Every morning, before I was up, I could
hear Tony singing in the garden rows. After the apple and cherry trees
broke into bloom, we ran about under them, hunting for the new nests
the birds were building, throwing clods at each other, and playing
hide-and-seek with Nina. Yet the summer which was to change everything
was coming nearer every day. When boys and girls are growing up, life
can't stand still, not even in the quietest of country towns; and they
have to grow up, whether they will or no. That is what their elders are
always forgetting.

It must have been in June, for Mrs. Harling and Antonia were preserving
cherries, when I stopped one morning to tell them that a dancing
pavilion had come to town. I had seen two drays hauling the canvas and
painted poles up from the depot.

That afternoon three cheerful-looking Italians strolled about Black
Hawk, looking at everything, and with them was a dark, stout woman who
wore a long gold watch-chain about her neck and carried a black lace
parasol. They seemed especially interested in children and vacant lots.
When I overtook them and stopped to say a word, I found them affable and
confiding. They told me they worked in Kansas City in the winter, and in
summer they went out among the farming towns with their tent and taught
dancing. When business fell off in one place, they moved on to another.

The dancing pavilion was put up near the Danish laundry, on a vacant
lot surrounded by tall, arched cottonwood trees. It was very much like
a merry-go-round tent, with open sides and gay flags flying from the
poles. Before the week was over, all the ambitious mothers were sending
their children to the afternoon dancing class. At three o'clock one
met little girls in white dresses and little boys in the round-collared
shirts of the time, hurrying along the sidewalk on their way to the
tent. Mrs. Vanni received them at the entrance, always dressed in
lavender with a great deal of black lace, her important watch-chain
lying on her bosom. She wore her hair on the top of her head, built up
in a black tower, with red coral combs. When she smiled, she showed two
rows of strong, crooked yellow teeth. She taught the little children
herself, and her husband, the harpist, taught the older ones.

Often the mothers brought their fancywork and sat on the shady side
of the tent during the lesson. The popcorn man wheeled his glass wagon
under the big cottonwood by the door, and lounged in the s