assurance. "He does it so that you may copy him. Chin up. Oh! how
fat you are."

Desiree herself was slim enough and as yet only half grown. She did
not dance so well as Mathilde, who moved through a quadrille with
the air of a duchess, and threw into a polonaise or mazurka a quiet
grace which was the envy and despair of her pupils. Mathilde was
patient with the slow and heavy of foot, while Desiree told them
bluntly that they were fat. Nevertheless, they were afraid of
Mathilde, and only laughed at Desiree when she rushed angrily at
them, and, seizing them by the arms, danced them round the room with
the energy of despair.

Sebastian, who had an oddly judicial air, such as men acquire who
are in authority, held the balance evenly between the sisters, and
smiled apologetically over his fiddle towards the victim of
Desiree's impetuosity.

"Yes," he would reply to watching mothers, who tried to lead him to
say that their daughter was the best dancer in the school: "Yes,
Mathilde puts it into their heads, and Desiree shakes it down to
their feet."

In all matters of the household Desiree played a similar part. She
was up early and still astir after nine o'clock at night, when the
other houses in the Frauengasse were quiet, if there were work to
do.

"It is because she has no method," said Mathilde, who had herself a
well-ordered mind, and that quickness which never needs to hurry.