_ WHEN the first dubious November snow had filtered down,
shading with white the bare clods in the plowed fields, when
the first small fire had been started in the furnace, which
is the shrine of a Gopher Prairie home, Carol began to make
the house her own. She dismissed the parlor furniture--the
golden oak table with brass knobs, the moldy brocade chairs,
the picture of "The Doctor." She went to Minneapolis, to
scamper through department stores and small Tenth Street
shops devoted to ceramics and high thought. She had to ship
her treasures, but she wanted to bring them back in her arms.
Carpenters had torn out the partition between front parlor
and back parlor, thrown it into a long room on which she
lavished yellow and deep blue; a Japanese obi with an
intricacy of gold thread on stiff ultramarine tissue, which she
hung as a panel against the maize wall; a couch with pillows of
sapphire velvet and gold bands; chairs which, in Gopher Prairie,
seemed flippant. She hid the sacred family phonograph in the
dining-room, and replaced its stand with a square cabinet on
which was a squat blue jar between yellow candles.
Kennicott decided against a fireplace. "We'll have a new
house in a couple of years, anyway."
She decorated only one room. The rest, Kennicott hinted,
she'd better leave till he "made a ten-strike."
The brown cube of a house stirred and awakened; it seemed
to be in motion; it welcomed her back from shopping; it lost
its mildewed repression.
The supreme verdict was Kennicott's "Well, by golly, I
was afraid the new junk wouldn't be so comfortable, but I
must say this divan, or whatever you call it, is a lot better
than that bumpy old sofa we had, and when I look around----
Well, it's worth all it cost, I guess."
Every one in town took an interest in the refurnishing. The
carpenters and painters who did not actually assist crossed
the lawn to peer through the windows and exclaim, "Fine!
Looks swell!" Dave Dyer at the drug store, Harry Haydock
and Raymie Wutherspoon at the Bon Ton, repeated daily,
"How's the good work coming? I hear the house is getting
to be real classy."
Even Mrs. Bogart.
Mrs. Bogart lived across the alley from the rear of Carol's
house. She was a widow, and a Prominent Baptist, and a
Good Influence. She had so painfully reared three sons to
be Christian gentlemen that one of them had become an Omaha
bartender, one a professor of Greek, and one, Cyrus N.
Bogart, a boy of fourteen who was still at home, the most
brazen member of the toughest gang in Boytown.
Mrs. Bogart was not the acid type of Good Influence. She
was the soft, damp, fat, sighing, indigestive, clinging,
melancholy, depressingly hopeful kind. There are in every large
chicken-yard a number of old and indignant hens who resemble
Mrs. Bogart, and when they are served at Sunday noon
dinner, as fricasseed chicken with thick dumplings, they keep
up the resemblance.
Carol had noted that Mrs. Bogart from her side window
kept an eye upon the house. The Kennicotts and Mrs. Bogart
did not move in the same sets--which meant precisely the same
in Gopher Prairie as it did on Fifth Avenue or in Mayfair.
But the good widow came calling.
She wheezed in, sighed, gave Carol a pulpy hand, sighed,
glanced sharply at the revelation of ankles as Carol crossed
her legs, sighed, inspected the new blue chairs, smiled with a
coy sighing sound, and gave voice:
"I've wanted to call on you so long, dearie, you know we're
neighbors, but I thought I'd wait till you got settled, you must
run in and see me, how much did that big chair cost?"
"Seventy-seven dollars!"
"Sev---- Sakes alive! Well, I suppose it's all right for them
that can afford it, though I do sometimes think---- Of course
as our pastor said once, at Baptist Church---- By the way, we
haven't seen you there yet, and of course your husband was
raised up a Baptist, and I do hope he won't drift away from
the fold, of course we all know there isn't anything, not
cleverness or gifts of gold or anything, that can make up for humility
and the inward grace and they can say what they want to about
the P. E. church, but of course there's no church that has more
history or has stayed by the true principles of Christianity
better than the Baptist Church and---- In what church were
you raised, Mrs. Kennicott?"
