As to Gus, she never so much as spoke to him all the evening; but he consoled himself with a great lot of muffins, and sat most of the evening (it was a cruel hot summer) whistling and talking with Roundhand on the verandah.

I think I should like to have been with them,--for it was very close in the room with that great big Mrs.Roundhand squeezing close up to one on the sofa.
"Do you recollect what a jolly night we had here last summer ?" I heard Hoskins say, who was leaning over the balcony, and ogling the girls coming home from church.

"You and me with our coats off, plenty of cold rum-and-water, Mrs.Roundhand at Margate, and a whole box of Manillas ?" "Hush!" said Roundhand, quite eagerly; "Milly will hear." But Milly didn't hear: for she was occupied in telling me an immense long story about her waltzing with the Count de Schloppenzollern at the City ball to the Allied Sovereigns; and how the Count had great large white moustaches; and how odd she thought it to go whirling round the room with a great man's arm round your waist.

"Mr.Roundhand has never allowed it since our marriage--never; but in the year 'fourteen it was considered a proper compliment, you know, to pay the sovereigns.

So twenty-nine young ladies, of the best families in the City of London, I assure you, Mr.
Titmarsh--there was the Lord Mayor's own daughters; Alderman Dobbins's gals; Sir Charles Hopper's three, who have the great house in Baker Street; and your humble servant, who was rather slimmer in those days--twenty-nine of us had a dancing-master on purpose, and practised waltzing in a room over the Egyptian Hall at the Mansion House.