I, proud being, danced twice with Arthur. We floundered in amazing fashion through a set of Lancers, the master of ceremonies shouting the while indignantly at our heels. And later he invited me to go through some mysterious measure he called a gallop, which consisted in a wild charge for the other end of the room, helter-skelter, couples knocking each other down delightedly, rolling over each other, and picking one another up in the best of tempers.
And then, as we mopped our faces, and drank lemonade, somebody proposed that I should give an imitation of Mr. Parker. Arthur and I were the only travelled personages of the assembly. He had been to Eton and I had been to Lysterby, and it was his slightly sarcastic voice that determined me. "Oh, I say, by all means. I hear he was a capital fellow that dancing-master of yours, and you do him to a T."
To prove that I did, I began the _chassé-croisé_, to the tune of an imaginary violin, chanting Nora Creina, amid shrieks of approbation. How often since have my friends lamented my missed vocation! On the stage, whether actress or dancer, my fortune would long ago have been made, and as an acrobat I should have won glory in my teens. But old-fashioned parents never think of these things. If you are a girl, and fortune forsakes the domestic hearth, they tell you to go and be a governess, and bless your stars that, thanks to their good sense, you are enabled to earn a miserable crust in the path of respectability. When they find a child with extraordinary mimic capacities, an abnormal physical suppleness, and a passion for the ballet, it does not occur to them that it would be wiser and more humane to seek to turn these advantages to some account, instead of condemning the little wretch to future misery and self-effacement as a governess.
Pauline, who knew every moment of the famous Mr. Parker by heart, wandered out into the front garden with a lad of her own age to look at the stars and talk of their ideal. It was a few minutes after the hourly train from Dublin stopped at Dalkey, and as they sat on the wall discussing their favourite book of the hour, Manzoni's "Betrothed," they saw a large and lofty figure steadily approach the gate. Good heavens! It was my mother. Pauline was a creature of resource, and she had some understanding of that formidable person.