CHAPTER THIRTEEN
IT was after the early supper-time at the Red House, and the
entertainment was in that stage when bashfulness itself had passed
into easy jollity, when gentlemen, conscious of unusual
accomplishments, could at length be prevailed on to dance a
hornpipe, and when the Squire preferred talking loudly, scattering
snuff, and patting his visitors' backs, to sitting longer at the
whist-table- a choice exasperating to uncle Kimble, who, being
always volatile in sober business hours, became intense and bitter
over cards and brandy, shuffled before his adversary's deal with a
glare of suspicion, and turned up a mean trump-card with an air of
inexpressible disgust, as if in a world where such things could happen
one might as well enter on a course of reckless profligacy. When the
evening had advanced to this pitch of freedom and enjoyment, it was
usual for the servants, the heavy duties of supper being well over, to
get their share of amusement by coming to look on at the dancing; so
that the back regions of the house were left in solitude.
There were two doors by which the White Parlour was entered from
the hall, and they were both standing open for the sake of air; but
the lower one was crowded with the servants and villagers, and only
the upper doorway was left free. Bob Cass was figuring in a
hornpipe, and his father, very proud of this lithe son, whom he
repeatedly declared to be just like himself in his young days, in a
tone that implied this to be the very highest stamp of juvenile merit,
was the centre of a group who had placed themselves opposite the
performer, not far from the upper door.
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