You have ruined me! It was the biggest
chance of my career. I should have been a made woman if it hadn't
been for you. Now I shall be the joke of the world!"
"Please, Miss Silsby," Kedzie protested, "if you please, Miss
Silsby--I didn't mean to fall into the water. I'm as sorry as
I can be."
"What good does it do me for you to be sorry? I'm the one to be
sorry. I should think you would have had more sense than to do
such a thing!"
"How could I help it, dog on it!" Kedzie retorted, her anger
recrudescent.
"Help it? Are you a dancer or are you a cow?"
Kedzie quivered as if she had been lashed. She struck back with
her best Nimrim repartee, "You're a nice one to call me a cow,
you big, fat, old lummox!"
Miss Silsby fairly mooed at this.
"You--you insolent little rat, you! You--oh, you--you! I'll never
let you dance for me again--never!"
"I'd better resign, then, I suppose," said Kedzie.
"Resign? How dare you resign! You're fired! That's how you'll resign.
You're fired! The impudence of her! She turns my life-work into
a laughing-stock and then says she'd better resign!"
"How about to-night?" Kedzie put in, dazed.
"Never you mind about to-night. I'll get along without you if
I have to dance myself."
The other nymphs shook under this, like corn-stalks in a wind.
But Kedzie was a statuette of pathos. She stood cowering barelegged
before Miss Silsby, fully clothed in everything but her right mind.
There was nothing Grecian about Miss Silsby except the Medusa glare,
and that turned Kedzie into stone.
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