She had once evoked wild applause at Tony Pastor's by
her clog-dancing.
There was another dancer there, an old grenadier of a woman who
had been famous in her time as a _premiere danseuse_ at
the opera. Mrs. Bottger had spent a large part of her early life
on one toe, but now she could hardly balance herself sitting down.
She held on to the table while she ate. She did not look as if
she needed to eat any more.
Kedzie was proud to know people who had been as famous as these two
said they had been, but Bottger and Jambers used to fight bitterly
over their respective schools of expression. Bottger insisted that
the buck-and-wing and the double shuffle and other forms of jiggery
were low. Jambers insisted that the ballet was immoral and, what
was more, insincere. Mrs. Bottger was furious at the latter charge,
but the former was now rather flattering. She used secretly to take
out old photographs of herself as a slim young thing in tights with
one toe for support and the other resting on one knee. She would
gloat over these as a miser over his gold; and she would shake her
finger at her quondam self and scold it lovingly--"You wicked little
thing, you!" Then she would hastily move it out of the reach of her
tears. It was safe under the eaves of her bosom against her heart.
It was a merry war, with dishonors even, till a new-comer appeared,
a Miss Eleanor Silsby, who taught the ultimate word in dancing; she
admitted it herself.
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