Little Lucy's Wonderful GlobeYonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
General
Little Lucy's Wonderful Globe
Yonge, Charlotte M. (Charlotte Mary)
Geography -- Juvenile literature
"What are you looking at?" asked Lucy, coming to her side.
"I'm watching for the procession. Then I shall go to church with
mamma. Look! That way we shall see it come; these two mirrors
reflect everything up and down the street."
"Are you dressed for church?" asked Lucy. "You have no hat on."
"Where does your grace come from not to know that a mantilla is
what is for church? Mamma is being dressed in her black silk and
her black mantilla."
"And your shoes?"
"I could not wear great, coarse, hard shoes," said the little Dona
Ines; "It would spoil my feet. Ah! I shall have time to show the
Senorita what I can do. Can your grace dance?"
"I danced with Uncle Joe at our last Christmas party," said Lucy,
with great dignity.
"See now," cried the Spaniard; "stand there. Ah! have you no
castanets?" And she quickly took out two very small ivory shells
or bowls, each pair fastened together by a loop, through which she
passed her thumb so that the little spoons hung on her palm, and
she could snap them together with her fingers.
Then she began to dance round Lucy in the most graceful swimming
way, now rising, now falling, and cracking her castanets together
at intervals. Lucy tried to do the same, but her limbs seemed like
a wooden doll's compared with the suppleness and ease of Ines. She
made sharp corners and angles, where the Spaniard floated so like a
sea-bird that it was like seeing her fly or float rather than merely
dance, till at last the very watching her rendered Lucy drowsy and
dizzy; and as the church bells began to ring, and the chant of the
procession to sound, she lost all sense of being in sunny Malaga,
the home of grapes.
CHAPTER XIV.
GERMANY.
There was a great murmur and buzz of learning lessons; rows upon
rows of little boys were sitting before desks, studying; very few
heads looked up as Lucy found herself walking round the room--a
large clean room, with maps hanging on the walls, but hot and
weary-feeling, because there were no windows open and so little
fresh air.
"What are you about, little boy?" she asked.
"I am learning my verb," he said; "moneo, mones, monet."
Lucy waited no longer, but moved off to another desk. "And what are
you doing?"
"I am writing my analysis."
Lucy did not know what an analysis was, so she went a little further.
"What are you doing here?" she said timidly, for these were somewhat
bigger boys.
"We are writing an essay on the individuality of self."
That was enough to frighten any one away, and Lucy betook herself to
some quite little boys, with fat rosy faces and light hair. "Are
you busy, too?"
"Oh, yes; we are learning the chief cities of the Fatherland."
Lucy felt like the little boy in the fable, who could not get either
the dog, or the bird, or the bee, to play with him.
"When do you play?" she asked.
"We have an hour's interval after dinner, and another at supper-time,
but then we prepare our work for the morrow," said one of the boys,
looking up well satisfied.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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