tas each for their pleasure, and it is not too much for a pleasure
so innocent and charming. The academy is on the ground floor of the
_maestro's_ unpretentious house, and in a waiting-room beyond the
shoemaker's shop which filled the vestibule sat, patient in their black
mantillas, the mothers and nurses of the pupils. These were mostly quite
small children in their every-day clothes, but there were two or three
older girls in the conventional dancing costume which a lady from one of
the hotels had emulated. Everything was very simple and friendly; Otero
found good seats among the _aficionados_ for the guests presented to
him, and then began calling his pupils to the floor of the long, narrow
room with quick commands of "_Venga_!" A piano was tucked away in a
corner, but the dancers kept time now with castanets and now by snapping
their fingers. Two of the oldest girls, who were apparently graduates,
were "differently beautiful" in their darkness and fairness, but
alike picturesquely Spanish in their vivid dresses and the black veils
fluttering from their high combs. A youth in green velvet jacket and
orange trousers, whose wonderful dancing did him credit as Otero's prize
pupil, took part with them; he had the square-jawed, high-cheek-boned
face of the lower-class Spaniard, and they the oval of all Spanish
women. Here there was no mere posturing and contortioning among the
girls as with the gipsies; they sprang like flames and stamped the floor
with joyous detonations of their slippers. It was their convention to
catch the hat from the head of some young spectator and wear it in a
figure and then toss it back to him. One of them enacted the part of a
_torero_ at a bull-fight, stamping round first in a green satin cloak
which she then waved before a man's felt hat thrown on the ground to
represent the bull hemmed about with _banderillas_ stuck quivering into
the floor. But the prettiest thing was the dancing of two little girl
pupils, one fair and thin and of an angelic gracefulness, and the other
plump and dark, who was as dramatic as the blond was lyrical. They
accompanied themselves with castanets, and, though the little fatling
toed in and wore a common dress of blue-striped gingham, I am afraid she
won our hearts from her graceful rival. Both were very serious and
gave their whole souls to the dance, but they were not more childishly
earnest than an older girl in black who danced with one of the gaudy
graduates, pan