yrical, so full of--Alas!
The tears were in his eyes, and he almost applauded with the others when
the dance was finished. He bowed vaguely in the direction of the anxious
Prue and made his way out. She felt rebuked and condemned and would not
be comforted by the praise of others. She did not know that the old
preacher had encountered on the sidewalk Judge Hippisley. Doctor
Brearley had forgotten that the judge had not yet ordered his own
decision reversed, and he thought he was saying the unavoidable thing
when he murmured:

"Ah, Judge, how proud you must be of your dear son's dear wife. I fancy
that Miriam, the prophetess, must have danced something like that on the
banks of the Red Sea when the Egyptians were overthrown."

Then he put up the umbrella he always carried and stumbled back to his
parsonage under the star-light. His heart was dancing a trifle, and he
escaped the scene of wrath that broke out as soon as he was away.

For William Pepperall had a lump in his throat made up of equal parts of
desire to cry and desire to fight, and he said to Judge Hippisley with
all truculence:

"Look here, Judge! I understand you been jawin' round this town about my
daughter not being all she'd ought to be. Now I'm goin' to put a stop to
that jaw of yours if I have to slam it right through the top of your
head. If you want to send me to jail for contemp' of court, sentence me
for life, because that's the way I feel about you, you fat old--"

Judge Hippisley put up wide-open hands and protested:

"Why, Bill, I--I just been wonderin' how I could get your daughter to
make up with me. I been afraid to ask her for fear she'd just think I
was toadyin' to her. I think she's the finest girl ever came out of
Carthage. Do you suppose she'd make up and--and come over to our house
to dinner Sunday?"

"Let's ask her," said William, and they walked in at the door.

XVIII

Early one morning about six months from the first dismal Monday morning
after William Pepperall's last bankruptcy, Serina wakened to find that
William was already up. She had been oversleeping with that luxury which
a woman can experience only in an expensive and frilly nightie combined
with hemstitched linen sheets. She opened her heavy and
slumber-contented eyes to behold her husband in a suit of partly-silk
pajamas. He was making strange motions with his feet. "What on earth you
doing there?" she yawned, and William grinned.

"Yestiddy afternoon the judge