“All right. Let’s,” agreed Natalie, seeing nothing dangerous in such a plan. Nor did Jessica object. She followed in all innocence and ignorance whatever the affectionate Aubrey suggested. But after one round of the block, that lively girl tired of it.
“Pshaw! There’s nothing to see here. I want to see something. Something except brown-stone houses and a few carriages before them. Hark! I hear music! Guess it is a hand-organ! Oh! I love hand-organs! Especially if they have monkeys to them. Hurry up! Come on! Isn’t this a lark?”
Natalie made a vain clutch at the starched and fleeing skirt, which eluded her grasp as its wearer dashed onward around the next corner and eastward along a cross street.
“It is a hand-organ! And there is a monkey—The dearest, delightfullest one ever! Hurry up, girls, do hurry up. See? There are children dancing on the pavement. Oh! how pretty and how jolly!”
It was both pretty and extremely “jolly.” Older eyes than these have watched the unconscious, small street-dancers, lured from their poor homes by the melody of “Money Musk” or its like, though wheezed from a weather-beaten hurdy-gurdy; and none of these three now remembered aught they should.
For them there was also lure in the music and in the antics of the red-clad monkey.
“Oh! how perfectly, delightfully ‘plebeian!’” cried Aubrey, her own nimble feet keeping time to those entrancing strains and catching Jessica about the waist to make her join in that mad whirl. “I can just fancy Helen Rhinelander’s face when I tell her, to-night, where we have been and what we’ve done. Ever been to dancing school, Jessica?”
“No, indeed, never.”
“I thought so. Never mind, you’ll learn soon. We have the finest teacher in the city. Come on, Nat! Let’s take a turn!”
Not one but many; and soon the surroundings changed and even reckless Aubrey paused and exclaimed: