The next morning I awoke with the same resolve in my heart, to be happy
if wicked, and proceeded to execute it with a great vigor. And in the
execution of that resolve dear old Goodloets almost had some of the moss
of its century's repose scraped off of its back.
First and foremost, we all danced, day and night. We had really begun
the giddy whirl the summer before when we had built the little clubhouse
over in the oak grove by the river's edge, just between the Town and the
Settlement, so that we would no longer feel the limit and limitations to
our gliding of anybody's double parlors, and conservative Goodloets had
been duly shocked thereat.
"Ladies did not dance outside of their own and their friends' private
homes in my day," Mrs. Cockrell had sighed, as she finished the petal
of the rose she was embroidering upon some of Letitia's lingerie.
"I'd rather they danced in their den of iniquity than to execute these
modern gyrations in my home," had responded Harriet's mother, Mrs.
Sproul, as she finished the hundredth round on the shawl she was
knitting. Harriet's report of the conversation had been received with
great hilarity that evening at dinner at the Club.
But Goodloets had had a year in which to recover from the shock of the
institution of the Country Club when I started in to enjoy myself.
Having church services there on Sundays and Wednesdays during the winter
had done much to remove the prejudice in the minds of the conservative.
I suspected the Reverend Mr. Goodloe of a great deal of worldly wisdom
when I saw how he had been able to persuade the directors, Hampton
Dibrell and Mark and Cliff, to let him do such a weird thing. Mrs.
Sproul and Mrs. Cockrell and their friends had first been tolled out to
prayer meeting and then had come to witness a tennis match. Billy, in
great glee, recounted to me the first time they had stayed to dinner
with him and father and Mr. Cockrell. They had been enjoying the prayer
meetings to the utmost and had come out with Mother Spurlock by mistake
on a Tuesday night, which was the regular dinner dance night. It was
some time before they discovered their mistake, for they were immensely
enjoying their visit with Mother Spurlock, and when the dancing began
Billy had seized Mother Elsie in his arms and danced her the whole
length of the room. The music had been too much for her feet in their
sensible shoes, and very suddenly they had unfolded their wings after
thirty long years of rest and had fairly flown up and down and backwards
and forwards with Billy's in a sedate version of one of the phases of
the tango. Mrs. George Spurlock had been the best dancer in Goodloets
when time was young.