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The Life Of Nancy
by
“To see some dancing,” repeated Tom, mindful of his own gay evening the night before, and of others to come, and the general impossibility of Nancy’s finding the happiness she sought. He never had been so confronted by social barriers. As for Nancy’s dancing at East Rodney, in the schoolhouse hall or in Jacob Parker’s new barn, it had been one of the most ideal things he had ever known in his life; it would be hard to find elsewhere such grace as hers. In seaboard towns one often comes upon strange foreign inheritances, and the soul of a Spanish grandmother might still survive in Nancy, as far as her light feet were concerned. She danced like a flower in the wind. She made you feel light of foot yourself, as if you were whirling and blowing and waving through the air; as if you could go out dancing and dancing over the deep blue sea water of the bay, and find floor enough to touch and whirl upon. But Nancy had always seemed to take her gifts for granted; she had the simplicity of genius. “I can’t say now, but I am sure to find out,” said Tom Aldis definitely. “I’ll try to make some sort of plan for you. I wish we could have another dance, ourselves.”
“Oh, not now,” answered Nancy sensibly. “It’s knowing ‘most all the people that makes a party pleasant.”
“My aunt would have asked you to come to luncheon to-day, but she had to go out of town, and was afraid of not getting back in season. She would like to see you very much. You see, I’m only a bachelor in lodgings, this winter,” explained Tom bravely.
“You’ve been just as good as you could be. I know all about Boston now, almost as if I lived here. I should like to see the inside of one of those big houses,” she added softly; “they all look so noble as you go by. I think it was very polite of your aunt; you must thank her, Mr. Aldis.”
It seemed to Tom as if his companion were building most glorious pleasure out of very commonplace materials. All the morning she had been as gay and busy as a brook.
By the middle of the afternoon he knocked again at cousin Snow’s door in Revere Street, and delivered an invitation. Mrs. Annesley, his aunt, and the kindest of women, would take Nancy to an afternoon class at Papanti’s, and bring her back afterwards, if cousin Snow were willing to spare her. Tom would wait and drive back with her in the coupe; then he must hurry to Cambridge for a business meeting to which he had been suddenly summoned.
Nancy was radiant when she first appeared, but a few minutes later, as they drove away together, she began to look grave and absent. It was only because she was so sorry to think of parting.
“I am so glad about the dancing class,” said Tom. “I never should have thought of that. They are all children, you know; but it’s very pretty, and they have all the new dances. I used to think it a horrid penance when I was a small boy.”
“I don’t know why it is,” said Nancy, “but the mere thought of music and dancin’ makes me feel happy. I never saw any real good dancin’, either, but I can always think what it ought to be. There’s nothing so beautiful to me as manners,” she added softly, as if she whispered at the shrine of confidence.
“My aunt thinks there are going to be some pretty figure dances to-day,” announced Tom in a matter-of-fact way. There was something else than the dancing upon his mind. He thought that he ought to tell Nancy of his engagement,–not that it was quite an engagement yet,–but he could not do it just now. “What was it you were going to tell me this morning? About Addie Porter, wasn’t it?” He laughed a little, and then colored deeply. He had been somewhat foolish in his attentions to this young person, the beguiling village belle of East Rodney and the adjacent coasts. She was a pretty creature and a sad flirt, with none of the real beauty and quaint sisterly ways of Nancy. “What was it all about?” he asked again.