Some fires had been built outside; the crowd proving
too great for the building's capacity, as there had to be ample
space for the dancers. Merry groups hovered around the flaming
logs, while within the house a fiddle sang its simple and
ravishing tunes. Everybody talked and laughed; it was a lively
racket of clashing voices and rhythmical feet.
You would have been surprised to find that Oncle Jazon was the
fiddler; but there he sat, perched on a high stool in one corner
of the large room, sawing away as if for dear life, his head
wagging, his elbow leaping back and forth, while his scalpless
crown shone like the side of a peeled onion and his puckered mouth
wagged grotesquely from side to side keeping time to his tuneful
scraping.
When the Roussillon party arrived it attracted condensed
attention. Its importance, naturally of the greatest in the
assembled popular mind, was enhanced--as mathematicians would
say, to the nth power--by the gown of Alice. It was resplendent
indeed in the simple, unaccustomed eyes upon which it flashed with
a buff silken glory. Matrons stared at it; maidens gazed with
fascinated and jealous vision; men young and old let their eyes
take full liberty. It was as if a queen, arrayed in a robe of
state, had entered that dingy log edifice, an apparition of
dazzling and awe-inspiring beauty.
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