These words put every man whom they surprised into a state of unusual
animation; and they surprised most of the company. It may be doubted
whether a female clog-dancer had ever footed it in Bursley. Several
public-houses possessed local champions--of a street, of a village--but
these were emphatically not women. Enoch Peake had arranged this daring
item in the course of his afternoon's business at Cocknage Gardens, Mr
Offlow being an expert in ratting terriers, and Mrs Offlow happening to
be on a tour with her husband through the realms of her championship, a
tour which mingled the varying advantages derivable from terriers,
recitations, and clogs. The affair was therefore respectable beyond
cavil.
Nevertheless when Florence shone suddenly at the service-door, the
shortness of her red-and-black velvet skirts, and the undeniable
complete visibility of her rounded calves produced an uneasy and
agreeable impression that Enoch Peake, for a chairman of the Mutual
Burial Club, had gone rather far, superbly far, and that his moral
ascendancy over Louisa Loggerheads must indeed be truly astonishing.
Louisa now stood gravely behind the dancer, in the shadow of the
doorway, and the contrast between her and Florence was in every way
striking enough to prove what a wonderful and mysterious man Enoch Peake
was. Florence was accustomed to audiences. She was a pretty, doll-like
woman, if inclined to amplitude; but the smile between those shaking
golden ringlets had neither the modesty nor the false modesty nor the
docility that Bursley was accustomed to think proper to the face of
woman. It could have stared down any man in the place, except perhaps
Mr Peake.
The gestures of Mr Offlow, and her gestures, as he arranged and
prepared the surface of the little square dancing-board that was her
throne, showed that he was the husband of Florence Simcox rather than
she the wife of Offlow the reciter and dog-fancier. Further, it was his
role to play the concertina to her: he had had to learn the concertina--
possibly a secret humiliation for one whose judgement in terriers was
not excelled in many public-houses.
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