"Did you remember to ask Mrs. Gordon about Mr. Beauchamp?" Miss Judy now inquired, adroitly bending Sidney's thoughts toward a delightful subject in which they were both deeply interested. "Did she know whether he used to be a dancing-master in his own country, as we have understood? I do hope you haven't changed your mind," she added earnestly. "It is really most important for Doris to learn to dance."
"No, I haven't changed it a bit. I've got the same Hard-shell, Whiskey Baptist mind that I've had for the last forty years. But it isn't as I think about dancing, or anything else that Doris is concerned in. It's as you think—"
"No—no, you mustn't say that," protested Miss Judy.
"I do say it, I mean it, and I intend to abide by it," declared Sidney, laying her knitting on her lap and loosing rings of yarn from her big ball and holding them out at arm's length. "You've always known better what was good for Doris than I ever have. When it comes to a difference of opinion I'm bound to give up."
Miss Judy blushed and looked distressed. "It is really such an important matter," she urged timidly. "A young lady cannot possibly learn how to walk and how to carry herself with real grace, without being taught dancing. If I only had some one to play the tune, I might teach Doris the rudiments myself; or sister Sophia might, if she hadn't that shortness of breath, and if I could play any instrumental piece on the guitar except the Spanish fandango. That tune, however, is not very well suited to the minuet, which is the only dance that we ever learned. Mother taught us the minuet, because she thought it necessary for all well brought up girls to learn it just for deportment, though she knew we should probably never have an opportunity to dance it in society."
Thus reminded of the many things that they had missed, Miss Judy turned and smiled a little sadly at Miss Sophia, as though it were the sweetest and most natural thing in the world to speak of Miss Sophia's dancing the minuet,—poor, little, round, slow Miss Sophia! And Miss Sophia also thought it sweet and natural, her dull gaze meeting her sister's bright one with confiding love as she murmured the usual vague assent.
"And did you think to ask Mrs. Gordon whether Mr. Beauchamp—" Miss Judy hesitated at the Frenchman's name, which she pronounced as the English pronounce it, and delicately touched her forehead.
"She said he was perfectly sane except upon that one subject, and the kindest, honestest soul alive," said Sidney, whisking the ball from under her arm and reeling off more yarn.
Miss Judy's sweet old face and soft blue eyes wore the dreamy look which always came over them when her imagination was stirred. "How romantic it is and how touching, that he should have believed, through all these years of hard work and a menial life, that he is Napoleon's son, the real King of Rome."
"Well, it don't do any harm," Sidney, the practical, said. "He don't dance with his head. It seems to me, too, I've heard that lots of crazy folks were great dancers. Anyway, you may tell him, as soon as you like, that I'll knit his summer socks to pay him for showing Doris how to dance, and you may say that I'll throw in the cotton to boot. I always like to pay the full price for whatever I get. If he still thinks that isn't enough, you might tell him I'm willing to knit his winter ones too, but he's got to furnish the yarn—there's reason in all things."