At breakfast Ollie waited on the table after compelling Serina to sit down and eat. There was little to tempt the appetite and no appetite to be tempted. Papa was in the doldrums. He had always complained before of having to gulp his breakfast and hurry to the shop. And now he complained because there was no hurry; indeed, there was no shop. He must set out at his time of years, after his life of independent warfare, to ask for enlistment as a private in some other man's company--in a town where vacancies rarely occurred and where William Pepperall would not be welcome. The whole town was mad at him. He had owed everybody, and then suddenly he owed nobody. By the presto-change-o of bankruptcy his debts had been passed from the hat of unpaid bills to the hat of worthless accounts. Serina was as dismal as any wife is when she is faced with the prospect of having her man hanging about the house all day. A wife in a man's office hours is a nuisance, but a man at home in household office hours is a pest. This was the newest but not the least of Serina's woes. Horace was even glummer than ever, as soggy as his own oatmeal. At best he was one of those breakfast bruins. Now he was a bear that has been hit on the nose. He, too, must seek a job. School had seemed confining before, but now that he must go to work, school seemed like one long recess. Even Ollie was depressed. Hers was the misery of an active person denied activity. She had prepared herself as an aid in her father's business, and now he had no business. In this alkali desert of inanition Prue's vivacious temper would have been welcome. "Where's Prue?" said papa for the fifth time. Serina was about to say that she was still asleep when Prue made her presence known. Everybody was apprised that the water had been turned on in the bathroom; it resounded throughout the house. It seemed to fall about one's head. Prue was filling the tub for her Monday morning siesta. She was humming a strange tune over the cascade like another Minnehaha. And from the behavior of the dining-room chandelier and the plates on the sideboard she was evidently dancing. "What's that toon she's dancing to?" papa asked, after a while. "I don't know," said Serina. "I never heard it," said Ollie. "Ah," growled Horace, "it's the Argentine tango." "The tango!" gasped papa. "Isn't that the new dance I've been reading about, that's making a sensation in New York?" "Ah, wake up, pop!" said Horace. "It's a sensation here, too." "In Carthage? They're dancing the tango in our home town?" "Surest thing you know, pop. The whole burg's goin' bug over it." "How is it done? What is it like?" "Something like this," said Horace, and, rising, he indulged in the prehistoric turkey-trot of a year ago, with burlesque hip-snaps and poultry-yard scrapings of the foot. "Stop it!" papa thundered. "It's loathsome! Do you mean to tell me that my daughter does that sort of thing?" "Sure! She's a wonder at it."