Neale carried into his dancing the same minute earnestness that won him success at his games and studies. He did not see the use of dancing, any more than he saw the use of learning German. But as the jobs seemed to have to be done, he tackled both of them conscientiously. He remembered to reverse in waltzing just as he remembered to put the auxiliary at the end of a sentence after "als." He came to be considered a good dancer. The girls did not claim to be tired when he asked them to dance with him. But he went no further. Even after he had mastered the steps and "leading," he did not talk as he spun methodically around. What was there to say? And even when he waltzed with Flossie Winters, the admitted belle, his heart beat no faster. It was nothing to him to put his arm around her waist. In spite of his long trousers and stick-up collar, the spirit of the thing escaped him; his time had not come. After some months (they seemed very long months to Neale), the conscientious and thorough instructor gave him a printed testimonial of efficiency; there was no more he could teach Neale. Over this his mother looked at him, "Wouldn't you like to go on, for the fun of it, Neale?" she asked him rather urgently. Neale's father took his cigar out of his mouth to hear Neale's answer. "For the _fun_ of it!" said Neale, stupefied at the idea. His parents exchanged glances and shook their heads, beaten. "Oh, of course you don't _have_ to!" his mother assured him hastily. His father put his cigar back in his mouth. CHAPTER XII In June 1899 when Hadley Prep. unlocked its grim doors and spewed forth the fifteen-year-old Neale for his third vacation, he did not as he had always done before, go at once with Mother to West Adams and the saw-mill. The invariable program of his journey there, Mother's two weeks' stay with him to get him settled, her going on to visit vague relatives of her own elsewhere in Massachusetts, and her return to spend the rest of the summer with Father, was upset by the news from the West Adams Crittendens. Jenny, the hired girl, had been to visit friends in Troy, and had fallen ill on her return. The doctor thought it might be typhoid. Certainly they did not want a boy visitor bothering around, until the matter was settled and they knew whether they were in for a long siege. The Crittendens like all methodical people were quite at a loss when circumstances interfered with their routine. If there was one part of Neale's year the rightness of which they did not doubt, it was the summer spent in the country where his father had grown up. Now they were confronted with a perfectly new aspect of the problem of what to do with him. They solved it by not doing anything for the present. Mrs. Crittenden went off to visit the usual relatives in Massachusetts, delicate old ladies, whose nerves could not hold out against the idea of a great ramping boy; and Neale was left temporarily with his father to wait developments in West Adams.