Everybody talked and laughed; it was a lively racket of clashing voices and rhythmical feet.
You would have been surprised to find that Oncle Jazon was the fiddler; but there he sat, perched on a high stool in one corner of the large room, sawing away as if for dear life, his head wagging, his elbow leaping back and forth, while his scalpless crown shone like the side of a peeled onion and his puckered mouth wagged grotesquely from side to side keeping time to his tuneful scraping.
When the Roussillon party arrived it attracted condensed attention.

Its importance, naturally of the greatest in the assembled popular mind, was enhanced--as mathematicians would say, to the nth power--by the gown of Alice.

It was resplendent indeed in the simple, unaccustomed eyes upon which it flashed with a buff silken glory.

Matrons stared at it; maidens gazed with fascinated and jealous vision; men young and old let their eyes take full liberty.

It was as if a queen, arrayed in a robe of state, had entered that dingy log edifice, an apparition of dazzling and awe-inspiring beauty.