Lills Travels in Santa Claus Land | Page 5

had taught her, among others a funny little new accent on some of her words,--the word "pretty" in particular. And, last of all, she had been taught to dance!
"And I can show you," Winnie said, eagerly, "'cause it goes by 'steps,' and uncle says I take them as pr-i-tty as Cousin Lily."
Now, in Connaut, little girls don't dance--not nice little girls, nor nice big girls either, for that matter.
The dimpled mouths opened in astonishment. "That is wicked, Winnie Ten'son, don't you know?"
"O, but 'tisn't," said Winnie. "My aunties dance, and their mamma, my grandmamma, was at the party once."
"We shall tell our mothers," said Lu. "I'll bet you've come home a proud, wicked girl, and you want us to be as bad as you are."
[Illustration: "Winnie already had her class before her."]
Now Winnie was only six years old, about the same age as her virtuous friends, and she didn't look very wicked. She had pink cheeks, and blue eyes, and dimples. She stood gazing at her accusers, first at one and then at the other.
"Luie," said Kathie, gravely, "we mustn't call Winnie wicked till we ask our mothers if she is."
"No, I don't think I would," said Mrs. Tennyson, looking up from her sewing, her cheek flushing at the sight of tears in her little Winnie's gentle eyes.
On the way home, they chanced to see their own minister walking along. Lu stopped short. "Kathie," said she, "I know it's awful wicked now, or else we never should have met the minister right here. I'm just going to tell him about Winnie."
She went up to him, Kathie following shyly.
"Mr. Goodhue, Winnie Ten'son is a nawful wicked girl!"
"She is!" said Mr. Goodhue, stopping, and looking down into the little eager face.
"Yes, sir, she is. She wants us to dance!"
"She does!"
"Yes, sir, she does. She wanted us to learn the steps, right down in her garden this afternoon. Would you dance, Mr. Goodhue?"
"Would I? Perhaps I might, were I as little and spry as you, and Winnie would teach me steps, and it was down in the garden."
The little girls looked up into his face searchingly. He walked on laughing, and they went on homeward, to ask further advice.
At home, too, everyone seemed to think it a matter for smiles, and laughed at the two tender little consciences.
So they both ran back after dinner to Mrs. Tennyson's. But on the way Kathie said, "They let us, the minister and ev'ry body, but if it is wicked ever, how isn't it wicked now?"
"I s'pose 'cause we're children," Lu said wisely.
The logical trouble thus laid, they tripped on.
They were dressed in sweet pink, and their sun-bonnets were as fresh and crisp as only the sun-bonnets of dear little country school-girls ever can be. It was a most merry summer day; all nature moving gladsomely to the full music of life. The leaves were fluttering to each other, the grasses sweeping up and down, the bobolinks hopping by the meadow path.
Their friend Winnie came out to meet them, looking rather astonished.
"We're going to learn," shouted Lu, "get on your bonnet."
"But you wasn't good to me to-day," said Winnie, thoughtfully.
"We didn't da'st to be," said Kathie, "till we'd asked somebody that knew."
Mrs. Tennyson was half of the mind to call her little daughter in; yet she felt it a pity to be less sweet and forgiving than the child.
Winnie already had her class before her. "Now you must do just as I do. You must hold your dress back so,--not grab it, but hold it back nice, and you must bend forward so, and you must point your slippers so,--not stand flat."
Very graceful the little dancing-teacher looked, tip-toeing here, gliding there, twinkling through a series of pretty steps down the long garden walk.
But the pupils! Do the best she might, sturdy little Kathie couldn't manage her dress. She grasped it tightly in either fat little fist. "Mother Bunch!" Lu giggled behind her back.
Kathie's face got very red over that. It was well enough to be "Dumpling,"--everybody loves a dumpling; but "Mother Bunch!" So she bounced and shuffled a little longer, and then she said she was going home.
But Miss Lu wasn't ready. She greatly liked the new fun, the hopping and whirling to Winnie's steady "One, two, three! One, two, three!" There was a grown-up, affected smirk on her delicate little face, at which Mrs. Tennyson laughed every time she looked out. I think Lu would have hopped and minced up and down the walk until night, if Winnie's mother hadn't told them it was time to go.
"I don't like her old steps," said Kathie. They were sitting on a daisy bank near Mr. Medway's.
"Well, I do," said Lu. "And you would, too, if you wasn't so chunked. You just bounced up and down."
Kathie burst out crying.