In a Little Town Part 37

"Two o'clock! And Prue not home. I'm going after her!"

He thrust into his overcoat, slapped his hat on his aching head, flung open the door. And Prue came home.

She was alone! And in tears!

V

As papa's overcoat slid off his arms and his hat off his head she tore down her gloves, tossed her cloak in the direction of the hat-tree and stumbled up the stairs, sobbing. Her mother caught her hand.

"What's the matter, honey?"

Prue wrenched loose and went on up.

Father and mother stared at her, then at each other, then at the floor.

Each read the same unspeakable fear in the other's soul. Serina ran up the stairs as fast as she could. William automatically locked the doors and windows, turned out the lights, and followed.

He paused in the upper hall to listen. Prue was explaining at last.

"It's that Orton Hippisley," Prue sobbed.

"What--what has he done?" Serina pleaded, and Prue sobbed on:

"Oh, he got fres.h.!.+ Some of these fellas in this town think that because a girl likes to have a good time and knows how to dance they can get fresh with her. I didn't like the way Ort Hippisley held me and I told him. Finally I wouldn't dance any more with him. I gave his dances to Grant Beadle till the last; then Ort begged so hard I said all right.

And he danced like a gentleman. But on the way home he--he put his arm round me. And when I told him to take it away he wouldn't. He said I had been in his arms half the evening before folks, and if I hadn't minded then I oughtn't to mind now. And I said: 'Is that so? Well, it's mighty different when you're dancing.' And he said, 'Oh no, it isn't,' and I said, 'Oh yes, it is.' And he tried to kiss me and I hauled off and smashed him right in the nose. It bloodied all over his dress soot, and I'm glad of it."

Somehow Papa Pepperall felt such an impulse to give three cheers that he had to put his own hand over his mouth. He tiptoed to his room, and when mamma appeared to announce with triumph, "I guess Prue hasn't gone to the bad yet," papa said: "Who said she had? Prue is the finest girl in America!"

"I thought you were saying--"

"Why can't you ever once get me right? I was saying that Prue is too fine a girl to be allowed to mingle with that tango set. I'm going to cowhide that Hippisley cub. And Prue's not going to another one of those dances."

But he didn't. And she did.

VI

Ollie was up betimes the next morning to get breakfast and make haste to her office. She was so excited that she dropped a stove-lid on the coalscuttle just as her mother appeared.

"For mercy's sake, less noise!" Serina whispered. "You'll wake poor Prue!"

Ollie next dropped the tray she had just unloaded on the table. Serina was furious. Ollie whispered:

"I'm so nervous for fear I've lost my job at Judge Hippisley's, now that Prue had to go and slap Orton."

"Always thinking of yourself," was Serina's rebuke. "Don't be so selfis.h.!.+"

But Ollie's fears were wasted. Orton Hippisley might have boasted of kisses he did not get, but not of the slaps that he did. He had gained a new respect for Prue, and at the first opportunity pleaded for forgiveness, eying her little fist the while. He begged her to go with him to a dance at his home that evening.

She forgave him for the sake of the invitation--and she glided and dipped at the judge's house while Ollie spent the evening in his office trying to finish the day's work. Her speed was not yet up to requirements. Prue's speed was.

Other girls watched Prue manipulating her members in the intricate mechanisms of the latest dances. They begged her to teach them, but she laughed and said: "It's easy. Just watch what I do and do the same."

So Raphael told his pupils and Napoleon his subordinates.

That night Ollie and Prue reached home at nearly the same time. Ollie told how well she was getting along in the judge's office. Prue told how she had made wall-flowers of everybody else in Mrs. Hippisley's parlor.

Let those who know a mother's heart decide which daughter Serina was the prouder of, the good or the bad.

She told William about it--how Ollie had learned to type letters with both hands and how Prue got there with both feet. And papa said, "She's a great girl!"

And that was singular.

VII

A few mornings later Judge Hippisley stopped William on the street and spoke in his best bench manner:

"Will, I hate to speak about your daughter, but I've got to."

"Why, Judge, what's Ollie done? Isn't she fast enough?"

"Ollie's all right. I'm speaking of Prue. She's entirely too fast. I want you to tell her to let my son alone."

"Why, I--you--he--"

"My boy was clerking in Beadle's hardware-store, learning the business and earning twelve dollars a week. And now he spends half his time dancing with that dam--daughter of yours. And Beadle is going to fire him if he doesn't 'tend to business better."

"I--I'll speak to Prue," was all Pepperall dared to say. The judge had too many powers over him to be talked back to.

Papa spoke to Prue and it amused her very much. She said that old Mr.

Beadle had better speak to his own boy, who was Orton's fiercest rival at the dances. And as for the fat old judge, he'd better take up dancing himself.

The following Sunday three of the Carthage preachers attacked the tango.

One of them used for his text Matthew xiv:6, and the other used Mark vi:22. Both told how John the Baptist had lost his head over Salome's dancing. Doctor Brearley chose Isaiah lix:7 "Their feet run to evil ...

their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths."

Mr. and Mrs. Pepperall and Ollie sat under Doctor Brearley. Prue had slept too late to be present. Doctor Brearley blamed so many of the evils of the world on the tango craze that if a visitor from Mars had dropped into a pew he might have judged that the world had been an Eden till the tango came. But then Doctor Brearley had always blamed old things on new things.

It was a ferocious sermon, however, and the wincing Pepperalls felt that it was aimed directly at them. When Doctor Brearley denounced modern parents for their own G.o.dlessness and the irreligion of their homes, William took the blame to himself. On his way home he announced his determination to resume the long-neglected family custom of reading from the Bible.

After the heavy Sabbath dinner had been eaten--Prue was up in time for this rite--he gathered his little flock in the parlor for a solemn while. It had been his habit to choose the reading of the day at random--he called it "letting the Lord decide." The big rusty-hinged Bible fell open with a loud puff of dust several years old. Papa adjusted his spectacles and read what he found before him:

"Nehemiah x: 'Now those that sealed were, Nehemiah, the Tirshatha, the son of Hachaliah, and Zidkijah, Seraiah, Azariah, Jeremiah, Pashur, Amariah, Malchijah, Hattush ...'" He began to breathe hard. He was lost in an impenetrable forest of names, and he could not p.r.o.nounce one of them. He sneaked a peek ahead, dimly made out "Bunni, Hizkijah, Magpiash and Hashub," and choked.

It looked like sacrilege, but he ventured to close the Book and open it once more.

This time he happened on the last chapter of the Book of Judges, wherein is the chronicle of the plight of the tribe of Benjamin, which could not get women to marry into it. The wife famine of the Benjamites was not in the least interesting to Mr. Pepperall, but he would not tempt the Lord again. So he read on, while the children yawned and shuffled, Prue especially.

Suddenly Prue sat still and listened, and papa's cough grew worse. He was reading about the "feast of the Lord in s.h.i.+loh yearly," and how the elders of the congregation ordered the children of Benjamin to go and lie in wait in the vineyards.