Angemal Terkelsen fell to my lot, a big, awkward boy who could neither bow nor dance, and would never swing himself round except when he came to a corner of the hall, where he had to turn. At first he danced so poorly, that he had to practise all alone while the rest of us sat and watched him. He was stiff as a poker and looked bored all the time he was in the class.
I was mightily offended with Baklind because I had to have Angemal for my partner, although of course Baklind was not to blame that Angemal and I were of the same height. Still, I remember that at that time I thought it was all his fault. Dance with Angemal I must, two hours every day for six weeks.
Towards the last, however, he wasn’t so bad. Whether it was I or Baklind who had improved him, I don’t know, but he even grew rather agreeable. He found out one day that I was awfully fond of chocolate, and always after that he brought me a thick cake of chocolate, and sometimes two cakes. Angemal’s father was a storekeeper. I am afraid that many pounds of chocolate disappeared from the shop during those weeks of dancing-school.
Every evening between six and eight o’clock, Madam Pirk’s garden fence was full of street urchins who had climbed up there to look in at us who were dancing. They made a tremendous rumpus out there, threw each other down off the fence, laughed and shouted.
In the hall, the floor rocked under our sixty feet, the cows in the cellar lowed, the old stove shook and rattled. Baklind played the violin, struck one and another sinner with his bow, counted out the time: one-two-three-hop! one-two-three-hop! I shoved and dragged Angemal, and the whole hall was in a cloud of dust that sifted down from the ceiling and out of the corners and from Madam Pirk’s old straight-backed chairs.
In the breathing-time between dances, we sat and rested, like hens gone to roost, on Madam Pirk’s steep, white-scoured attic stairs; or else Baklind taught us how we should enter a room or look out of a window or do something else in a proper manner. The most beautiful, but also the most complicated way to look out of a window was the following: feet crossed, body in a curve, and arms leaning lightly on the window-sill. He added also that, having taken this position, the person ought to turn his gaze upward. I wonder if Angemal Terkelsen, or any other of us ever stands and looks out of the window in that fashion?
Once in a while Baklind would get frantic over the street boys perching on the garden fence and peeping in at us. Never in my life have I seen a person leap as our dancing-master did, when he dashed out after those boys. I am not exaggerating when I say that he took steps five or six feet long. With uplifted cane and curls flying every-which-way, he literally stretched himself out flat against Madam Pirk’s fence. But if Baklind thought he could get hold of Stian, the watchman’s boy, or George, the street-sweeper’s, he made a great mistake. They were up on the hill like a streak of lightning, pointing their fingers at him and roaring with laughter. “Such wolf-cubs—I’d like to break the noses off of those imps,” said Baklind when he came in all out of breath.
When dancing-school had lasted for about a month, the big old stove began to shake and clatter in a very disquieting manner.
“Poor old thing!” said Baklind. “He doesn’t care much for all this dancing. I think we must brace him up a little. We’ll tie a rope around him!”
Then things were lively for a few minutes. Angemal ran home for a rope. Baklind put one chair on another, balanced himself on the top one and tied the stout rope around the stove and then to some big nails in the wall.