"Oh!" remarked the professor reflectively. "So you came on your own hook--off your own bat."
There was a long silence while Professor Ladue drummed on the table with his fingers. Sally waited.
At last he turned. "Sally," he said, with a slight return of that gayety he had shown on her entrance, "the high courage of Miss Sally Ladue shall receive the reward which it deserves. It is not fitting that it should not. Bearding the lion in his den is nothing to it. I am curious to know, Sally, whether you--" But there the professor stopped. He had been about to ask his daughter, aged ten, whether she was not afraid. He knew that she was not afraid. He knew that, if there was some fear, some hesitation, some doubt as to the exact outcome of the interview, it was not on Sally's part.
"Well, Sally," he continued, waving his hand airily, "make your arrangements. Miss Ladue is to go to dancing-school and dance her feet off if she wants to. Never mind the price." He waved his hand again. "Never mind the price. What are a few paltry dollars that they should interfere with pleasure? What is money to dancing?"
Sally was very solemn. "I think the price is ten dollars," she said.
Professor Ladue snapped his fingers in the air. "It doesn't matter. Poof! Ten dollars or ten hundred! Let us dance!"
Sally's eyes filled, but she choked the tears back.
"Thank you, father," she said gently. "Mother will be glad."
He rose and bowed, his hand on his heart. "That is important, of course."
"I think it is the only important thing about it," Sally returned promptly.
The professor bowed again, without reply, and Sally turned to go.
It may have been that the professor's heart smote him. It may have been that he had been aware of Sally's unshed tears. It may have been that he regretted that he should have been the cause--but I may be doing him an injustice. Very likely he was above such things as the tears of his wife and his daughter. It is quite possible that he was as proud of his ability to draw tears as of his ability to draw, correctly, a bone that he never saw. Whatever the reason, he spoke again as Sally was opening the door.
"Will Miss Ladue," he asked, with an elaborate politeness, "honor my poor study with her presence when she has more leisure? When she has not Charlie on her mind? We can, if she pleases, go farther into the matter of lizards or of coal trees."