Harling from his
first sleep. A crisis was inevitable.
One Saturday night Mr. Harling had gone down to the cellar for beer. As he
came up the stairs in the dark, he heard scuffling on the back porch, and
then the sound of a vigorous slap. He looked out through the side door in
time to see a pair of long legs vaulting over the picket fence. Antonia
was standing there, angry and excited. Young Harry Paine, who was to marry
his employer's daughter on Monday, had come to the tent with a crowd of
friends and danced all evening. Afterward, he begged Antonia to let him
walk home with her. She said she supposed he was a nice young man, as he
was one of Miss Frances's friends, and she didn't mind. On the back porch
he tried to kiss her, and when she protested--because he was going to be
married on Monday--he caught her and kissed her until she got one hand free
and slapped him.
Mr. Harling put his beer-bottles down on the table. `This is what I've
been expecting, Antonia. You've been going with girls who have a
reputation for being free and easy, and now you've got the same reputation.
I won't have this and that fellow tramping about my back yard all the
time. This is the end of it, tonight. It stops, short. You can quit
going to these dances, or you can hunt another place.
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