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
selfish!"
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.