t's a very decent sort of
room. Would you like to dance on the lawn?"

"Not in December, thanks!"

"Are you ready, girls?" asked Miss Paget, opening the door. "Miss
Leighton has just come, and we're going to begin."

There was no doubt that the dances were extremely pretty. Miss Leighton
was an excellent teacher, and her pupils did her credit. The audience
was charmed, and clapped with the utmost enthusiasm at the end of each
performance. There was a Daisy Dance, in which twelve little girls,
dressed to represent daisies, went through a series of very graceful
movements; and a Rose Gavotte that was equally pretty and tasteful. A
Butterflies' Ball, in which the dancers waved gorgeous wings of painted
muslin, was highly effective; and so was the Russian Mazurka, given by
Vivien and Dorothy, attired in fur-trimmed costumes and high scarlet
leather boots. The babies looked sweet in a Doll Dance, and little
Beatrice Perry made a sensation by her _pas seul_ as "Cupid", dressed in
a classic toga with the orthodox bow and arrows. She was a beautifully
made child of six, and danced barefooted, so she looked the part
admirably, and quite carried the audience by storm.

Monica, with floating fair hair, a figured muslin dress and a basket of
flowers, capered as a "Spring Wind" and dropped blossoms in the path of
"April"; even Patsie, the overgrown, looked quite pretty in her Flower
Quadrille. But everybody decided that the star of the afternoon was
Claudia. She was beautiful to begin with, and her forget-me-not costume
suited her exactly. Perhaps her long experience in posing as a model for
her father's pictures made it easier for her to learn the right
postures. She had dropped into the rhythmic dancing as into a
birthright; her movements seemed the very embodiment of natural grace,
and to watch her was like surprising the fairies at dawn, or the dryads
and oreads in a classic forest. The best of Claudia was that she was
quite without self-consciousness. She danced because she enjoyed it, not
to command admiration. She received the storm of clapping quite as a
matter of course, just as she took the exhibition of her many portraits
in the Academy.

"I'd give anything to have your face," said Patsie enviously to her
afterwards. "Some folks are luckers! Why wasn't _I_ born pretty? It
gives people such a tremendous pull!"

"I don't know," answered Claudia, rather taken aback at the question.

"Look here!" said Lorraine; "we've