“Now, here’s your coat. Well, I can’t help it, you have no time to hunt for them. Put your hands in your pockets—it’s not far. And mind you don’t run for Ruth every time. You don’t take any pains with her, and you hustle her about, Miss Dorothy says. Take another little girl. Yes, you must. I shall speak to your father if you answer me in that way, Richard. Men don’t dance with their sisters. Because they don’t. I don’t know why.” He slammed the door till the piazza shook, and strode along beside his scandalized sister, the pumps flopping noisily on his shoulders. She tripped along contentedly—she liked to go. The personality capable of extracting pleasure from the hour before them baffled his comprehension, and he scowled fiercely at her, rubbing his silk stockings together at every step, to enjoy the strange smooth sensation thus produced. This gave him a bow-legged gait that distressed his sister beyond words. “I think you might stop. Everybody’s looking at you! Please stop, Dick Pendleton; you’re a mean old thing. I should think you’d be ashamed to carry your slippers that way. If you jump in that wet place and spatter me I shall tell papa—you _will_ care, when I tell him, just the same! You’re just as bad as you can be. I shan’t speak with you to-day!” [Illustration: “_Going daintily and dutifully to dancing-school._”] She pursed up her lips and maintained a determined silence. He rubbed his legs together with renewed emphasis. Acquaintances met them and passed, unconscious of anything but the sweet picture of a sister and a brother and a plush bag going daintily and dutifully to dancing-school; but his heart was hot at the injustice of the world and the hypocritical cant of girls, and her thoughts were busy with her indictment of him before the family tribunal—she hoped he would be sent to bed. Life is full and running over with just such rosy deceits. He jumped over the threshold of the long room and aimed his cap at the head of a boy he knew, who was standing on one foot to put on a slipper. This destroyed his friend’s balance, and a cheering scuffle followed. Life assumed a more hopeful aspect. In the other dressing-room his sister had fluttered into a whispering, giggling, many-colored throng; buzzing and chuckling with the rest, she adjusted her slippers, and perked out her bows, her braids quivering with sociability. A shrill whistle called them out in two crowding bunches to the polished floor. Hoping against hope, he had clung to the beautiful thought that Miss Dorothy would be sick, that she had missed her train—but no! there she was, with her shiny high-heeled slippers, her pink skirt that pulled out like a fan, and her silver whistle on a chain. The little clicking castanets that rang out so sharply were in her hand beyond a doubt. “Ready, children! Spread out. Take your lines. First position. Now!”