"W-why, I went to Congregational, as a girl in Mankato,
but my college was Universalist."
"Well---- But of course as the Bible says, is it the Bible,
at least I know I have heard it in church and everybody admits
it, it's proper for the little bride to take her husband's vessel
of faith, so we all hope we shall see you at the Baptist Church
and---- As I was saying, of course I agree with Reverend
Zitterel in thinking that the great trouble with this nation
today is lack of spiritual faith--so few going to church, and
people automobiling on Sunday and heaven knows what all.
But still I do think that one trouble is this terrible waste of
money, people feeling that they've got to have bath-tubs and
telephones in their houses---- I heard you were selling the
old furniture cheap."
"Yes!"
"Well--of course you know your own mind, but I can't
help thinking, when Will's ma was down here keeping house
for him--SHE used to run in to SEE me, real OFTEN!--it was good
enough furniture for her. But there, there, I mustn't croak,
I just wanted to let you know that when you find you can't
depend on a lot of these gadding young folks like the Haydocks
and the Dyers--and heaven only knows how much money
Juanita Haydock blows in in a year--why then you may be
glad to know that slow old Aunty Bogart is always right there,
and heaven knows----" A portentous sigh. "--I HOPE you and
your husband won't have any of the troubles, with sickness and
quarreling and wasting money and all that so many of these
young couples do have and---- But I must be running along
now, dearie. It's been such a pleasure and---- Just run in
and see me any time. I hope Will is well? I thought he
looked a wee mite peaked."
It was twenty minutes later when Mrs. Bogart finally oozed
out of the front door. Carol ran back into the living-room
and jerked open the windows. "That woman has left damp
finger-prints in the air," she said.
II
Carol was extravagant, but at least she did not try to clear
herself of blame by going about whimpering, "I know I'm
terribly extravagant but I don't seem to be able to help it."
Kennicott had never thought of giving her an allowance.
His mother had never had one! As a wage-earning spinster
Carol had asserted to her fellow librarians that when she was
married, she was going to have an allowance and be business-
like and modern. But it was too much trouble to explain to
Kennicott's kindly stubbornness that she was a practical
housekeeper as well as a flighty playmate. She bought a budget-
plan account book and made her budgets as exact as budgets
are likely to be when they lack budgets.
For the first month it was a honeymoon jest to beg prettily,
to confess, "I haven't a cent in the house, dear," and to be
told, "You're an extravagant little rabbit." But the budget
book made her realize how inexact were her finances. She
became self-conscious; occasionally she was indignant that she
should always have to petition him for the money with which
to buy his food. She caught herself criticizing his belief that,
since his joke about trying to keep her out of the poorhouse
had once been accepted as admirable humor, it should continue
to be his daily bon mot. It was a nuisance to have to run
down the street after him because she had forgotten to ask
him for money at breakfast.
But she couldn't "hurt his feelings," she reflected. He
liked the lordliness of giving largess.
She tried to reduce the frequency of begging by opening
accounts and having the bills sent to him. She had found that
staple groceries, sugar, flour, could be most cheaply purchased
at Axel Egge's rustic general store. She said sweetly to Axel:
"I think I'd better open a charge account here."
"I don't do no business except for cash," grunted Axel.
She flared, "Do you know who I am?"
"Yuh, sure, I know. The doc is good for it. But that's
yoost a rule I made. I make low prices. I do business for
cash."
She stared at his red impassive face, and her fingers had
the undignified desire to slap him, but her reason agreed with
him. "You're quite right. You shouldn't break your rule
for me."
Her rage had not been lost. It had been transferred to
her husband. She wanted ten pounds of sugar in a hurry, but
she had no money. She ran up the stairs to Kennicott's office.
On the door was a sign advertising a headache cure and
stating, "The doctor is out, back at----" Naturally, the blank
space was not filled out. She stamped her foot. She ran
down to the drug store--the doctor's club.
As she entered she heard Mrs. Dyer demanding, "Dave,
I've got to have some money."
