Already, Mr Macey and a few other privileged villagers, who were
allowed to be spectators on these great occasions, were seated on
benches placed for them near the door; and great was the admiration
and satisfaction in that quarter when the couples had formed
themselves for the dance, and the Squire led off with Mrs
Crackenthorp, joining hands with the rector and Mrs Osgood. That was
as it should be- that was what everybody had been used to- and the
charter of Raveloe seemed to be renewed by the ceremony. It was not
thought of as an unbecoming levity for the old and middle-aged
people to dance a little before sitting down to cards, but rather as
part of their social duties. For what were these if not to be merry at
appropriate times, interchanging visits and poultry with due
frequency, paying each other old-established compliments in sound
traditional phrases, passing well-tried personal jokes, urging your
guests to eat and drink too much out of hospitality, and eating and
drinking too much in your neighbour's house to show that you liked
your cheer? And the parson naturally set an example in these social
duties. For it would not have been possible for the Raveloe mind,
without a peculiar revelation, to know that a clergyman should be a
pale-faced memento of solemnities, instead of a reasonably faulty man,
whose exclusive authority to read prayers and preach, to christen,
marry, and bury you, necessarily co-existed with the right to sell you
the ground to be buried in, and to take tithe in kind; on which last
point, of course, there was a little grumbling, but not to the
extent of irreligion- not beyond the grumbling at the rain, which
was by no means accompanied with a spirit of impious defiance, but
with a desire that the prayer for fine weather might be read
forthwith.
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