In the drawing-room, my aunt was saying to The Tartar, "Oh, yes, Bettina sings and dances."
"She sings," I said.
"Don't you skirt-dance?" The Tartar asked.
Bettina looked sorry. "I can dance ordinary dances," she said. "But what sort is a skirt-dance?"
The men made a semicircle round her to explain.
Betty said she hadn't done any skirt-dances since she was a little girl.
"Oh, and what are you now?" the Colonel said, grinning horribly.
They made Bettina tell about the action-songs our mother had taught us in the nursery. They asked her to do one.
Of course Bettina refused. "They're only for children," she said with that little air borrowed from our mother.
The Tartar threw back his bullet head and roared. The Colonel said they were sick, in London, of sophisticated dancing. What they wanted was Bettina's sort. Bettina shook her head.