"If I go there again, which I doubt, will you do me the kindness not to lose sight of the balcony, eh?"
"I should rather think so," was the laconic reply of the indomitable Piscis.
The following day was Sunday, and the usual weekly ball took place at the school. They danced in the afternoon from three to seven. The room was spacious, having been built a few years before as a school for children. The benches were piled up on the teacher's platform; the walls were covered with maps and proverbs, and as the followers of Terpsichore danced the languid habanera, they could amuse themselves by reading a portion of the invaluable exhortations tending to show that virtue and labor are the true treasures of childhood: "The studious child will receive the reward of his industry;" "Truth and perseverance are superior to talents." And there at the end over the master's table was the image of Christ crucified (oh, blasphemy!), mounted on a silken background, in the presence of these wild polkas and voluptuous dances.
It was there that, without fear of rain or sun, strangers could court and admire the young girls of Sarrio. And, in truth, all the captains and pilots who visited the town took care to frequent the place. Occasionally their admiration led them to overstep the bounds of British gravity, and their fair beards came too near to the face of some beauty.
"Are you mad, Christian?" she would ask, as she pushed him away.
"Christian! Christian!" the Englishman repeated in astonishment. "What is being a Christian?"
"Goodness, man, don't you know the doctrine? Well, learn it then."
It would be about five or six in the evening, after four or five waltzes and as many polkas had been danced, that these ladies were so charming. The well-circulated blood tinged their cheeks with a bright color; their fair or dark locks, in pretty disorder, floated in the air or fell in adorable curls upon their shoulders; their eyes shone like stars in those heavenly faces, and those ruddy, luscious, half-opened lips revealed immaculate rows of teeth.
But enough, or we shall never finish; albeit in our admiration of the working-girls of Sarrio we are outdone by every Englishman who comes hither.
There was always a sameness in the feminine element of these balls, for it was entirely composed of young girls of the same rung of the social ladder. But there was a dangerous variety in the masculine element, for it consisted of the young gentlemen as well as the young artisans of Sarrio. Thus the artisans considered that their rights were encroached upon by the rival charms of the young gentlemen, and the repeated unequal marriages that took place in the town showed how they had been ousted.