Quadrille

It was not quadrille dancing, nor minuet dancing, nor even country-dance dancing.

The movements of the other women were more or less similar to Tess's, the whole bevy of them drawing together like dancers in a quadrille at the completion of a sheaf by each, every one placing her sheaf on end against those of the rest, till a shock, or 'stitch' as it was here called, of ten or a dozen was formed.

There was ol' Mickey Coote Who played hard on his flute When the ladies lined up for a set He was tootin' with skill For each sparkling quadrille Though the dancers were fluther'd and bet

It now first struck her that she was selected from among her sisters as worthy of being the mistress of Hunsford Parsonage, and of assisting to form a quadrille table at Rosings, in the absence of more eligible visitors.

We quadrilled, waltzed, and conversed, in all of which my clever partner excelled; and her charms, combined with the excellent champagne I imbibed, fairly dazzled my imagination.

Penknife, hand-lens, padlock key, marching compass and small cash went in his trouser pockets, leaving the tunic pockets for the little black quadrille notebook, pencil and pen, and the breast pockets for his breviary on one side and cigarettes and matches on the other.

He would write “one paragraph at time”, always beginning each novel in longhand – he favoured notebooks with quadrille lines (those little squares).