William Pepperall, however, still fumed at home and abroad, and Judge Hippisley would have authorized raids if there had been any places to raid. Thus far the orgies had been confined to private walls. There was, indeed, no place in Carthage for public dancing except the big room in the Westcott Block over Jake Meyer's restaurant, and that room was rented to various secret societies on various nights.
Prue's class outgrew the parlor, spread to the dining-room, and trickled into the kitchen. Here the growth had to stop, till it was learned that if Mr. Maugans played very loud he could be heard in the bedrooms up-stairs. And there a sort of University Extension was practised for ladies only.
And still the demand for education increased. The benighted held out hands pleading for help. Young men and old offered fabulous sums, a dollar a lesson, two dollars! Prue decided that if her mother would stay up-stairs as a chaperon it would be proper to let the men dance there, too.
"But how am I going to cook the meals?" said mamma.
"We'll hire a cook," said Prue. And it was done. She even bought mamma a new dress, and established her above-stairs as a sort of grand duenna.
Mamma watched Prue with such keenness that now and then, when Prue had to rush down-stairs, mamma would sometimes solve a problem for one of Prue's "scholars," as she called them.
One day papa came home to his pandemonium, jostled through the couple-cluttered hall, stamped up-stairs, and found mamma showing Deacon Flugal how to do the drop-step.
"You trot four short steps backward," mamma was saying, "then you make a little dip; but don't swing your shoulders. Prue says if you want to dance refined you mustn't swing your shoulders or your—your—the rest of you."
Papa was ready to swing his shoulders and drop the deacon through the window, but as he was about to protest the deacon caught mamma in his arms and swept backward, dropping his fourth step incisively on papa's instep, rendering papa hors de combat.
By the time William had rubbed witch-hazel into the deacon's heel-mark, the deacon in a glorious "prespiration" had gone home with his own breathless wife ditto. William dragged Serina into the bathroom, the only room where dancing was not in progress. He warned her not to forget that she had sworn to be a faithful wife. She pooh-poohed him and said: