hibit to get new books for the M.E. Sabbath-school library and
got Spud Mulkins of the El Adobe to lend 'em the big gold-framed oil
painting that hangs over his bar. Some of the other ladies objected to
this--the picture was a big pink hussy lying down beside the
ocean--but Henrietta says art for art's sake is pure to them that are
pure, or something, and they're doing such things constantly in the
East; and I'm darned if Spud didn't have his oil painting down and the
mosquito netting ripped off it before Alonzo heard about it and put the
Not-at-All on it. He wouldn't reason with Henrietta either. He just said
his objection was that every man that saw it would put one foot up
groping for the brass railing, which would be undignified for a
Sabbath-school scheme, and that she'd better hunt out something with
clothes on like Whistler's portrait of his mother, or, if she wanted the
nude in art, to get the Horse Fair or something with animals.

"I tell you that to show you how they don't hit it off sometimes. Then
Henrietta sulks. Kind of pinched and hungry looking she is, drapes her
black hair down over one side of her high forehead, wears daring
gowns--that's what she calls 'em anyway--and reads the most outrageous
kinds of poetry out loud to them that will listen. Likes this Omar
Something stuff about your path being beset with pitfalls and gin fizzes
and getting soused out under a tree with your girl.

"I'm just telling you so you'll get Henrietta when Wilfred Lennox drips
gracefully in with his piece of poetry in one hand. Of course she must
have looked long and nervously at Wilfred, then read his poetry, then
looked again. There before her was Romance against a background of
Alonzo Price, who never had an adventurous or evil thought in his life,
and wore rubbers! Oh, sure! He must have palsied her at once, this wild,
free creature of the woods who couldn't stand the cramped haunts of men.
And I have said that Wilfred was there with the wild, free words about
himself, and the hat and tie and the waving brown hair that give him so
much trouble. Shucks! I don't blame the woman. It's only a few years
since we been let out from under lock and key. Give us a little time to
get our bearings, say I. Wilfred was just one big red splash before her
yearning eyes; he blinded her. And he stood there telling how this here
life in the marts of trade would sure twist and blacken some of the very
finest chords in his being. Something l