ering
how they had endured the clumsy things so long; and come spring all the
prominent young society buds and younger matrons of the most exclusive
set who could stay on a horse at all was getting theirs ready for the
approaching season, Red Gap being like London in having its gayest
season in the summer, when people can get out more. Even Mis' Judge
Ballard fell for it, though hers was made of severe black with a long
coat. She looked exactly like that Methodist minister, the old one, that
we had three years ago.

"Most of the younger set used the mail-order catalogue, their figures
still permitting it. And maybe there wasn't a lot of trying on behind
drawn blinds pretty soon, and delighted giggles and innocent girlish
wonderings about whether the lowest type of man really ogles as much
under certain circumstances as he's said to. And the minute the roads
got good the telephone of Pierce's Livery, Feed, and Sale Stable was
kept on the ring. Then the social upheaval was on. Of course any of 'em
looked quiet after Henrietta's costume, for none of the girls but Beryl
Mae Macomber, a prominent young society bud, aged seventeen, had done
anything like that. But it was the idea of the thing.

"A certain element on the South Side made a lot of talk and stirred
things up and wrote letters to the president of the Civic Purity League,
who was Mis' Judge Ballard herself, asking where this unspeakable
disrobing business was going to end and calling her attention to the
fate that befell Sodom and Gomorrah. But Mis' Ballard she's mixed on
names and gets the idea these parties mean Samson and Delilah instead of
a couple of twin cities, like St. Paul and Minneapolis, and she writes
back saying what have these Bible characters got to do with a lady
riding on horseback--in trousers, it is true, but with a coat falling
modestly to the knee on each side, and certain people had better be a
little more fussy about things that really matter in life before they
begin to talk. She knew who she was hitting at all right, too. Trust
Mis' Ballard!

"It was found that there was almost the expected amount of ogling from
sidewalk loafers, at first. As Daisy Estelle Maybury said, it seemed as
if a girl couldn't show herself on the public thoroughfare without being
subjected to insult. Poor Daisy Estelle! She had been a very popular
young society belle, and was considered one of the most attractive girls
in Red Gap until this happened. No one had e