ud he could be heard in the bedrooms
up-stairs. And there a sort of University Extension was practised for
ladies only.

And still the demand for education increased. The benighted held out
hands pleading for help. Young men and old offered fabulous sums, a
dollar a lesson, two dollars! Prue decided that if her mother would stay
up-stairs as a chaperon it would be proper to let the men dance there,
too.

"But how am I going to cook the meals?" said mamma.

"We'll hire a cook," said Prue. And it was done. She even bought mamma
a new dress, and established her above-stairs as a sort of grand duenna.

Mamma watched Prue with such keenness that now and then, when Prue had
to rush down-stairs, mamma would sometimes solve a problem for one of
Prue's "scholars," as she called them.

One day papa came home to his pandemonium, jostled through the
couple-cluttered hall, stamped up-stairs, and found mamma showing Deacon
Flugal how to do the drop-step.

"You trot four short steps backward," mamma was saying, "then you make a
little dip; but don't swing your shoulders. Prue says if you want to
dance refined you mustn't swing your shoulders or your--your--the rest
of you."

Papa was ready to swing his shoulders and drop the deacon through the
window, but as he was about to protest the deacon caught mamma in his
arms and swept backward, dropping his fourth step incisively on papa's
instep, rendering papa _hors de combat_.

By the time William had rubbed witch-hazel into the deacon's heel-mark,
the deacon in a glorious "prespiration" had gone home with his own
breathless wife ditto. William dragged Serina into the bathroom, the
only room where dancing was not in progress. He warned her not to forget
that she had sworn to be a faithful wife. She pooh-poohed him and said:

"You'd better learn to dance yourself. Come on, I'll show you the Jedia
Luna. It's very easy and awful refined. Do just like I do."

She put her hands on her hips and began to sidle. She had him nearly
sidled into the bathtub before he could escape with the cry of a hunted
animal. At supper he thumped the table with another of his resolutions,
and cried:

"My house was not built for a dance-hall!"

"That's right, poppa," said Prue; "and it shakes so I'm afraid it'll
come down on us. I've been thinking that you'll have to hire me the
lodge-room in the Westcott Block. I can give classes there all day."

He refused flatly. So she persuaded Deacon Flugal an