Girls linked by the half-dozen arm-in-arm leap along with shrieks like grotesque maenads; a rougher horseplay finds favour among the youths, occasionally leading to fisticuffs.

Thick voices bellow in fragmentary chorus; from every side comes the yell, the eat-call, the ear-rending whistle; and as the bass, the never-ceasing accompaniment, sounds myriad-footed tramp, tramp along the wooden flooring.

A fight, a scene of bestial drunkenness, a tender whispering between two lovers, proceed concurrently in a space of five square yards .-- Above them glimmers the dawn of starlight.
For perhaps the first time in his life Bob Hewett has drunk more than he can well carry.

To Pennyloaf's remonstrances he answers more and more impatiently: 'Why does she talk like a bloomin' fool ?--one doesn't get married every day.' He is on the look-out for Jack Bartley now; only let him meet Jack, and it shall be seen who is the better man.
Pennyloaf rejoices that the hostile party are nowhere discoverable.

She is persuaded to join in a dance, though every moment it seems to her that she must sink to the ground in uttermost exhaustion.