In a Little Town Part 38

"'And see, and behold, if the daughters of s.h.i.+loh come out to dance in dances, then come ye out of the vineyards and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of s.h.i.+loh....

"'And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives, according to their number, of them that danced, whom they caught: and they went and returned unto their inheritance, and repaired the cities, and dwelt in them....

"'In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did that which was right in his own eyes."

He closed the Book and stole a glance at Prue. Her eyes were so bright with triumph that he had to say:

"Of course that proves nothing about dancing. It doesn't say that the s.h.i.+loh girls made good wives."

Prue had the impudence to add, "And it doesn't say that the sons of Benjamin were good dancers."

Her father silenced her with a scowl of horror. Then he made a long prayer, directed more at his family than at the Lord. It apparently had an equal effect on each. After a hymn had been mumbled through the family dispersed.

Prue lingered just long enough to capture the Bible and carry it off to her room in a double embrace. Serina and William tried to be glad to see her sudden interest, but they were a little afraid of her exact motive.

She made no noise at all and did not come down in time to help get supper--the sad, cold supper of a Sunday evening. She slipped into the dining-room just before the family was called. Papa found at his plate a neat little stack of cards, bearing each a carefully lettered legend in Prue's writing. He picked them up, glanced at them, and flushed.

"I dare you to read them," said Prue.

So he read: "'To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven ... a time to mourn and a time to dance.... He hath made every thing beautiful in his time.' Ecclesiastes iii.

"'Let them praise his name in the dance ... for the Lord taketh pleasure in his people.... Praise him with the timbrel and dance.... Praise him upon the loud cymbals.' Psalms cxlix, cl.

"'O virgin of Israel ... thou shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry.... Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together.' Jeremiah x.x.xi.

"'We have piped unto you, and ye have not danced.' Matthew xi: 17.

"'Michal, Saul's daughter, looked through a window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart.... Therefore Michal the daughter of Saul had no child unto the day of her death.' II Samuel vi: 16, 23."

Papa did not fall back upon the Shakesperean defense that the devil can quote Scripture to his purpose. He choked a little and filled his hand with the apple-b.u.t.ter he was spreading on his cold biscuit. Then he said:

"It's not that I don't believe in dancing. I don't say all dances are immor'l."

"You better not," said Serina, darkly. "You met me at a dance. We used to dance all the time till you got so's you wouldn't take me to parties any more. And you got so clumsy and I began to take on flesh, and ran short of breath like."

"Oh, there's mor'l dances as well as immor'l dances," William confessed, not knowing the history of the opposition every dance has encountered in its younger days. "The waltz now, or the lancers or the Virginia reel.

Even the two-step was all right. But this turkey-trot-tango business--it's goin' to be the ruination of the home. It isn't fit for decent folks to look at, let alone let their daughters do. I want you should quit it, Prue. If you need exercise help your mother with the housework. You go and tango round with a broom awhile. I don't see why you don't try to help your sister, too, and make something useful of yourself. I tell you, in these days a woman ought to be able to earn her own living same's a man. You could get a good position in s.h.i.+llaber's dry-goods store if you only would."

Prue wriggled her shoulders impatiently and said: "I guess I'm one of those s.h.i.+loh girls. I'll just dance round awhile, and maybe some rich Benjamin gent'man will grab me and take me off your hands."

VIII

One evening Prue came home late to supper after a session at Bertha Appleby's. An informal gathering had convened under the disguise of a church-society meeting, only to degenerate into a dancing-bee after a few perfunctory formalities.

Prue had just time to seize a bite before she went to dress for a frankly confessed dancing-bout at Eliza Erf's. As she ate with angry voracity she complained:

"I guess I'll just quit going to dances. I don't have a bit of fun any more."

Her father started from his chair to embrace the returned prodigal, but he dropped into Ollie's place as Prue exclaimed:

"Everybody is always at me for help. 'Prue, is this right?' 'Prue, teach me that.' 'Oh, what did you do then?' 'Is it the inside foot or the outside you start on?' 'Do you drop on the front knee or the hind?' 'Do you do the Innovation?' Why, it's worse than teaching school!"

"Why don't you teach school?" said William, feebly. "There's going to be a vacancy in the kindergarten."

Prue sniffed. "I see myself!" And went to her room to dress.

Her father sank back discouraged. What ailed the girl? She simply would not take life seriously. She would not lift her hand to help. When they were so poor and the future so dour, how could she keep from earning a little money? Was she condemned to be altogether useless, s.h.i.+ftless, unprofitable? A weight about her father's neck till he could s.h.i.+ft her to the neck of some unhappy husband?

He remembered the fable of the ant and the locust. Prue was the locust, frivoling away the summer. At the first cold blast she would be pleading with the industrious ant, Ollie, to take her in. In the fable the locust was turned away to freeze, but you couldn't do that with a human locust.

The ants just have to feed them. Poor Ollie!

Munching this quinine cud of thought, he went up to bed. He was footsore from tramping the town for work. He had covered almost as much distance as Prue had danced. He was all in. She was just going out.

She kissed him good night, but he would not answer. She went to kiss her mother and Ollie and Horace. Ollie was practising shorthand, and kissed Prue with sorrowing patience. Horace dodged the kiss, but called her attention to an article in the evening paper:

"Say, Prue, if you want to get rich quick whyn't you charge for your tango advice? Says here that teachers are springing up all over Noo York and Chicawgo, and they get big, immense prices."

"How much?" said Prue, indifferently.

"Says here twenty-five dollars an hour. Some of 'em's earning a couple of thousand dollars a week."

This information went through the room like a projectile from a coast-defense gun. Serina listened with bated breath as Horace read the confirmation. She shook her head:

"It beats all the way vice pays in this world."

Horace read on. The article described how some of the most prominent women in metropolitan society were sponsoring the dances. A group of ladies, whose names were more familiar to Serina than the Christian martyrs, had rented a whole dwelling-house for a dancing couple to disport in, so that the universal amus.e.m.e.nt could be practised exclusively.

That settled Serina. Whatever Mrs. ---- and Miss ---- and the mother of the d.u.c.h.ess of ---- did was better than right. It was swell.

Prue's frown now was the frown of meditation. "If they charge twenty-five dollars an hour in New York, what ought to be the price in Carthage?"

"About five cents a week," said Serina, who did not approve of Carthage.

"n.o.body in this town would pay anything for anything."

"We used to pay old Professor Durand to teach us to waltz and polka,"

said Horace, "in the good old days before pop got the bankruptcy habit."

That night Prue made an experiment. She danced exclusively with Ort Hippisley and Grant Beadle, the surest-footed bipeds in the town. When members of the awkward squad pleaded to cut in she danced away impishly, will-o'-the-wispishly. When the girls lifted their skirts and asked her to correct their footwork she referred them to the articles in the magazines.

She was chiefly pestered by Idalene Brearley, daughter of the clergyman, and his chief cross.

Finally Idalene Brearley tore Prue from the arms of Ort Hippisley, backed her into a corner, and said:

"Say, Prue, you've got to listen! I'm invited to visit the swellest home in Council Bluffs for a house-party. They call it a week-end; that shows how swell they are. They're going to dance all the time. When it comes to these new dances I'm weak at both ends, head and feet." She laughed shamelessly at her own joke, as women do. "I don't want to go there like I'd never been any place, or like Carthage wasn't up to date. I'm just beginning to get the hang of the Maxixe and the Hesitation, and I thought if you could give me a couple of days' real hard work I wouldn't be such an awful gump. Could you? Do you suppose you could? Or could you?"

Prue looked such astonishment at this that Idalene hastened to say: