She put none of Janice’s board money in the bank that month. For the extra twenty dollar bill, Mr. Bogarti patiently taught her in private. He was really a lover of his art and he believed faithfully that anyone could, with patience, be taught to dance.
Poor Aunt ’Mira groaned and wept in secret at first. She had carried around a superabundance of flesh for many years; and what it did to her at first to joggle and shake herself upon the polished planks of the Odd Fellows’ floor was, as Marty would have said had he known about it, “a shame!”
Marty was safe at school. Janice was away all day at the seminary. Uncle Jason had taken the contract to build Hiram Bulger’s new barn. And that fall in Polktown there were more women than Aunt ’Mira keeping secrets from their husbands and families.
Early one morning while Marty was at the barn and Janice was making a more lingering toilet than usual in her room, Uncle Jason happened to shuffle in at the kitchen door unexpectedly. The rich odor of frying pork filled the room and was wafted invitingly out of doors. The blue smoke from the huge griddle on which the flapjacks were baking made a halo about Aunt ’Mira’s head.
“I vum, Almiry! Be ye gone clean daft?” gasped her husband, in horror.
Aunt ’Mira had been so earnest in her endeavors that she had not heard his approach. A strip of pork was poised on the fork held in her left hand, while the cake-turner waved aloft in the other; and Aunt ’Mira was counting:
“One, two, dip; one, two, dip; one, two, three, slide.”
She came up, facing Uncle Jason, after a sweeping “sink” that would seem impossible for a lady of her build to accomplish.
“Almiry! what air you doin’?” ejaculated her husband again.
“Dancin’,” said his wife meekly.