the town. When
members of the awkward squad pleaded to cut in she danced away
impishly, will-o'-the-wispishly. When the girls lifted their skirts and
asked her to correct their footwork she referred them to the articles in
the magazines.

She was chiefly pestered by Idalene Brearley, daughter of the clergyman,
and his chief cross.

Finally Idalene Brearley tore Prue from the arms of Ort Hippisley,
backed her into a corner, and said:

"Say, Prue, you've got to listen! I'm invited to visit the swellest home
in Council Bluffs for a house-party. They call it a week-end; that shows
how swell they are. They're going to dance all the time. When it comes
to these new dances I'm weak at both ends, head and feet." She laughed
shamelessly at her own joke, as women do. "I don't want to go there like
I'd never been any place, or like Carthage wasn't up to date. I'm just
beginning to get the hang of the Maxixe and the Hesitation, and I
thought if you could give me a couple of days' real hard work I wouldn't
be such an awful gump. Could you? Do you suppose you could? Or could
you?"

Prue looked such astonishment at this that Idalene hastened to say:

"O' course I'm not asking you to kill yourself for nothing. How much
would you charge? Of course I haven't much saved up; but I thought if I
took two lessons a day you could make me a special rate. How much would
it be, d'you s'pose? Or what do you think?"

Prue wondered. This was a new and thrilling moment for her. A boy is
excited enough over the first penny he earns, but he is brought up to
earn money. To a girl, and a girl like Prue, the luxury was almost
intolerably intense. She finally found voice to murmur:

"How much you gettin' for the lessons you give?"

Idalene had, for the sake of pin money, been giving a few alleged
lessons in piano, voice, water-colors, bridge whist, fancy stitching,
brass-hammering, and things like that. She answered Prue with
reluctance:

"I get fifty cents an hour. But o' course I make a specialty of those
things."

"I'm making a specialty of dancing," said Prue, coldly.

Idalene was torn between the bitterly opposite emotions of getting and
giving. Prue tried to speak with indifference, but she looked as greedy
as the old miser in the "Chimes of Normandy."

"Fifty cents suits me, seeing it's you."

Idalene gasped: "Well, o' course, two lessons a day would be a dollar.
Could you make it six bits by wholesale?"

Prue didn't see how she c