214 Tom Seven Years Old.

“What are you stopping for?” asked lom,
in a great hurry to begin again. She had
pulled out her handkerchief, and was fanning
herself, and her face was redder than ever,
and she seemed very hot.

“Why, mother,” cried Jim, coming up,
“think of you dancing like this! Who'd
have thought it ?”

“Matty’s husband,” said Tom, “I thought
you must be her son, because your face is so
red. What’s the matter with her? Why
doesn’t she go on?”

“The breath’s almost quite knocked out of
her,” said he. ‘ Maybe she’d like to rest.
Here’s a chair, mother.”’

Tom could not understand how anyone
could bear to sit down while the music was
still playing. So he ran away to find some-
body else to dance with, and as he could
not have the biggest person in the room, to
get the next biggest. A country dance was
just beginning, in which big and small danced
together, and Tom was madé to join in it.
Everybody else seemed to know what they