She had never seen any one dance, no one had taught her, but as naturally as a little duck takes to the water, had her little feet taken to dancing on that evening when, for the first time, Starlight had brought his violin to the Bonifaces'. For fully ten minutes, to the great delight of Company F, little Kate kept time in a variety of intricate and pretty little motions to the rhythm of the old violin a sort of dancing in which slow and graceful gestures of dimpled arms and hands played almost as important part as the little feet themselves. Indeed, the whole proceeding was a deliberate one, owing to an inability on Starlight's part to play any faster; but to my thinking “The dancing was a matter of Kate's own creation;” all the prettier for that, and far more becoming to such a dignified little maiden.
As for Company F, it would have liked nothing better than a whole half-hour of dancing; but “Mrs. Manager” wisely protested, and after the little song had been rendered with “violin accompaniment,” and the little piece spoken “with dramatic effect,” Miss Kate Boniface tripped from the stage 'midst hearty peals of applause, and Mrs. Manager, as Starlight had called Hazel, came once more to the front.
“I shall now have the pleasure of acquainting you, gentlemen,” she said, with all the superiority of a veritable showman, “with my own little thoroughbred, one of the most knowing and accomplished of Shetland ponies. Mr. Lightfoot, will you have the kindness to bring Miss Gladys into the ring?” whereupon Starlight, otherwise Mr. Lightfoot, led the pony on to the stage, or, I should say, “into the ring,” as Hazel preferred to regard it from a strictly professional point of view. Gladys had been groomed by Starlight and Flutters to within an inch of her life, in preparation for the occasion, and, indeed, she sorely needed it. The fact was that she had been turned out for the last two months owing to an unfortunate gall on her back which had refused to heal under the saddle; so, while her mistress had been dependent upon Albany coaches for such excursions as she wished to take into the city, Miss Gladys had been kicking up her heels and running races with herself in the most inviting of clover fields. Only yesterday had she been enjoying all this freedom, with burrs in her tail and burrs in her mane, and with never so much as a halter, and here she was to-day tricked out in blue ribbons, with her coat smoothed down to look as silky as possible, and with her four pretty little hoofs oiled up to a state of shiny blackness, but without the sign of shoe on any one of them. There had been no time, indeed, to have Miss Gladys shod, nor was there any need of it, as, after today's performance, back she was to go again, for at least another month more, to all the wild dissipation of pony life in a clover field. Of course she was astonished at the sight of the soldiers, but she had been rehearsing with Starlight and Hazel for a whole hour that morning in that sort of “box stall” which formed the scene of the circus, and so, being somewhat familiar with the place, contented herself with an occasional pricking-up of her black-pointed ears, which only gave her a more spirited look, and, on the whole, was extremely becoming.
“Now, Miss Gladys,” said Hazel, when she had-succeeded in getting her posed to her liking, “I would like you to answer a few questions, and for each correct answer you shall have a beautiful lump of white sugar. Mr. Lightfoot, have you the sugar ready?”
“Yes, Mrs. Manager,” answered Starlight, who, in his capacity of clown, was endeavoring all the while to keep up a funny sort of byplay, and sometimes succeeding; “yes, Mrs. Manager, the sugar is all ready. I have placed, as you perceive, five lumps upon either extended palm, and would like to make this arrangement, that when the pony makes a mistake I may be allowed to eat the sugar.”
“Very well, Mr. Lightfoot, I am quite agreeable to the arrangement; but, if I am not mistaken, the pony thinks you are likely to fare rather poorly; how about that, Miss Gladys? Do you intend that Mr. Lightfoot shall enjoy more than one of those lumps of sugar?” Hazel stood leaning against the pony's side, lightly swinging her riding-whip in apparently aimless fashion in her left hand, but in answer to her question, Miss Gladys shook her pretty head from side to side with as decided an assertion in the negative as though she had been able to voice an audible “No.”
“There! what did I tell you, Mr. Lightfoot?”
“Why! did Miss Gladys answer? I didn't hear her.”
“Of course you did not hear her. She answered by shaking her head. Ponies can't talk.”
“What! can't Miss Gladys say a word?”