The joy of my second year at Lysterby was Mr. Parker the dancing-master. Was he evoked from pantomime and grotesque legend by the sympathetic genius of Sister Ignatius? We were all solemnly convened, in our best shoes and frocks, to a great meeting in the big hall to make the acquaintance of our dancing-master, and learn the polite steps of society. A wizen cross-looking little creature stood at the top of the long room, and as we entered in file, all agog, and ready enough, heaven knows, to shriek for nothing, from sheer animal spirits, he bowed to us, as I suppose they bowed in the good old days of Queen Anne. For Queen Anne was his weakness. I wonder why, since she was neither the queen of grace nor of beauty.

I recall the gist of his first speech: "We are now, young ladies, about to study one of the most necessary and the most serious of arts, the art of dancing. It is the art of dancing that makes ladies and gentlemen of us all. In a ball-room the awkward, those who cannot dance, are in disgrace. Nobody minds them, nobody admires them. They have not the tone of society. They are poor creatures, who, for all society cares, might never have been born. What it behoves you, young ladies, is to acquire the tone of society from your earliest years, and it is only by a steady practice of the art of dancing that you may hope to acquire it. Practice, young ladies, makes perfect—remember that."

Ever afterwards, his first question, before beginning each week\'s lesson, was: "What does practice do, young ladies?" and we were all expected to reply in a single ringing voice: "Makes perfect, Mr. Parker." Children are heartless satirists, and the follies of poor little Mr. Parker filled us with wicked glee.

I see him still, unconscious tiny clown, gathering up in a delicate grasp the tails of his black coat to show us how a lady curtseyed in the remote days of Queen Anne. And mincing across the polished floor, he would say, as he daintily picked his steps: "The lady enters the ball-room on the tip of her toes—so!" Picture, I pray you, the comic appearance of any woman who dared to enter a ball-room as Mr. Parker walked across our dancing-hall! Society would stand still to gape. He minced to right, he minced to left, he minced in and out of the five positions, and then with eyes ecstatically closed, he would seize his violin, and play the homely air of "Nora Creina," as he chasséed up and down the floor for our delectation, singing the while—
"Bend and rise-a—Nora Creina,
Rise on your toes-a—Nora Creina,
Chassez to the right-a—Nora Creina,
And then to the left-a—Nora Creina."

In his least inspired moments, he addressed us in the first position; but whenever he soared aloft on the wings of imagination, he stood in the glory of the fifth. In that position he never failed to recite to us the imposing tale of his successes in the "reception halls" of the Duchess of Leamington and the Marchioness of Stoke. Once he went so far as to exhibit to us a new dance he had composed expressly for his illustrious friend the duchess.

"My dears, that dance will be all the rage next spring in London, you will see."

He was quite aware that we never would see, having nothing on earth to do with the London season. But the assertion mystified us, and enchanted him.
 
"Thus my hand lightly reposes on the waist of her Grace, her fingers just touch my shoulders, and, one, two, three—boom!" he was gliding round the room, clasping lightly an imaginary duchess in his arms, in beatific unconsciousness of the exquisite absurdity of his appearance and action, and we children followed his circumvolutions with glances magnified and brightened by mirth and wonderment.

The irresistible Mr. Parker had a knavish trick of keeping us on our good behaviour by a delusive promise persistently unfulfilled. Every Tuesday, after saluting us in the fashion of the eighteenth century and demanding from us an immense simultaneous curtsey of Queen Anne, holding our skirts in an extravagant semicircle and trailing our little bent bodies backward and upward upon the most pointed of toes, he would rap the table with his bow, clear his throat, adjust his white tie, straighten himself, and, with a hideous grin he doubtless deemed captivating, he would address us inclusively—

"Young ladies, it is my intention to bring you a little confectionery next Tuesday; and now, if you please, attention! and answer. What does practice do?"

In vain we shouted our customary response with more than our customary conviction; the confectionery was always for next Tuesday, and never, alas! for to-day. With longing eyes we watched the slightest movement of the master towards his pocket. He never produced anything but his handkerchief, and when he doubled in two to wish us "O reevoyer," he never omitted to say—

"To-day I did not pass by the confectioner\'s shop; but it will certainly be for next Tuesday."

For a long time he took us in, as other so-called magicians have taken in simpletons as great as we. We believed he had a secret understanding with the devil, for only to the power of evil could we attribute a quickness of apprehension such as he boasted. He would stand with his back to us, playing a............