o on under cover. This town--why it's only the
religious training I've given Cy that's kept him so innocent of--things.
Just the other day----I never pay no attention to stories, but I heard
it mighty good and straight that Harry Haydock is carrying on with a
girl that clerks in a store down in Minneapolis, and poor Juanita
not knowing anything about it--though maybe it's the judgment of
God, because before she married Harry she acted up with more than one
boy----Well, I don't like to say it, and maybe I ain't up-to-date, like
Cy says, but I always believed a lady shouldn't even give names to all
sorts of dreadful things, but just the same I know there was at least
one case where Juanita and a boy--well, they were just dreadful.
And--and----Then there's that Ole Jenson the grocer, that thinks he's so
plaguey smart, and I know he made up to a farmer's wife and----And this
awful man Bjornstam that does chores, and Nat Hicks and----"

There was, it seemed, no person in town who was not living a life of
shame except Mrs. Bogart, and naturally she resented it.

She knew. She had always happened to be there. Once, she whispered, she
was going by when an indiscreet window-shade had been left up a couple
of inches. Once she had noticed a man and woman holding hands, and right
at a Methodist sociable!

"Another thing----Heaven knows I never want to start trouble, but I
can't help what I see from my back steps, and I notice your hired girl
Bea carrying on with the grocery boys and all----"

"Mrs. Bogart! I'd trust Bea as I would myself!"

"Oh, dearie, you don't understand me! I'm sure she's a good girl. I mean
she's green, and I hope that none of these horrid young men that there
are around town will get her into trouble! It's their parents' fault,
letting them run wild and hear evil things. If I had my way there
wouldn't be none of them, not boys nor girls neither, allowed to know
anything about--about things till they was married. It's terrible the
bald way that some folks talk. It just shows and gives away what awful
thoughts they got inside them, and there's nothing can cure them except
coming right to God and kneeling down like I do at prayer-meeting every
Wednesday evening, and saying, 'O God, I would be a miserable sinner
except for thy grace.'

"I'd make every last one of these brats go to Sunday School and learn
to think about nice things 'stead of about cigarettes and goings-on--and
these dances they have at the l