“Aw, Mother, don’t sidestep your plain duty,” said Chet, his eyes twinkling.
“Chetwood! You know very well that I do not approve of many of these modern dances. I certainly do not ‘sidestep’”––
“That isn’t a dance, Mother,” giggled Laura.
Her husband chuckled at the other end of the table. “My dear,” he said, suavely, “you should keep up with the times––”
“No, thank you. I have no desire to. Keeping up with the times, as you call it, has made my son speak a language entirely unintelligible to my ear, and has made my daughter an exponent of muscular exercises of which I cannot approve.”
“Pshaw!” said her husband, easily. “Basketball, and running, and rowing, and the exercise she gets at that gymnasium, aren’t going to hurt Mother Wit.”
“There you go!” exclaimed his wife. “You 22 have begun to apply to Laura an appellation which she has gained since all this disturbance over athletics among the girls, has arisen.
“I can no more than expect,” went on Mrs. Belding, seriously, “that, dissatisfied with basketball and the like, the girls will become baseball and football—what do you call them, Chetwood? Fans?”
“Quite right, mother,” Laura hastened to answer instead of her brother. “And all we girls of Central High are fans already when it comes to baseball and football. I’d like to belong to a baseball team, myself, for one––”
“Laura!” gasped her mother, while her father and Chet burst out laughing.