"Bend and rise-a—Nora Creina,
Rise on your toes-a—Nora Creina,
Chassez to the right-a—Nora Creina,
And then to the left-a—Nora Creina."
In his least inspired moments, he addressed us in the first position; but whenever he soared aloft on the wings of imagination, he stood in the glory of the fifth. In that position he never failed to recite to us the imposing tale of his successes in the "reception halls" of the Duchess of Leamington and the Marchioness of Stoke. Once he went so far as to exhibit to us a new dance he had composed expressly for his illustrious friend the duchess.
"My dears, that dance will be all the rage next spring in London, you will see."
He was quite aware that we never would see, having nothing on earth to do with the London season. But the assertion mystified us, and enchanted him.
"Thus my hand lightly reposes on the waist of her Grace, her fingers just touch my shoulders, and, one, two, three—boom!" he was gliding round the room, clasping lightly an imaginary duchess in his arms, in beatific unconsciousness of the exquisite absurdity of his appearance and action, and we children followed his circumvolutions with glances magnified and brightened by mirth and wonderment.
The irresistible Mr. Parker had a knavish trick of keeping us on our good behaviour by a delusive promise persistently unfulfilled. Every Tuesday, after saluting us in the fashion of the eighteenth century and demanding from us an immense simultaneous curtsey of Queen Anne, holding our skirts in an extravagant semicircle and trailing our little bent bodies backward and upward upon the most pointed of toes, he would rap the table with his bow, clear his throat, adjust his white tie, straighten himself, and, with a hideous grin he doubtless deemed captivating, he would address us inclusively—