lock, 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.

"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 li