Carol saw that her husband was there, and two other men,
all listening in amusement.
Dave Dyer snapped, "How much do you want? Dollar be
enough?"
"No, it won't! I've got to get some underclothes for the
kids."
"Why, good Lord, they got enough now to fill the closet
so I couldn't find my hunting boots, last time I wanted them."
"I don't care. They're all in rags. You got to give me
ten dollars----"
Carol perceived that Mrs. Dyer was accustomed to this
indignity. She perceived that the men, particularly Dave,
regarded it as an excellent jest. She waited--she knew what
would come--it did. Dave yelped, "Where's that ten dollars
I gave you last year?" and he looked to the other men to
laugh. They laughed.
Cold and still, Carol walked up to Kennicott and
commanded, "I want to see you upstairs."
"Why--something the matter?"
"Yes!"
He clumped after her, up the stairs, into his barren office.
Before he could get out a query she stated:
"Yesterday, in front of a saloon, I heard a German farm-
wife beg her husband for a quarter, to get a toy for the baby--
and he refused. Just now I've heard Mrs. Dyer going through
the same humiliation. And I--I'm in the same position! I
have to beg you for money. Daily! I have just been informed
that I couldn't have any sugar because I hadn't the money
to pay for it!"
"Who said that? By God, I'll kill any----"
"Tut. It wasn't his fault. It was yours. And mine. I now
humbly beg you to give me the money with which to buy meals
for you to eat. And hereafter to remember it. The next time,
I sha'n't beg. I shall simply starve. Do you understand?
I can't go on being a slave----"
Her defiance, her enjoyment of the role, ran out. She
was sobbing against his overcoat, "How can you shame me
so?" and he was blubbering, "Dog-gone it, I meant to give
you some, and I forgot it. I swear I won't again. By golly
I won't!"
He pressed fifty dollars upon her, and after that he
remembered to give her money regularly. . .sometimes.
Daily she determined, "But I must have a stated amount--
be business-like. System. I must do something about it."
And daily she didn't do anything about it.
III
Mrs. Bogart had, by the simpering viciousness of her
comments on the new furniture, stirred Carol to economy. She
spoke judiciously to Bea about left-overs. She read the cook-
book again and, like a child with a picture-book, she studied
the diagram of the beef which gallantly continues to browse
though it is divided into cuts.
But she was a deliberate and joyous spendthrift in her
preparations for her first party, the housewarming. She made
lists on every envelope and laundry-slip in her desk. She
sent orders to Minneapolis "fancy grocers." She pinned
patterns and sewed. She was irritated when Kennicott was
jocular about "these frightful big doings that are going on."
She regarded the affair as an attack on Gopher Prairie's timidity
in pleasure. "I'll make 'em lively, if nothing else. I'll
make 'em stop regarding parties as committee-meetings."
Kennicott usually considered himself the master of the
house. At his desire, she went hunting, which was his symbol
of happiness, and she ordered porridge for breakfast, which
was his symbol of morality. But when he came home on the
afternoon before the housewarming he found himself a slave,
an intruder, a blunderer. Carol wailed, "Fix the furnace so
you won't have to touch it after supper. And for heaven's sake
take that horrible old door-mat off the porch. And put on your
nice brown and white shirt. Why did you come home so
late? Would you mind hurrying? Here it is almost suppertime,
and those fiends are just as likely as not to come at
seven instead of eight. PLEASE hurry!"
She was as unreasonable as an amateur leading woman on
a first night, and he was reduced to humility. When she came
down to supper, when she stood in the doorway, he gasped.
She was in a silver sheath, the calyx of a lily, her piled hair
like black glass; she had the fragility and costliness of a
Viennese goblet; and her eyes were intense. He was stirred
to rise from the table and to hold the chair for her; and all
through supper he ate his bread dry because he felt that she
would think him common if he said "Will you hand me the
butter?"
