here in the world.

Even ex-comrade Lon Price would now shut his office at four o'clock every
day and go up on the hill and outdoor a bit, instead of getting away from
it all in a smoky Bohemian way. Besides he'd had a difference of opinion
with Vernabelle about the poster she was doing for him, the same being
more like an advertisement for some good bath soap, he said, than for
choice villa sites.

"I don't know anything about art," says Lon, "but I know what my wife
likes." Which left Vernabelle with another design on her hands and
brought Comrade Price out of Bohemia.

Even if Dulcie's winter sports hadn't done the trick I guess it would of
been done easy by her report that Bohemians was no longer thought to be
smart in New York, Red Gap being keenly sensitive in such matters. Metta
Bigler's mother firmly turned out the half-lights in Bohemia when she
heard of this talk of Dulcie's. I don't blame her. She didn't one bit
relish having her neat home referred to as a slum, say nothing of having
her only child using a lip stick and acting like an abandoned woman with
cigarettes and the wine cup.

She said just that to me, Metta's mother did. She said she had heard that
New York was all broken up into social sets, the same way Red Gap is, and
if Bohemians wasn't being took up by the better element in New York, then
they shouldn't be took up by the better element of Red Gap--at least not
in any home of which the deed was still in her name. She said of course
she couldn't keep Metta's guest from being a Bohemian, but she would have
to be it alone. She wasn't going to have a whole mob coming round every
day and being Bohemians all over the place, it being not only messy but
repugnant alike to sound morality and Christian enlightenment. And that
settled it. Our town was safe for one more winter. Of course God only
knows what someone may start next winter. We are far off from things,
but by no means safe.

Cousin Egbert was kind of sorry for Vernabelle. He said if she'd just
stuck to plain glass blowing she might of got by with it. He's a wonder,
that man--as teachable as a granite bowlder.

My Godfrey! Ten-thirty, and me having to start the spring sport of ditch
cleaning to-morrow morning at seven! Won't I ever learn!

IV

VENDETTA

By the evening lamp in the Arrowhead living room I did my bit, for the
moment, by holding a hank of gray wool for Ma Pettengill to wind. While
this minor war measure went forwar