l. I knew it
would be useless to acquaint my elders with any such plan. Grandfather did
n't approve of dancing anyway; he would only say that if I wanted to dance
I could go to the Masonic Hall, among "the people we knew." It was just my
point that I saw altogether too much of the people we knew.

My bedroom was on the ground floor, and as I studied there, I had a stove
in it. I used to retire to my room early on Saturday night, change my
shirt and collar and put on my Sunday coat. I waited until all was quiet
and the old people were asleep, then raised my window, climbed out, and
went softly through the yard. The first time I deceived my grandparents I
felt rather shabby, perhaps even the second time, but I soon ceased to
think about it.

The dance at the Firemen's Hall was the one thing I looked forward to all
the week. There I met the same people I used to see at the Vannis' tent.
Sometimes there were Bohemians from Wilber, or German boys who came down
on the afternoon freight from Bismarck. Tony and Lena and Tiny were always
there, and the three Bohemian Marys, and the Danish laundry girls.

The four Danish girls lived with the laundryman and his wife in their
house behind the laundry, with a big garden where the clothes were hung
out to dry. The laundryman was a kind, wise old fellow, who paid his girls
well, looked out for them, and gave them a good home. He told me once that
his own daughter died just as she was getting old enough to help her
mother, and that he had been "trying to make up for it ever since." On
summer afternoons he used to sit for hours on the sidewalk in front of his
laundry, his newspaper lying on his knee, watching his girls through the
big open window while they ironed and talked in Danish. The clouds of
white dust that blew up the street, the gusts of hot wind that withered
his vegetable garden, never disturbed his calm. His droll expression
seemed to say that he had found the secret of contentment. Morning and
evening he drove about in his spring wagon, distributing freshly ironed
clothes, and collecting bags of linen that cried out for his suds and
sunny drying-lines. His girls never looked so pretty at the dances as they
did standing by the ironing-board, or over the tubs, washing the fine
pieces, their white arms and throats bare, their cheeks bright as the
brightest wild roses, their gold hair moist with the steam or the heat and
curling in little damp spirals about their ears. They h