SPAIN.
"Suppose now I go to sleep again; what should I like to see next?
A sunny place, I think, where there is sea to look at. Shall it
be Spain, and shall it be among the poor people? Well, I think I
should be where there is a little lady girl. I hope they are not
all as lazy and conceited as the Chinese and the Turk."
So Lucy awoke in a large, cool room with a marble floor and heavy
curtains, but with little furniture except one table, and a row of
chairs ranged along the wall. It had two windows, one looking out
into a garden,--such a garden!--orange-trees with shining leaves
and green and golden fruit and white flowers, and jasmines, and
great lilies standing round about a marble court. In the midst of
this court was a basin of red marble, where a fountain was playing,
making a delicious splashing; and out beyond these sparkled in the
sun the loveliest and most delicious of blue seas--the same blue
sea, indeed, that Lucy had seen in her Italian visit.
That window was empty; but the other, which looked out into the
street, had cushions laid on the sill, an open-work stone ledge
beyond, and little looking-glasses on either side. Leaning over this
sill there was seated a little maiden in a white frock, but with a
black lace veil fastened by a rose into her jet-black hair, and the
daintiest, prettiest-shaped little feet imaginable in white satin
shoes, which could be plainly seen as she knelt on the window-seat.
"What are you looking at?" asked Lucy, coming to her side.
"I'm watching for the procession. Then I shall go to church with
mamma. Look! That way we shall see it come; these two mirrors
reflect everything up and down the street."
"Are you dressed for church?" asked Lucy. "You have no hat on."
"Where does your grace come from not to know that a mantilla is
what is for church? Mamma is being dressed in her black silk and
her black mantilla."
"And your shoes?"
"I could not wear great, coarse, hard shoes," said the little Dona
Ines; "It would spoil my feet. Ah! I shall have time to show the
Senorita what I can do. Can your grace dance?"
"I danced with Uncle Joe at our last Christmas party," said Lucy,
with great dignity.
"See now," cried the Spaniard; "stand there. Ah! have you no
castanets?" And she quickly took out two very small ivory shells
or bowls, each pair fastened together by a loop, through which she
passed her thumb so that the little spoons hung on her palm, and
she could snap them together with her fingers.
Then she began to dance round Lucy in the most graceful swimming
way, now rising, now falling, and cracking her castanets together
at intervals. Lucy tried to do the same, but her limbs seemed like
a wooden doll's compared with the suppleness and ease of Ines. She
made sharp corners and angles, where the Spaniard floated so like a
sea-bird that it was like seeing her fly or float rather than merely
dance, till at last the very watching her rendered Lucy drowsy and
dizzy; and as the church bells began to ring, and the chant of the
procession to sound, she lost all sense of being in sunny Malaga,
the home of grapes.