A PARTNER FOR A COTILLON. 259 
as to wooing or fighting; if lam snubbed it won’t 
be all the world, and I suppose I shall live it down 
—so here goes! Walking boldly up to her, I 
asked coolly, but rather apologetically, if she_ 
would try a waltz. 
‘ Guess, stranger, I ain’t a-fix’d up for waltzin.’ 
‘Perhaps, madam,’ I said, ‘you will excuse 
me, although unknown to you, if I ask you to 
dance the next cctillon with me?’ 
Looking into my face with an expression half 
doubt, half delight, she said: ‘Stranger, I'll have 
the tallest kind of pleasure in puttin’ you right 
slick through a cotillon, for I’ve sot here, like 
a blue chicken on a pine-log, till I was like to 
a-grow'd to the seat.’ 
This satisfactorily arranged, I sat down by her 
side until the waltz finished, to have a good look 
at and trot out my new inamorata. She was a 
blonde beauty, with fair hair and light-grey eyes, 
that flashed and twinkled roguishly; and robed in 
some white material, with blue ribbons in her 
hair and round her waist—a mountain-sylph, that 
any wanderer in search of a partner would have 
deemed himself lucky to have stumbled on. 
Our conversation was rather discursive, until 
I discovered that home-politics, or rather the 
duties and requirements of a gal thum, was a 
s2 
