"Poor thing!" exclaimed Rebecca, "why should not they let her dance as merrily as she likes? I will never stint my scholars in their jumps."
Nurse thought that on the sea-shore, or on the green, it was different from the present occasion. Miss Lucy came to learn to dance, not to practise leaping. She could not imagine what possessed the child to-day to dance as she did. Lucy was not strong, and there was trouble enough sometimes in getting her to do more than merely shuffle her feet.
"She just makes up when she is in spirits for what she can't do at other times," was Rebecca's good-natured excuse, as she smiled at the happy-looking fluttered Lucy.
Nurse beckoned the offender across the room to receive a rebuke, as soon as the quadrille was finished; and Lucy came smiling, panting, and fanning herself, and went away again, not at all disheartened by nurse's lecture on manners. She was observed, as she took her seat, to look up at Mademoiselle and Adèle, as much as to say, "What do you think of my dancing?" Mademoiselle smiled, and Adèle looked indifferent.
"Well, ma'am," said nurse, "so the Lieutenant's lady was very sorry for my poor son. I remember he said something of her once in a letter or a message."
"Said something of her! Why, well he might. He seemed to think of little but pleasing or displeasing her; and she was kind to him accordingly. I used to think he would never put his hat on again, when he had taken it off to be spoken to by the ladies from the station-house."
"Aye, there is another lady too. Was she kind to my poor son also?"
"All very well: but Miss Storey had always more partiality for our people than for the Preventive men. Poor father said,--one of the last jokes I have heard him make,--that he saw nothing for it but Miss Elizabeth taking to drinking or smoking, as she is so partial to smuggling and all that sort of thing, and as she must now get what she used to have so in other ways."
"But gloves come over against the law still, do not they?"
"Very few, high as the duty is. They are not sought after as they were a while ago, for they say the English gloves are nearly as good and as cheap now, and there are many more made. They say at the Custom-house that near twice as many skins come into the country as there were a few years ago; and so there is no occasion to smuggle so many French."