Jones ... you'll see and hear a lot more of
me, the next week or so!" and he smiled genially, prophetically.

He looked like Socrates as he stood there ... jovially homely,
round-faced ... head as bald as ivory ... red, bushy eyebrows that were
so heavy he shrugged them....

"I'm just beginning the fight (would you actually believe it) for free
speech here ... it takes a radical community, you know, to teach the
conservatives how to suppress freedom....

"You must come around to the big barn Friday night, after the circus."

"--the circus?"

"Oh, we have a circus of our own every summer about this time ... we
represent the animals ourselves ... some of us don't need to make up
much, neither, if we only knew it," he roared.

"After the imitation circus, the real circus will begin. I have
compelled the announcement of a general meeting to discuss my
grievances, and that of others, who are not game enough to speak for
themselves."

* * * * *

I found nobody but Hildreth--Mrs. Baxter--at home, when I returned. She
was lying back in the hammock where Penton lounged to read his news
clippings ... near the outdoor table ... dressed easily in her bloomers
and white middy blouse with the blue bow tie ... her great, brown eyes,
with big jet lashes, drooping langourously over her healthy, rounded
cheeks ... her head of rich, dark hair touseled attractively. She was
reading a book. I caught the white gleam of one of her pretty legs where
the elastic on one side of her bloomers had slipped up.

Alone with her, a touch of my old almost paralytic shyness returned ...
but the pathway to my tent lay so near her hammock I would almost brush
against its side in passing....

She looked up. She gazed at me indefinitely, as if coming back from a
far dream to reality.

"Oh, Johnnie Gregory! You?" fingering her hair with flexible fingers
like a violinist trying his instrument.

"Yes!" I stopped abruptly and flushed.

"Did Jones like you?"

"I think he did."

"Jones is an eccentric ... but nine-tenths of the time he is right in
his contentions ... his moral indignations ... it is his spirit of no
compromise that defeats him."

With that she reached out one hand to me, with that pretty droop of the
left corner of her mouth, that already had begun to fascinate me....

"Help me up ... a hammock's a nice place to be in, but an awkward thing
to get out of."

I took her hand and helped her rise