“If it is _buidseachas_—if it is witchcraft of any kind you are on for, I’ll not have it,” said Kate firmly. “I never saw the like of this since the old woman in Pennyland put the curse on the Colonsay factor, and she had only seven candles. Dear, dear Lennox, do not do anything desperate; do not be carrying on, for you are frightening me out of my judgment. I’m—I’m maybe better now, I took a bite at a biscuit; indeed I’m quite better, it was nothing but the cold—and a lad out there that tried to kiss me.”
Bud paid no heed, but plucked up the edges of her skirt in outstretched hands and glided into the last dance she had learned from the vaudeville lady, humming softly to herself an appropriate tune. The candles warmly lit her neck, her ears, her tilted nostrils, her brow was high in shadow. First she rose on tiptoe and made her feet to twitter on the flags, then swayed and swung a little body that seemed to hang in air. The white silk swept around and over her—wings with no noise of flapping feather, or swirled in sea-shell coils, that rose in a ripple from her ankles and swelled in wide circling waves above her head, revealing her in glimpses like some creature born of foam on fairy beaches, and holding the command of tempest winds. Ah, dear me! many and many a time I saw her dance just so in her daft days before the chill of wisdom and reflection came her way; she was a passion disembodied, an aspiration realised, a happy morning thought, a vapour, a perfume of flowers, for her attire had lain in lavender. She was the spirit of Spring, as I have felt it long ago in little woods, or seen it in pictures, or heard it in songs; she was an ecstasy, she was a dream.
The dog gave a growl of astonishment, then lay his length on the hearth-rug, his nose between his paws, his eyes fixed on her. “I’ll not have it,” said the maid piteously. “At least I’ll not stand much of it, for it’s not canny to be carrying-on like that in a Christian dwelling. I never did the like of that in all my life.”
“_Every_ move a picture,” said the child, and still danced on, with the moan of the wind outside for a bass to her low-hummed melody. Her stretching folds flew high, till she seemed miraculous tall, and to the servant’s fancy might have touched the low ceiling; then she sank—and sank—and sank till her forehead touched the floor, and she was a flower fallen, the wind no more to stir its petals, the rain no more to glisten on its leaves. ’Twas as if she shrivelled and died there, and Kate gave one little cry that reached the players of cards in the parlour.