Country life -- Juvenile fiction; Girls -- Juvenile fiction; Grandparents as parents -- Juvenile fiction
Out in the garden, the Judge heard the click of castanets and the tap
of the high heels.
"What is the child doing," he wondered.
As the dance proceeded, the sound of the castanets grew wilder and
wilder, and the high heels beat double raps on the floor. Then,
suddenly, with one sharp "click-ck" the dance ended, and there was
silence.
Then Anne cried, "Do it again, do it again, Judy," and the Judge
clapped his applause from the garden below.
At the sound the girls poked their heads out of the window.
"You ought to see her, Judge," Anne's tone was rapturous, "you just
ought to see her."
"Shall I come down?" Judy asked. She was glowing, radiant.
"Yes, indeed. Come and dance on the path."
Five minutes later Judy was whirling, wraithlike in the white light of
the moon, which turned her scarlet trappings to silver. Anne sat by
the Judge and made admiring comments.
"Isn't it fine?" she asked.
The Judge nodded.
"I saw the Spanish girls do it when I was young," he said, beating time
with his cane, "and Judy lived in Spain with her mother for a year,
you'd think the child was born to it," and he chuckled with pride.
But when Judy came up after the last wild dash, he was more moderate in
his praises. The Judge had been raised in the days when children heard
often the rhyme, "Praise to the face, is open disgrace," and at times
he reminded himself of the merits of such early discipline.
"I don't know what your grandmother would have thought of it, my dear,"
he said, with a doubtful shake of his head, "in her days, young ladies
didn't do such things."
"Didn't grandmother dance?" asked Judy.
"Indeed she did," said the Judge with enthusiasm. "Why, Judy, there
wasn't a couple that could beat your grandmother and me when we danced
the Virginia reel."
Judy threw herself down on the bench beside him, and fanned herself
with the end of her shawl.
"Can you dance," she asked, "can you really dance, grandfather? I'm so
glad. Some day I shall give a party, and have all the people of the
neighborhood, and we will end it with the reel. May I, grandfather?"
"You may do anything you wish," was the Judge's rash promise, and with
a quick laugh, Judy saw her opportunity and took advantage of it.
"Then let's go down to the kitchen," she said, "and get something to
eat now. I didn't eat much dinner, and I am starved. Aren't you,
Anne?"
But Anne had been trained in the way she should go. "I--I haven't
thought of being hungry," she hesitated. "I never eat before I go to
bed."
"Oh, I do," said Judy, scornfully. "And dancing makes me ravenous."
"But Perkins has retired, and Mary, and everybody--" expostulated the
Judge.
"Who cares for Perkins?" asked Judy with her nose in the air.
"Well," said the Judge, who was hopelessly the slave of his servants,
"he might not like it--"
"Judge Jameson," said Judy, shaking a reproachful finger at him, "I
believe you are afraid of your butler."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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