Next to him, her party dress and slipper-bag concealed by a rain-coat, sat Annette, hot and rebellious, and in anything but a prayerful frame of mind.

Beside her sat Sandy, rigid with elegance, his eyes riveted on the preacher, but his thoughts on his feet.

For, stationary though he was, he was really giving himself the benefit of a final rehearsal, and mentally performing steps of intricate and marvelous variety.
"Stop moving your feet!" whispered Annette.

"You'll step on my dress." "Is it the mazurka that's got the hiccoughs in the middle ?" asked Sandy, anxiously.
Mr.Meech paused and looked at them over his spectacles in plaintive reproach.
Then he wandered on into sixthlies and seventhlies of increasing length.

Before the final amen had died upon the air, Annette and Sandy had escaped to their reward.
The hop was given in the town hall, a large, dreary-looking room with a raised platform at one end, where Johnson's band introduced instruments and notes that had never met before.
To Sandy it was a hall of Olympus, where filmy-robed goddesses moved to the music of the spheres.
"Isn't the floor g-grand ?" cried Annette, with a little run and a slide.