dy, opposing Catholicism and
Christian Science, and properly guiding all movements that make for
morality and prohibition. Here, the combined churches could afford
a splendid club-house, maybe a stucco and half-timber building with
gargoyles and all sorts of pleasing decorations on it, which, it seems
to me, would be lots better to impress the ordinary class of people than
just a plain old-fashioned colonial house, such as you describe. And
that would be the proper center for all educational and pleasurable
activities, instead of letting them fall into the hands of the
politicians."

"I don't suppose it will take more than thirty or forty years for the
churches to get together?" Carol said innocently.

"Hardly that long even; things are moving so rapidly. So it would be a
mistake to make any other plans."

Carol did not recover her zeal till two days after, when she tried Mrs.
George Edwin Mott, wife of the superintendent of schools.

Mrs. Mott commented, "Personally, I am terribly busy with dressmaking
and having the seamstress in the house and all, but it would be splendid
to have the other members of the Thanatopsis take up the question.
Except for one thing: First and foremost, we must have a new
schoolbuilding. Mr. Mott says they are terribly cramped."

Carol went to view the old building. The grades and the high school were
combined in a damp yellow-brick structure with the narrow windows of an
antiquated jail--a hulk which expressed hatred and compulsory training.
She conceded Mrs. Mott's demand so violently that for two days she
dropped her own campaign. Then she built the school and city hall
together, as the center of the reborn town.

She ventured to the lead-colored dwelling of Mrs. Dave Dyer. Behind the
mask of winter-stripped vines and a wide porch only a foot above the
ground, the cottage was so impersonal that Carol could never visualize
it. Nor could she remember anything that was inside it. But Mrs. Dyer
was personal enough. With Carol, Mrs. Howland, Mrs. McGanum, and Vida
Sherwin she was a link between the Jolly Seventeen and the serious
Thanatopsis (in contrast to Juanita Haydock, who unnecessarily boasted
of being a "lowbrow" and publicly stated that she would "see herself
in jail before she'd write any darned old club papers"). Mrs. Dyer was
superfeminine in the kimono in which she received Carol. Her skin was
fine, pale, soft, suggesting a weak voluptuousness. At afternoon-coffees
she had b