He seemed to be made of springs, India rubber springs, to be as light as a thistle down, to tread, float, on air, and to possess the wind and speed of a dervish.
The black-eyed slip of a girl watched him in breathless amazement and delight; and when he finished and came on his toe points as if he had just floated down from the grimy house-tops, she uttered a long-drawn sigh of envy and admiration.
"I couldn't do that," she said, looking at him sullenly but wistfully.
"No, not yet," he said. "And why, my child? Because you have not been taught. One does not know how to dance till one learns. Would you like to learn?"
"Shouldn't I, just!" she responded.
"Take me to your mother, and we will see," he said.
She ran, sprang into the shop.
"Mother, here's a man as dances like—like—an angel," (she said "a hangel",) "and he's going to teach me."
The poor woman "went for her" with a stick that lay handy, but M. Faber interposed, and entered on an explanation and a proposal.
He would take Sarah Ann as a pupil, teach her to dance, get her an engagement at one of the theaters, and in return, she was to be bound to him as a kind of apprentice, and give him a certain percentage—it was a fair one—of all she might earn for the next five years.