"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."
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.
