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, shiftless,
unprofitable? A weight about her father's neck till he could shift 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 amusement could be practised
exclusively.
That settled Serina. Whatever Mrs. ---- and Miss ---- and the mother of
the Duchess 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.
"Nobody 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:
"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 stitching,
brass-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
amusements. 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,
fishingly.
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 class 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.