“I'm going to be a Gorgeous Entertainment; I'm going to be the Greatest Agg-Aggregation of Historic Talent now touring the Middle West. I'm Mademoiselle Winifred Wallace, of Madison Square Theatre, New York, positively appearing here for one night only. I'm the whole company, and the stage manager, and the band, and the boys that throw the bouquets. Biff! I'm checked high; all you've got to do is to sit there with your poor croodles and feel them melt away. Let's light the foot-lights.”
There was a row of old brass bedroom candlesticks on the kitchen shelf that were seldom used now in the house of Dyce, though their polish was the glory of Miss Bell's heart. The child kilted up her gown, jumped on a chair, and took them down with the help of Kate. She stuck in each a candle, and ranged them in a semicircle on the floor, then lit the candles and took her place behind them.
“Put out the lamp!” she said to Kate, in the common voice of actors' tragedy.
“Indeed and I'll do nothing of the kind,” said the maid. “If your auntie Bell comes in she'll—she'll skin me alive for letting you play such cantrips with her candles. Forbye, you're going to do something desperate, something that's not canny, and I must have the lamp behind me or I'll lose my wits.”
“Woman, put out the light!” repeated Bud, with an imperious, pointing finger, and, trembling, Kate turned down the lamp upon the wall and blew down the chimney in the very way Miss Dyce was always warning her against. She gasped at the sudden change the loss of the light made—at the sense of something idolatrous and bewitched in the arc of flames on her kitchen floor, each blown inward from the draught of a rattling window.
“If it is buidseachas—if it is witchcraft of any kind you are on for, I'll not have it,” said Kate, firmly. “I never saw the like of this since the old woman in Pennyland put the curse on the Colonsay factor, and she had only seven candles. Dear, dear Lennox, do not do anything desperate; do not be carrying on, for you are frightening me out of my judgment. I'm—I'm maybe better now; I took a bite at a biscuit; indeed, I'm quite better; it was nothing but the cold—and a lad out there that tried to kiss me.”
Bud paid no heed, but plucked up the edges of her skirt in out-stretched hands and glided into the last dance she had learned from the vaudeville lady, humming softly to herself an appropriate tune. The candles warmly lit her neck, her ears, her tilted nostrils; her brow was high in shadow. First she rose on tiptoe and made her feet to twitter on the flags, then swayed and swung a little body that seemed to hang in air. The white silk swept around and over her—wings with no noise of flapping feather, or swirled in sea-shell coils, that rose in a ripple from her ankles and swelled in wide, circling waves above her head, revealing her in glimpses like some creature born of foam on fairy beaches and holding the command of tempest winds. Ah, dear me! many and many a time I saw her dance just so in her daft days before the chill of wisdom and reflection came her way; she was a passion disembodied, an aspiration realized, a happy morning thought, a vapor, a perfume of flowers, for her attire had lain in lavender. She was the spirit of spring, as I have felt it long ago in little woods, or seen it in pictures, or heard it in songs; she was an ecstasy, she was a dream.
The dog gave a growl of astonishment, then lay his length on the hearth-rug, his nose between his paws, his eyes fixed on her. “I'll not have it,” said the maid, piteously. “At least I'll not stand much of it, for it's not canny to be carrying on like that in a Christian dwelling. I never did the like of that in all my life.”
“Every move a picture,” said the child, and still danced on, with the moan of the wind outside for a bass to her low-hummed melody. Her stretching folds flew high, till she seemed miraculous tall, and to the servant's fancy might have touched the low ceiling; then she sank—and sank—and sank till her forehead touched the floor, and she was a flower fallen, the wind no more to stir its petals, the rain no more to glisten on its leaves. 'Twas as if she shrivelled and died there, and Kate gave one little cry that reached the players of cards in the parlor.
“Hush! what noise was that?” said Ailie, lifting her head.