soapsuds, and the former works like a lady.
Or skating to sliding: Or English verse to dactyls in English: Or painting to daubing: Or preserved strawberries to strawberry jam.
What says Goldsmith of the two styles?
"They swam, sprawled, frisked, and languished; but Olivia's foot was as pat to the music as its echo."-- _Vicar of Wakefield._ Newhaven dancing aims also at fun; laughter mingles with agility; grotesque yet graceful gestures are flung in, and little inspiring cries flung out.
His lordship soon entered into the spirit of it.

Deep in the mystery of the hornpipe, he danced one or two steps Jean and Christie had never seen, but their eyes were instantly on his feet, and they caught in a minute and executed these same steps.
To see Christie Johnstone do the double-shuffle with her arms so saucily akimbo, and her quick elastic foot at an angle of forty-five, was a treat.
The dance became inspiriting, inspiring, intoxicating; and, when the fiddles at last left off, the feet went on another seven bars by the enthusiastic impulse.
And so, alternately spinning yarns, singing songs, dancing, and making fun, and mingling something of heart and brain in all, these benighted creatures made themselves happy instead of peevish, and with a day of stout, vigorous, healthy pleasure, refreshed, indemnified, and warmed themselves for many a day of toil.
Such were the two picnics of Inch Coombe, and these rival cliques, agreeing in nothing else, would have agreed in this: each, if allowed (but we won't allow either) to judge the other, would have pronounced the same verdict: _"Ils ne savent pas vivre ces gens-l'a."_.