w Prue felt like the locust turned away from ant-hill after
ant-hill. She walked the streets disconsolately. Her feet from old habit
led her past her father's door. She paused to gaze at the dear front
walk and the beloved frayed steps, the darling need of paint, the
time-gnawed porch furniture, the empty hammock hooks. She sighed and
would have trudged on, but her mother saw her and called to her from the
sewing-room window, and ran out bareheaded in her old wrapper.

They embraced across the gate and Serina carried on so that Prue had to
go in with her to keep the neighbors from having too good a time. Prue
told her story, and Serina's jaw set in the kind of tetanus that mothers
are liable to. She sent Horace to fetch Prue's baggage from "old
Prosser's," and she re-established Prue in her former room.

When William came slumping up the steps, still jobless, he found the
doors locked, front and back, and the porch windows fastened. Serina
from an upper sill informed him that Prue was back, and he could either
accept her or go somewhere else to live.

William yielded, salving his conscience by refusing to speak to the
girl. Prue settled down with the meekness of returned prodigals for whom
fatted calves are killed. According to the old college song, "The
Prod.," when he got back, "sued father and brother for time while away."
That was the sort of prodigal Prue was. Prue brought her classes with
her.

Papa Pepperall gave up the battle. He dared not lock his daughter in or
out or up. He must not beat her or strangle her with a bowstring or drop
her into the Bosporus. He could not sell her down the river. A modern
father has about as much authority as a chained watch-dog. He can jump
about and bark and snap, but he only abrades his own throat.

There were Pepperall feuds all over town. One by one the most
conservative were recruited or silenced.

William Pepperall, however, still fumed at home and abroad, and Judge
Hippisley would have authorized raids if there had been any places to
raid. Thus far the orgies had been confined to private walls. There was,
indeed, no place in Carthage for public dancing except the big room in
the Westcott Block over Jake Meyer's restaurant, and that room was
rented to various secret societies on various nights.

Prue's class outgrew the parlor, spread to the dining-room, and trickled
into the kitchen. Here the growth had to stop, till it was learned that
if Mr. Maugans played very lo