The news that Carthage had a tango-teacher created a sensation rivaling the advent of its first street-car. It gave the place a metropolitan flavor. If it only had a slums district, now, it would be a great and gloriously wicked city.
Prue was fairly besieged with applicants for lessons. Those who could dance a few steps wanted the new steps. Those who could not dance at all wanted to climb aboard the ark.
Mrs. Hippisley's drawing-room did not long serve its purpose. On the third day the judge stalked in. He came home with a chill. At the sight of his wife with one knee up, trying to paw like a horse, his chill changed to fever. His roar was heard in the kitchen. He was so used to domineering that he was not even afraid of his wife when he was in the first flush of rage.
Prue and Idalene and Bertha he would have sentenced to deportation if he had had the jurisdiction. He could at least send them home. He threatened his wife with dire punishments if she ever took another step of the abominable dance.
Prue was afraid of the judge, but she was not afraid of her own father. She told him that she was going to use the parlor, and he told her that she wasn't. The next day he came home to find the class installed.
He peeked into the parlor and saw Bertha Appleby dancing with Idalene Brearley. Prue was in the arms of old "Tawm" Kinch, the town scoundrel, a bald and wealthy old bachelor who had lingered uncaught like a wise old trout in a pool, though generations of girls had tried every device, from whipping the' stream to tickling his sides. He had refused every bait and lived more or less alone in the big old mansion he had inherited from his skinflint mother.
At the sight of Tawm Kinch in his parlor embracing his daughter and bungling an odious dance with her, William Pepperall saw red. He would throw the old brute out of his house. As he made his temper ready Mrs. Judge Hippisley hurried up the hall. She had walked round the block, crossed two back yards and climbed the kitchen steps to throw the judge off the scent. William could hardly make a scene before these women. He could only protest by leaving the house.
He found that, having let the outrage go unpunished, once, it was hard to work up steam to drive it out the second day. Also he remembered that he had asked Tawm Kinch for a position in his sash-and-blind factory and Tawm had said he would see about it. Attacking Tawm Kinch would be like assaulting his future bread and butter. He kept away from the house as much as he could, sulking like a punished boy. One evening as he went home to supper, purposely delaying as long as possible, he saw Tawm Kinch coming from the house. He ran down the steps like an urchin and seized William's hand as if he had not seen him for a long time.
"Take a walk with me, Bill," he said, and led William along an unfrequented side street. After much hemming and hawing he began: "Bill, I got a proposition to make you. I find there's a possibility of a p'sition openin' up in the works and maybe I could fit you into it if you'd do something for me."
William tried not to betray his overweening joy.