was showin' me a new step in this Max
Hicks dance. It's right cute. Goes like this."

Mamma Pepperall watched him cavort a moment, then sniffed
contemptuously, and rolled out like a fireman summoned.

"Not a bit like it! It goes like this."

A few minutes later the door opened and Ollie put her head in.

"For Heaven's sake be quiet! You'll wake Prue, and she's all wore out;
and she's only got an hour more before they have to get up and take the
train for Des Moines."

The old rascals promised to be good, but as soon as she had gone they
wrangled in whispers and danced on tiptoes. Suddenly Prue put her head
in at the door and gasped:

"What in Heaven's name are you and poppa up to? Do you want to wake
Orton?"

Papa had to explain:

"I got a new step, Prue. Goes like this. Come on, momma."

Serina shyly took her place in his arms; but they had taken only a few
strides when Prue hissed:

"Sh-h! Don't do it! Stop it!"

"Why?"

"In the first place it's out of date. And in the second place it's not
respectable."

Then the hard-working locust, having rebuked the frivolous ants, went
back to bed.

"A" AS IN "FATHER"

I

For two years life at Harvard was one long siesta to Orson Carver, 2d.
And then he fell off the window-seat. Orson Carver, 1st, ordered him to
wake up and get to work at once. Orson announced to his friends that he
was leaving college to pay an extensive visit to "Carthage" and it
sounded magnificent until he added, "in the Middle West."

A struggling young railroad had succumbed to hard times out there, and
Orson senior had been appointed receiver. It was the Carthage, Thebes &
Rome Railroad, connecting three towns whose names were larger than their
populations.

Since Orson had seemed unable to decide what career to choose, if any,
his father decided for him--decided that he should take up railroading
and begin at the beginning, which was the office at Carthage. And Orson
went West to "grow up young man with the country."

Carthage bore not the faintest resemblance to the moving-picture life of
the West; he didn't see a single person on horseback. Yet his mother
thought of him as one who had vanished into the Mojave desert. She wrote
to warn him not to drink the alkali water.

Young Orson, regarding the villagers with patient disdain, was amazed to
find that they were patronizing him with amusement. They spoke of his
adored Boston as an old-fogy place with "no git-up-and-gi