In a Little Town Part 39

"O' course I'm not asking you to kill yourself for nothing. How much would you charge? Of course I haven't much saved up; but I thought if I took two lessons a day you could make me a special rate. How much would it be, d'you s'pose? Or what do you think?"

Prue wondered. This was a new and thrilling moment for her. A boy is excited enough over the first penny he earns, but he is brought up to earn money. To a girl, and a girl like Prue, the luxury was almost intolerably intense. She finally found voice to murmur:

"How much you gettin' for the lessons you give?"

Idalene had, for the sake of pin money, been giving a few alleged lessons in piano, voice, water-colors, bridge whist, fancy st.i.tching, bra.s.s-hammering, and things like that. She answered Prue with reluctance:

"I get fifty cents an hour. But o' course I make a specialty of those things."

"I'm making a specialty of dancing," said Prue, coldly.

Idalene was torn between the bitterly opposite emotions of getting and giving. Prue tried to speak with indifference, but she looked as greedy as the old miser in the "Chimes of Normandy."

"Fifty cents suits me, seeing it's you."

Idalene gasped: "Well, o' course, two lessons a day would be a dollar.

Could you make it six bits by wholesale?"

Prue didn't see how she could. Teaching would interfere so with her amus.e.m.e.nts. Finally Idalene sighed:

"Oh, well, all right! Call it fifty cents straight. When can I come over to your house?"

"To my house?" gasped Prue. "Papa doesn't approve of my dancing. I'll come to yours."

"Oh no, you won't," gasped Idalene. "My father doesn't dream that I dance. I'm going to let him sleep as long as I can."

Here was a plight! Mrs. Judge Hippisley strolled up and demanded, "What's all this whispering about?"

They explained their predicament. Mrs. Hippisley thought it was a perfectly wonderful idea to take lessons. She would let Prue teach Idalene in her parlor if Prue would teach her at the same time for nothing.

"Unless you think I'm too old and stupid to learn," she added, fis.h.i.+ngly.

Prue put a catfish on her hook: "Oh, Mrs. Hippisley, I've seen women much older and fatter and stupider than you dancing in Chicago."

While the hours of tuition were being discussed Bertha Appleby tiptoed up to eavesdrop, and pleaded to be accepted as a pupil. And she forced on the timorous Prue a quarter as her matriculation fee.

Orton Hippisley beau'd Prue home that night, and they paused in an arcade of maples to practise a new step she had been composing in the back of her head.

He was an apt pupil, and when they had resumed their homeward stroll she neglected to make him take his arm away. Encouraged, he tried to kiss her when they reached the gate. She cuffed him again, but this time her buffet was almost a caress. She sighed:

"I can't get very mad at you, you're such a quick student. I hope your mother will learn as fast."

"My mother!" he exclaimed.

"Yes. She wants me to teach her the one-step."

"Don't you dare!"

"And why not?" she asked, with sultry calm.

"Do you think I'll let my mother carry on like that? Well, hardly!"

"Oh, so what I do isn't good enough for your mother!"

"I don't mean just that; but can't you see--Wait a minute--"

She slammed the gate on his outstretched fingers and he went home fondling his wound.

The next day he strolled by the parlor door at his own home, but Prue would not speak to him and his mother was too busy to invite him in. It amazed him to see how humble his haughty mother was before the hitherto neglected Prue.

Prue would have felt sorrier for him if she had not been so exalted over her earnings.

She had not let on at home about her cla.s.s till she could lay the proof of her success on the supper-table. When she stacked up the entire two dollars that she had earned by only a few miles of trotting, it looked like the loot the mercenaries captured in that old Carthage which the new Carthage had never heard of.

The family was aghast. It was twice as much as Ollie had earned that day. Ollie's money "came reg'lar," of course, and would total up more in the long run.

But for Prue to earn anything was a miracle. And in Carthage two dollars is two dollars, at the very least.

IX

The news that Carthage had a tango-teacher created a sensation rivaling the advent of its first street-car. It gave the place a metropolitan flavor. If it only had a slums district, now, it would be a great and gloriously wicked city.

Prue was fairly besieged with applicants for lessons. Those who could dance a few steps wanted the new steps. Those who could not dance at all wanted to climb aboard the ark.

Mrs. Hippisley's drawing-room did not long serve its purpose. On the third day the judge stalked in. He came home with a chill. At the sight of his wife with one knee up, trying to paw like a horse, his chill changed to fever. His roar was heard in the kitchen. He was so used to domineering that he was not even afraid of his wife when he was in the first flush of rage.

Prue and Idalene and Bertha he would have sentenced to deportation if he had had the jurisdiction. He could at least send them home. He threatened his wife with dire punishments if she ever took another step of the abominable dance.

Prue was afraid of the judge, but she was not afraid of her own father.

She told him that she was going to use the parlor, and he told her that she wasn't. The next day he came home to find the cla.s.s installed.

He peeked into the parlor and saw Bertha Appleby dancing with Idalene Brearley. Prue was in the arms of old "Tawm" Kinch, the town scoundrel, a bald and wealthy old bachelor who had lingered uncaught like a wise old trout in a pool, though generations of girls had tried every device, from whipping the' stream to tickling his sides. He had refused every bait and lived more or less alone in the big old mansion he had inherited from his skinflint mother.

At the sight of Tawm Kinch in his parlor embracing his daughter and bungling an odious dance with her, William Pepperall saw red. He would throw the old brute out of his house. As he made his temper ready Mrs.

Judge Hippisley hurried up the hall. She had walked round the block, crossed two back yards and climbed the kitchen steps to throw the judge off the scent. William could hardly make a scene before these women. He could only protest by leaving the house.

He found that, having let the outrage go unpunished, once, it was hard to work up steam to drive it out the second day. Also he remembered that he had asked Tawm Kinch for a position in his sash-and-blind factory and Tawm had said he would see about it. Attacking Tawm Kinch would be like a.s.saulting his future bread and b.u.t.ter. He kept away from the house as much as he could, sulking like a punished boy. One evening as he went home to supper, purposely delaying as long as possible, he saw Tawm Kinch coming from the house. He ran down the steps like an urchin and seized William's hand as if he had not seen him for a long time.

"Take a walk with me, Bill," he said, and led William along an unfrequented side street. After much hemming and hawing he began: "Bill, I got a proposition to make you. I find there's a possibility of a p'sition openin' up in the works and maybe I could fit you into it if you'd do something for me."

William tried not to betray his overweening joy.

"I'd always do anything for you, Tawm," he said. "I always liked you, always spoke well of you, which is more 'n I can say of some of the other folks round here."

Tawm was flying too high to note the raw tactlessness of this; he went right on:

"Bill--or Mr. Pepperall, I'd better say--I'm simply dead gone on that girl of yours. She's the sweetest, smartest, gracefulest thing that ever struck this town, and when I--Well, I'm afraid to ask her m'self, but I was thinkin' if you could arrange it."