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. Naturally she does not dance with sufficient liveliness
to please Bob; he seizes another girl, a stranger, and whirls round
the six-foot circle with a laugh of triumph.
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