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 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.

"It's the finest game in the world," declared Laura, stoutly.

"Hear! hear!" from Chet.

"I've been to see the games a lot with father Saturday afternoons,"
began Laura, when her mother interposed:

"Indeed? _That_ is why you are so eager always to spend your forenoons
with your father on Saturday?"

"Oh, Mother! I really _do_ help father in the jewelry-store--don't I,
Dad?"

"Couldn't get along without you, daughter," said Mr. Belding,
stoutly.

"And he always takes me for a nice bite in a restaurant," pursued the
girl, "and then if there's a game, we go to see it."

"Runaways!" said Mrs. Belding, shaking an admonishing finger at them.
"So you encourage her in these escapades, do you, Mr. Belding?"

"Quite so, Mother," he returned. "You're behind the times. Girls are
different nowadays--in open practise, at least--from what they were in
our day. Of course, I remember when I first saw you----"

"That will do!" exclaimed Mrs. Belding, flushing very prettily, while
the children laughed. "We will not rake up old stories, if you
please."

Any reference to the occasion at which her husband hinted, usually
brought