The Dancing School and Dicky[C]

The Dancing School and Dicky[C]

BY JOSEPHINE DODGE DASKAM.

(Arranged by Maude Herndon and Grace Kellam.)

[From "The Little God and Dicky."]

[We have debated long and earnestly which of the seven stories in "The Madness of Phillip and Other Tales of Childhood" is the best public reading. As yet we have no decision; certainly six of them are among the choicest readings of child-life which may be found in American literature, where we have the real child in books. With the permission of the author and the publishers, McClure, Phillips & Co., New York, we reprint cuttings from two of these stories.]

here are you going?" said somebody, as he slunk out toward the hat-rack.

"Oh, out."

"Well, see that you don't stay long. Remember what it is this afternoon."

He turned like a stag at bay.

"What is it this afternoon?" he demanded viciously.

"You know very well."

"What?"

"See that you're here, that's all. You've got to get dressed."

"I will not go to that old dancing school again, and I tell you that I won't, and I won't. And I won't!"

"Now, Dick, don't begin that all over again. It's so silly of you. You've got to go."

"Why?"

"Because it's the thing to do."

"Why?"

"Because you must learn to dance."

"Why?"

"Every nice boy learns."

"Why?"

"That will do, Richard. Go and find your pumps. Now, get right up from the floor, and if you scratch the Morris chair I shall speak to your father. Ain't you ashamed of yourself? Get right up—you must expect to be hurt, if you pull so. Come, Richard! Now, stop crying—a great boy like you! I am sorry I hurt your elbow, but you know very well you aren't crying for that at all. Come along!"

His sister flitted by the door, her accordeon-plaited skirt held carefully from the floor, her hair in two glistening, blue-knotted pigtails.

"Hurry up, Dick, or we'll be late," she called back sweetly.

"Oh, you shut up, will you!" he snarled.

She looked meek, and listened to his deprivation of dessert for the rest of the week with an air of love for the sinner and hatred for the sin that deceived even her older sister who was dressing her.

A desperately patient monologue from the next room indicated the course of events there.

"Your necktie is on the bed. No, I don't know where the blue one is—it doesn't matter; that it just as good. Yes, it is. No, you cannot. You will have to wear one. Because no one ever goes without. I don't know why.

"Many a boy would be thankful and glad to have silk stockings. Nonsense, your legs are warm enough. I don't believe you. Now, Richard, how perfectly ridiculous! There is no left or right to stockings. You have no time to change. Shoes are a different thing. Well, hurry up, then. Because they are made so, I suppose. I don't know why.

"Brush it more on that side—no, you can't go to the barbers. You went last week. It looks perfectly well. I cut it? Why, I don't know how to trim hair. Anyway, there isn't time now. It will have to do. Stop your scowling for goodness' sake, Dick. Have you a handkerchief? It makes no difference, you must carry one. You ought to want to use it. Well, you should. Yes, they always do, whether they have colds or not. I don't know why.

"Your Golden Text! The idea! No, you cannot. You can learn that Sunday before church. This is not the time to learn Golden Texts. I never saw such a child. Now take your pumps and find the plush bag. Why not? Put them right with Ruth's. That's what the bag was made for. Well, how do you want to carry them? Why, I never heard of anything so silly! You will knot the strings. I don't care if they do carry skates that way—skates are not slippers. You'd lose them. Very well, then, only hurry up. I should think you'd be ashamed to have them dangling around your neck that way. Because people never do carry them so. I don't know why.

"Now, here's your coat. Well, I can't help it, you have no time to hunt for them. Put your hands in your pockets—it's not far. And mind, don't run for Ruth every time. You don't take any pains with her, and you hustle her about, Miss Dorothy says. Take another little girl. Yes, you must. I shall speak to your father if you answer me in that way, Richard. Men don't dance with their sisters. Because they don't. I don't know why."

He slammed the door till the piazza shook, and strode along beside his scandalized sister, the pumps flopping noisily on his shoulders. She tripped along contentedly—she liked to go. The personality capable of extracting pleasure from the hour before them baffled his comprehension, and he scowled fiercely at her, rubbing his silk stockings together at every step, to enjoy the strange smooth sensation thus produced. This gave him a bow-legged gait that distressed his sister beyond words.

"I think you might stop. Everybody's looking at you! Please stop, Dick Pendleton; you're a mean old thing. I should think you'd be ashamed to carry your slippers that way. If you jump in that wet place and spatter me I shall tell papa—you will care, when I tell him just the same! You're just as bad as you can be. I shan't speak with you to-day!"

She pursed up her lips and maintained a determined silence. He rubbed his legs together with renewed emphasis. Acquaintances met them and passed, unconscious of anything but the sweet picture of a sister and a brother and a plush bag going dutifully and daintily to dancing school.

He jumped over the threshold of the long room and aimed his cap at the head of a boy he knew, who was standing on one foot to put on a slipper. This destroyed his friend's balance, and a cheerful scuffle followed. Life assumed a more hopeful aspect.

A shrill whistle called them out in two crowded bunches to the polished floor.

Hoping against hope, he had clung to the beautiful thought that Miss Dorothy would be sick, that she had missed her train—but no! There she was, with her shiny high-heeled slippers, her pink skirt that puffed out like a fan, and her silver whistle on a chain. The little clicking castanets that rang out so sharply were in her hand beyond a doubt.

"Ready, children! Spread out. Take your lines. First position. Now!"

The large man at the piano, who always looked half asleep, thundered out the first bars of the latest waltz, and the business began.

Their eyes were fixed solemnly on Miss Dorothy's pointed shoes. They slipped and slid and crossed their legs and arched their pudgy insteps; the boys breathed hard over their gleaming collars. On the right side of the hall thirty hands held out their diminutive skirts at an alluring angle. On the left, neat black legs pattered diligently through mystic evolutions.

The chords rolled out slower, with dramatic pauses between; sharp clicks of the castanets rang through the hall; a line of toes rose gradually towards the horizontal, whirled more or less steadily about, crossed behind, bent low, bowed, and with a flutter of skirts resumed the first position.

A little breeze of laughing admiration circled the row of mothers and aunts.

"Isn't that too cunning! Just like a little ballet! Aren't they graceful, really, now!"

"One, two, three! One, two three! Slide, slide, cross; one, two, three!"

There are those who find pleasure in the aimless intricacies of the dance; self-respecting men even have been known voluntarily to frequent assemblies devoted to this nerve-racking attitudinizing futility. Among such, however, you shall seek in vain in future years for Richard Carr Pendleton.

"One, two, three! Reverse, two, three!"

The whistle shrilled.

"Ready for the two-step, children?"

A mild tolerance grew on him. If dancing must be, better the two-step than anything else. It is not an alluring dance, your two-step; it does not require temperament. Any one with a firm intention of keeping the time and a strong arm can drag a girl through it very acceptably.

Dicky skirted the row of mothers and aunts cautiously.

"Oh, look! Did you ever see anything so sweet?" said somebody. Involuntarily he turned. There in a corner, all by herself, a little girl was gravely performing a dance. He stared at her curiously.

She was ethereally slender, brown-eyed, brown-haired, brown-skinned. A little fluffy white dress spread fan-shaped over her knees; her ankles were bird-like. Her eyes were serious, her hair hung loose. She swayed lightly; one little gloved hand held out her skirt, the other marked the time. Her performance was an apotheosis of the two-step; that metronomic dance would not have recognized itself under her treatment.

Dicky admired. But the admiration of his sex is notoriously fatal to the art that attracts it. He advanced and bowed jerkily, grasped one of the loops of her sash in the back, stamped gently a moment to get the time, and the artist sank into the partner, the pirouette grew coarse to sympathize with clay.

"Don't they do it well, though! See those little things near the door!" he caught as they went by, and his heart swelled with pride.

"What's your name?" he asked abruptly after the dance.

"Thithelia," she lisped. She was very shy.

"Mine's Richard Carr Pendleton. My father's a lawyer. What's yours?"

"I—I don't know!"

"Pooh!" he said, grandly; "I guess you know. Don't you, really?"

She shook her head. Suddenly a light dawned in her eyes.

"Maybe I know," she murmured. "I gueth I know. He—he'th a really thtate!"

"A really state? That isn't anything—nothing at all. A really state?" He frowned at her. Her lip quivered. She turned and ran away.

"Here, come back!" he called; but she was gone.

"That will do for to-day," said Miss Dorothy, presently, and they surged into the dressing-rooms, to be buttoned up and pulled out of draughts and trundled home.

She was swathed carefully in a wadded silk jacket, and then enveloped in a hooded cloak; she looked like an angelic brownie. Dicky ran to her as a woman led her out to a coupé at the curb, and tugged at the ribbon of her cloak.

"Where do you live? Say, where do you?" he demanded.

"I—I don't know." The woman laughed.

"Why, yes, you do, Cissy. Tell him directly, now."

She put one tiny finger in her mouth.

"I—I gueth I live on Chethnut Thtreet," he called as the door slammed and shut her in.

His sister amicably offered him half the plush bag to carry, and opened a running criticism of the afternoon.

"Did you ever see anybody act like that Fannie Leach? She's awfully rough. Miss Dorothy spoke to her twice—wasn't that dreadful? What made you dance all the time with Cissy Weston? She's an awful baby—a regular fraid-cat! We girls tease her just as easy—do you like her?"

"She's the prettiest one there!"

"Why, Dick Pendleton, she is not! She's so little—she's not half so pretty as Agnes, or—or lots of the girls. She's such a baby. She puts her finger in her mouth if anybody says anything at all. If you ask her a single thing she does like this: 'I don't know, I don't know!'"

He smiled scornfully. Did he not know how she did it?

"And she can't talk plain! She lisps—truly she does!"

Was ever a girl so thick-headed as that sister of his!

"She puts her finger in her mouth! She can't talk plain!" Alas, my sisters, it was Helen's finger that toppled over Troy, and Diane de Poitiers stammered!

For two long months the little girl led him along the primrose way. The poor fellow thought it was the main road; he had yet to learn it was but a by-path. But the Little God was not through with him. That very night he reached the top of the wave.

He came down to breakfast rapt and quiet. He salted his oatmeal by mistake, and never knew the difference. His sister laughed derisively, and explained his folly to him as he swallowed the last spoonful, but he only smiled kindly at her. After his egg he spoke.

"I dreamed that it was dancing school. And I went. And I was the only fellow there. And what do you think? All the little girls were Cecilia!"

They gasped.

"You don't suppose he'll be a poet, do you? Or a genius, or anything?" his mother inquired anxiously.

"No!" his father returned. "I should say he was more likely to be a Mormon!"