strangled at this, too. He finally manages to say that he tried
to read Shakespere once but it was too fine print. The old liar! He
wouldn't read a line of Shakespere in letters a foot high. It just showed
that he, too, was trying to bluff along with the rest of 'em on this
Bohemian chatter.

Vernabelle continued full of blandishment for the two men and poured 'em
out stiff hookers of this demon elderberry wine and lighted cigarettes
for 'em from hers. I don't know whether this beverage got to Lon Price
or not, but in a minute he was telling her that beauty in her sex was a
common-enough heritage, but how all-too rare it was to find beauty and
brains in the same woman! Vernabelle called him comrade after that, and
then she was telling Cousin Egbert that he was of the great outdoors--a
man's man! Egbert looked kind of silly and puzzled at this. He didn't
seem to be so darned sure about it.

Then Vernabelle worked over by the easel--it took her about six attitudes
leaning against things, to get there--and showed her oil paintings to the
newcomers. Lon Price was full of talk and admiration and said she must
do a poster for him showing a creature of rare beauty up in the clouds
beckoning home-buyers out to Price's Addition, where it was Big Lots,
Little Payments, and all Nature seemed to smile. He said this figure,
however, had better have something in the shape of a garment on it
because the poster would go into homes where art in its broader extent
was still regarded in a suspicious or even hostile manner, if she caught
what he meant. The artist says she can readily understand, and that life
after all is anything but selective.

Cousin Egbert just looked at the pictures in an uncomfortable manner.
He spoke only once and that was about the mottled lady reaching over
her shoulder and smiling. "Grinitch," says he with a knowing leer. But
Vernabelle only says, yes, it was painted in the dear old village.

Then the crowd sort of got together on the couch and in chairs and
Vernabelle talked for one and all. She said how stimulating it was for a
few of the real people who did things to come together in this way after
the day's turmoil--to get away from it all! Beryl Mae said she had often
wanted to get away from it all, but her aunt was narrow-minded. Henrietta
Price lighted her ninth cigarette and said how it reminded her of the
Latin Quarter of Paris, which she had never been to, but her cousin had
spent a whole afternoon