Papa was used to fighting with mamma, and he roared with fine leoninity: "Are you defending your daughter's shamelessness? Do you approve of the tango?" "I've never seen it." "Then it must be just because you always encourage your children to flout my authority. I never could keep any discipline because you always fought for them, encouraged them to disobey their father, to--to--to--" She chanted her responses according to the familiar family antipathy antiphony. They talked themselves out eventually; but Prue was not home. Ollie gradually typewrote herself to sleep and Prue was not home. Horace came in from the Y. M. C. A. bowling-alley and went to bed, and Prue was not home. The old heads nodded. The sentinels slept. At some dimly distant time papa woke with a start and inquired, "Huh?" Mamma jumped and gasped, "Who?" They were shivering with the after-midnight chill of the cold room, and Prue was not home. Papa snapped his watch open and snapped it shut; and the same to his jaw: "Two o'clock! And Prue not home. I'm going after her!" He thrust into his overcoat, slapped his hat on his aching head, flung open the door. And Prue came home. She was alone! And in tears! V As papa's overcoat slid off his arms and his hat off his head she tore down her gloves, tossed her cloak in the direction of the hat-tree and stumbled up the stairs, sobbing. Her mother caught her hand. "What's the matter, honey?" Prue wrenched loose and went on up. Father and mother stared at her, then at each other, then at the floor. Each read the same unspeakable fear in the other's soul. Serina ran up the stairs as fast as she could. William automatically locked the doors and windows, turned out the lights, and followed. He paused in the upper hall to listen. Prue was explaining at last. "It's that Orton Hippisley," Prue sobbed. "What--what has he done?" Serina pleaded, and Prue sobbed on: "Oh, he got fresh! Some of these fellas in this town think that because a girl likes to have a good time and knows how to dance they can get fresh with her. I didn't like the way Ort Hippisley held me and I told him. Finally I wouldn't dance any more with him. I gave his dances to Grant Beadle till the last; then Ort begged so hard I said all right. And he danced like a gentleman. But on the way home he--he put his arm round me. And when I told him to take it away he wouldn't. He said I had been in his arms half the evening before folks, and if I hadn't minded then I oughtn't to mind now. And I said: 'Is that so? Well, it's mighty different when you're dancing.' And he said, 'Oh no, it isn't,' and I said, 'Oh yes, it is.' And he tried to kiss me and I hauled off and smashed him right in the nose. It bloodied all over his dress soot, and I'm glad of it."