“Shall I dance now?” enquired Pequita.
Lotys smiled and nodded. Four or five of the company at once got up, and helped to push aside the table.
“Will you play for me, Monsieur Valdor?” asked the little girl, still standing by the side of Zouche.
“Of course, my child! What shall it be? Something to suggest a fairy hopping over mushrooms in the moonlight?—or Shakespeare’s Ariel swinging on a cobweb from a bunch of may?”
Pequita considered, and for a moment did not reply, while Zouche, still holding her little brown hand, kissed it again.
“You are very fond of dancing?” asked Pasquin Leroy, looking at her dark face and big black eyes with increasing interest.
She smiled frankly at him.
“Yes! I would like to dance before the King!”
“Fie, fie, Pequita!” cried Johan Zegota, while murmurs of laughter and playful cries of ‘Shame, Shame’ echoed through the room.
“Why not?” said Pequita; “It would do me good, and my father too! Such poor, sad people come to the theatre where I dance,—they love to see me, and I love to dance for them—but then—they too would be pleased if I could dance at the Royal Opera, because they would know I could then earn enough money to make my father comfortable.”