ook by the
song. He don't know yet what it means, but it took him all right; he got
regular besotted with it, keeping the kitchen door open all the time, so
he wouldn't miss a single turn. It took his mind off his work, too. Talk
about the Yellow Peril! He got so locoed with that song one day, what
does he do but peel and cook up twelve dollars' worth of the Piedmont
Queen dahlia bulbs I'd ordered for the front yard. Sure! Served 'em with
cream sauce, and we et 'em, thinking they was some kind of a Chinese
vegetable.

"But I was saying about this new look in Chester's eyes, kind of far-off
and criminal, when that song was playing. And then something give me a
pause, as they say. Chet showed up one evening with his nails all
manicured; yes, sir, polished till you needed smoked glasses to look at
'em. I knew all right where he'd been. I may as well tell you that Henry
Lehman was giving Red Gap a flash of form with his new barber
shop--tiled floor, plate-glass front, exposed plumbing, and a manicure
girl from Seattle; yes, sir, just like in the great wicked cities. It
had already turned some of our very best homes into domestic hells, and
no wonder! Decent, God-fearing men, who'd led regular lives and had
whiskers and grown children, setting down to a little spindle-legged
table with this creature, dipping their clumsy old hands into a pink
saucedish of suds and then going brazenly back to their innocent
families with their nails glittering like piano keys. Oh, that young
dame was bound to be a social pet among the ladies of the town, yes--no?
She was pretty and neat figured, with very careful hair, though its
colour had been tampered with unsuccessfully, and she wore little,
blue-striped shirtwaists that fitted very close--you know--with low
collars. It was said that she was a good conversationalist and would
talk in low, eager tones to them whose fingers she tooled.

"Still, I didn't think anything of Chester resorting to that sanitary
den of vice. All I think is that he's trying to pretty himself up for
Nettie and maybe show her he can be a man-about-town, like them she has
known in Spokane and in Yonkers, New York, at the select home of Mrs.
W.B. Hemingway and her husband. How little we think when we had ought
to be thinking our darndest! Me? I just went on playing them two
records, the male barytone and the lady mezzo, and trying to curse that
Chinaman into keeping the kitchen door shut on his cooking, with Wilbur
d