Free Ballet Shoes for Anna by Noel Streatfeild

he wrote the children a friendly letter telling them that he would not be away long, and that when he came back he would ask permission from their uncle to take them out. At the end of the letter he said:
If, Anna, you are not fixed up with a suitable dancing teacher I hear very good accounts of a Madame Scarletti. I looked her up in the telephone book. She has a studio at 45 Bemberton Street, Chelsea, London. I gather she is very old but still one of the best teachers in the world.
    Then Sir William licked up the letter, put it in his pocket to post on arrival and forgot all about it for the next six weeks, when by chance he wore that coat again and found the letter in a pocket.
    Wally’s mum got £1.25 for each suitcase and Wally arranged that Doreen, who lived by the church, should take Anna to Miss de Veane’s studio.
    “She’s a right silly type, that Doreen,” he told the children. “Giggles at nothin’, but she’s been with Miss de Veane since she was ever so small, so she’s in with her like so could get her to see Anna.”
    This was not at all what Anna wanted.
    “But it’s I who wish to see Miss de Veane. Until I see how she teaches I do not know if it is with her I wish to learn.”
    “But, Anna,” Francesco pleaded, “if she is the only one could you not learn from her just until S’William comes home?”
    “I think it is what Jardek would have wished,” said Gussie. “Great harm cannot come from one lesson each Saturday.”
    Anna stamped her foot she was so cross.
    “Great harm can come. Wrong positions, wrong use of muscles and my legs may be ruined for ever and ever.”
    Gussie shrugged and turned to Francesco.
    “I do not know why we sold the suitcases. Wally’s mum says all must go to school or The Uncle may go to prison. This would I think be a good idea but he will not wish to go. So Anna can only dance when there is no school and there is only one to teach. What more can we do? In London perhapsthere are many who teach well but how can Anna go to London? The Uncle will not take her in his car for he thinks to dance is a sin.”
    Francesco agreed.
    “He’s quite right, Anna, it’s Miss de Veane or nobody at all. Go and see the lady and if she will teach you then try how it goes.”
    “But if it goes wrong?” said Anna. “She will have all the money for our suitcases, and we have no more money.”
    “If we must we will get more,” Gussie promised, “but go in hope that this lady is such a one as Jardek would approve.”
    So two days later the boys took Anna, with her shoes in a paper bag – which Mabel gave her without asking why she wanted it – to the house by the church where Doreen lived.
    Wally was quite right. Doreen was a very giggling girl, but she was kind-hearted so took complete charge of Anna.
    “Now you don’t want to be nervous like, she’s ever so kind really.” Then Doreen giggled. “Course it’s different for me, I been with her ever so long so I dance solos and that for her shows.”
    Doreen was a plump little girl with brown ringlets. She did not, Anna thought, look a dancer, at least she did not look like the girls Jardek had taught of whom he had shown her photographs.
    “Which solos do you dance?”
    Doreen giggled again.
    “All sorts, ever so pretty the costumes I’ve worn. Once I was a fairy and another time a butterfly and another time thespirit of winter. I wore a big white bonnet for that with a robin on it. Of course mostly it’s musical comedy or tap that I do.”
    Anna had no idea what Doreen was talking about, but it didn’t sound the sort of dancing Jardek taught.
    The studio door was opened by Miss de Veane. She was a long thin woman with orange-coloured hair which at the roots showed it was really dark. She wore a very tight-fitting black dress and white boots. Anna, as she had been taught to do by Olga to any grown-up, dropped a polite little curtsey.
    This made Doreen giggle.
    “She’s part foreign. That’s why she does that,