Angela stopped playing and looked round her. The girls were crowded together.
Rebekah Hermitage sat apart at the table. There was that in her face which betokened disapproval, mingled with curiosity, for she had never seen a dance, and never, except on a barrel-organ, heard dance music. Nelly Sorensen stood beside the piano watching the player with the devotion which belongs to the disciple who loves the most. Whatever Miss Kennedy did was right and sweet and beautiful. Also, whatever she did filled poor Nelly with a sense of humiliation, because she herself felt so ignorant.
"Rebekah! Nelly!" cried Angela. "Can you not help me?"
Both shook their heads.
"I cannot dance," said Rebekah, trying to show a little scorn, or, at least, some disapprobation. "In our Connection we never dance."
"You never dance?" Angela forgot for the moment that she was in Stepney, and among a class of girls who do not dance. "Do you sing?"
"If any is merry," replied Rebekah, "let him sing hymns."
"Nelly, can you help me?"
She, too, shook her head. But, she said, "her father could play the fiddle. Might he come?"
Angela begged her to invite him immediately, and on her way to ask Mr. Goslett, at Mrs. Bormalack's, to bring his fiddle too. Between them they would teach the girls to dance.