Up the Country: A Saga of Pioneering Days

It was that slack hour before midnight, and while the little girls in short skirts, like Jenny Poole and Flora McEachern, were thrilled to be asked for a dance by Mr Mazere and Mr Labosseer, the current did not run as smoothly for some of their elders. The black-red rose was still in Emily's hair and beginning to wilt a little. She had had only one dance with Bert. It was bliss to be swung in his steel-strong arms, but he did not linger a moment with her after their dance had ended. Jessie McEachern, with a pale blush rose in her glossy black locks, was in the same plight; it seemed to her and Emily that every man in the room but the right one coveted their roses. Mary Brennan's posy of forget-me-nots and mignonette was also safely guarded from the many that wanted a sprig from it and she, like Jessie, wondered who it was that Bert really favoured. He spoke mostly to Mrs Labosseer, and the fact that he protected himself with a matron was interpreted by the three girls as his still being fancy free, and each having as good a chance as the next to attract him.

Things were equally at cross purposes with the men. While Jack Stanton wanted Mary's forget-me-nots, he had to dodge instead the rose that Agnes Brennan would have given him. Louisa's rose was waiting for Hugh, but he was hankering after Jessie's. And Malcolm, Tim and Denny all wanted what they were not invited to have. Emily provoked them with eyes that were for no one but Bert--couldn't she see that Bert enjoyed dancing with his sisters, his stepmother, Mrs McEachern, Mrs Labosseer and the other married women as much as with any girl in the place?