"Aw, Delia, don't be harsh with a fellow," said Banks, grinning broadly. "You going to promise me a dance to-night?"
"And you probably coming here half drunk!" announced the spinster, frankly. "I guess not!" announced the spinster, frankly. "I guess not! No indeed!"
"You'd better. You'll be a wall-flower enough, Delia—you know you will."
At that Miss Pringle flushed very red and her eyes fairly snapped.
"If I never danced at all I wouldn't take on any such makeshift of a man as you, Ad Banks! Get out of here!" she commanded, "shooing" him with the broom.
He grappled with her, still laughing in his lubberly way, and wrenched the broom from Miss Pringle's hands.
"Oh, Delia," he sing-songed, "how I love you! You're the prettiest girl I know. Come on and give us a dance. No? Then I'll dance with the broom," and he proceeded to do a grotesque dance over the clean floor with the broomstick for a partner.
"Now just look at what you've done, Ad Banks!" cried Miss Pringle almost in tears. "See that!"
Broken cakes of mud were scattered about the floor wherever the fellow clogged while Miss Pringle looked on angrily.
"That fellow needs a good licking," Orrin Post said to Hiram, while the girls loudly expressed their vexation at what Banks was doing.