Ruth gave him one of her long, sweet glances, then demurely began laying
out more cards. "Good morning, Bob," she said richly.

Bob said good morning, too, but I discerned something forced and
peremptory in his voice. I felt that that pack of playing cards laid out
before Ruth on the Sabbath-day affected him just as it had me when first
Ruth came to live with us. I had been brought up to look upon
card-playing on Sunday as forbidden. In Hilton I could remember when
policemen searched vacant lots and fields on Sunday for crowds of bad
boys engaged in the shocking pastime beneath secreted shade trees. Ruth
had traveled so widely and spent so many months visiting in various
communities where card-playing on Sunday was the custom that I knew it
didn't occur to her as anything out of the ordinary. I tried to listen
to what Will was reading out loud to me from the paper, but the
fascination of the argument going on behind my back by the window held
me.

"But, Bob dear," I heard Ruth's surprised voice expostulate pleasantly,
"you play golf occasionally on Sunday. What's the difference? Both a
game, one played with sticks and a ball, and the other with black and
red cards. I was allowed to play Bible authors when I was a child, and
it's terribly narrow, when you look at it squarely, to say that one pack
of cards is any more wicked than another."

"It's not a matter of wickedness," Bob replied in a low, disturbed
voice. "It's a matter of taste, and reverence for pervading custom."

"But----" put in Ruth.

"Irreverence for pervading custom," went on Bob, "is shown by certain
men when they smoke, with no word of apology, in a lady's
reception-room, or track mud in on their boots, as if it was a country
club. Some people enjoy having their Sundays observed as Sunday, just as
they do their reception-rooms as reception-rooms."

"But, Bob----"

"I think of you as such an exquisite person," he pursued, "so fine, so
sensitive, I cannot associate you with any form of offense or vulgarity,
like this," he must have pointed to the cards, "or extreme fashions, or
cigarette smoking. Do you see what I mean?"

"Vulgarity! Cigarette smoking! Why, Bob, some of the most refined women
in the world smoke cigarettes--clever, intelligent women, too. And I
never could see any justice at all in the idea some people have that
it's any worse, or more vulgar, as you say, for women to smoke
cigarettes than for men."

"Irreverence for custom again