We've been getting too durned devoted to our jobs and our ideals.
You're becoming a regular school marm and I'm getting to be a regular slave
to every wretched little babe who takes it into his head to be born. We
haven't one redeeming vice."

And again he took up dancing. The first effort which he made, down at
Deborah's school one evening, was a failure quite as dismal as his attempts
of the previous year. But he did not appear in the least discouraged. He
came to the house one Friday night.

"I knew I could learn to dance," he said, "in spite of all your taunts and
jibes. That little fiasco last Saturday night--"

"Was perfectly awful," Deborah said.

"Did not discourage me in the least," he continued severely. "I decided the
only trouble with me was that I'm tall and I've got to bend--to learn to
bend."

"Tremendously!"

"So I went to a lady professor, and she saw the point at once. Since then
I've had five lessons, and I can fox-trot in my sleep. To-morrow is
Saturday. Where shall we go?"

"To the theater."

"Good. We'll start with that. But the minute the play is over we'll gallop
off to the Plaza Grill--just as the music is in full swing--"

"And we'll dance," she groaned, "for hours. And when I get home, I'll creep
into bed so tired and sore in every limb--"

"That you'll sleep late Sunday morning. And a mighty good thing for you,
too--if you ask my advice--"

"I don't ask your advice!"

"You're getting it, though," he said doggedly. "If you're still to be a
friend of mine we'll dance at the Plaza to-morrow night--and well into the
Sabbath."

"The principal of a public school--dancing on the Sabbath. Suppose one of
my friends should see us there."

"Your friends," he replied with a fine contempt, "do not dance in the Plaza
Grill. I'm the only roisterer you know."

"All right," she conceded grudgingly, "I'll roister. Come and get me. But
I'd much prefer when the play is done to come home and have milk and
crackers here."

"Deborah," he said cheerfully, "for a radical school reformer you're the
most conservative woman I know."

CHAPTER XVIII

In Deborah's school, in the meantime, affairs had drawn to a climax. The
moment had come for the city to say whether her new experiment should be
dropped the following year or allowed to go on and develop. There came a
day of sharp suspense when Deborah's friends and enemies on the Board of
Education sat down to discuss and settle her fate. The