"Do you think that it was the devil that tempted you, Mother Elsie?" I

asked her about it one day when she had a leisure moment for teasing.

"Effie Burns' youngest baby was born exactly while I was dancing, and we

will have six months' trouble with her because her band was not put on

properly," was her answer, as she took up her parcel of five pairs of

only slightly worn stockings that five girls in the Settlement needed

worse than I needed darns, and departed in a great hurry. "Oh, but you

should have seen Hattie Sproul's eyes while I danced," she called back

over her shoulder as she went through the gate.

And so in the second summer of the Club's existence there had been no

bridle upon its gayeties--I had almost used the word license, and I

suppose it would have been a just one under the circumstances. Billy

called it "The Bucket of the Lost Lid," and every individual member did

exactly as he or she chose. The sideboard out on the back porch made as

good a bar as any in the state with old Uncle Wilks to officiate, and in

the wing in one of the private dining rooms a huge wheel stood with its

face to the wall during the day, but came complacently out of its corner

when night descended. On the porch could always be found either Mrs.

James Knight or Mrs. Buford Cunningham. They neither of them had

children, hated home and were serenely happy sitting on the front porch

knitting silk scarfs and gossiping with all comers, while James and

Buford hung around the sideboard at the back. They were institutions and

all of the unmarried boys and girls, men and women, widowed and

widowered, came and went at will, with the liberty that the chaperonage

of their certain presence allowed.

"Suppose one of 'em should fall dead and the other have to attend her

funeral," Nickols remarked one Saturday night at a dinner table not more

than twelve feet away from the two couples. "The scandal that would soon

disrupt this town for lack of their free chaperonage would be like an

earthquake. None of you would have a shred of respectability with which

to drape yourselves to appear in public."

"They don't wear much respectability anyway in the eyes of the

Settlement," said Billy, as he mixed the champagne cup with old Wilks

standing admiringly by. "The floor manager ordered Luella May Spain off

the floor at the dance they had in the lodge room over the Last Chance

last Saturday night for appearing in one of Harriet's last year dancing

frocks Mother Spurlock had collected for her, though they do say that

Luella May had sewed in two inches of tucker and put in sleeves. How's

that for an opinion passed upon the high and mighty from the meek and

lowly?"




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