IV
She had reached the calmness of not caring whether her
guests liked the party or not, and a state of satisfied suspense
in regard to Bea's technique in serving, before Kennicott cried
from the bay-window in the living-room, "Here comes somebody!"
and Mr. and Mrs. Luke Dawson faltered in, at a
quarter to eight. Then in a shy avalanche arrived the entire
aristocracy of Gopher Prairie: all persons engaged in a
profession, or earning more than twenty-five hundred dollars a
year, or possessed of grandparents born in America.
Even while they were removing their overshoes they were
peeping at the new decorations. Carol saw Dave Dyer
secretively turn over the gold pillows to find a price-tag, and
heard Mr. Julius Flickerbaugh, the attorney, gasp, "Well, I'll
be switched," as he viewed the vermilion print hanging against
the Japanese obi. She was amused. But her high spirits slackened
as she beheld them form in dress parade, in a long, silent,
uneasy circle clear round the living-room. She felt that she
had been magically whisked back to her first party, at Sam
Clark's.
"Have I got to lift them, like so many pigs of iron? I
don't know that I can make them happy, but I'll make them
hectic."
A silver flame in the darkling circle, she whirled around, drew
them with her smile, and sang, "I want my party to be noisy
and undignified! This is the christening of my house, and
I want you to help me have a bad influence on it, so that
it will be a giddy house. For me, won't you all join in an
old-fashioned square dance? And Mr. Dyer will call."
She had a record on the phonograph; Dave Dyer was capering
in the center of the floor, loose-jointed, lean, small, rusty
headed, pointed of nose, clapping his hands and shouting,
"Swing y' pardners--alamun lef!"
Even the millionaire Dawsons and Ezra Stowbody and
"Professor" George Edwin Mott danced, looking only slightly
foolish; and by rushing about the room and being coy and coaxing
to all persons over forty-five, Carol got them into a waltz
and a Virginia Reel. But when she left them to disenjoy
themselves in their own way Harry Haydock put a one-step record
on the phonograph, the younger people took the floor, and
all the elders sneaked back to their chairs, with crystallized
smiles which meant, "Don't believe I'll try this one myself,
but I do enjoy watching the youngsters dance."
Half of them were silent; half resumed the discussions of
that afternoon in the store. Ezra Stowbody hunted for something
to say, hid a yawn, and offered to Lyman Cass, the
owner of the flour-mill, "How d' you folks like the new
furnace, Lym? Huh? So."
"Oh, let them alone. Don't pester them. They must like
it, or they wouldn't do it." Carol warned herself. But they
gazed at her so expectantly when she flickered past that she
was reconvinced that in their debauches of respectability they
had lost the power of play as well as the power of impersonal
thought. Even the dancers were gradually crushed by the
invisible force of fifty perfectly pure and well-behaved and
negative minds; and they sat down, two by two. In twenty
minutes the party was again elevated to the decorum of a
prayer-meeting.
"We're going to do something exciting," Carol exclaimed
to her new confidante, Vida Sherwin. She saw that in the
growing quiet her voice had carried across the room. Nat
Hicks, Ella Stowbody, and Dave Dyer were abstracted, fingers
and lips slightly moving. She knew with a cold certainty that
Dave was rehearsing his "stunt" about the Norwegian catching
the hen, Ella running over the first lines of "An Old Sweetheart
of Mine," and Nat thinking of his popular parody on Mark
Antony's oration.
"But I will not have anybody use the word `stunt' in my
house," she whispered to Miss Sherwin.
"That's good. I tell you: why not have Raymond Wutherspoon sing?"
"Raymie? Why, my dear, he's the most sentimental yearner
in town!"
"See here, child! Your opinions on house-decorating are
sound, but your opinions of people are rotten! Raymie does
wag his tail. But the poor dear---- Longing for what he
calls `self-expression' and no training in anything except selling
shoes. But he can sing. And some day when he gets away
from Harry Haydock's patronage and ridicule, he'll do
something fine."
Carol apologized for her superciliousness. She urged
Raymie, and warned the planners of "stunts," "We all want
you to sing, Mr. Wutherspoon. You're the only famous actor
I'm going to let appear on the stage tonight."
While Raymie blushed and admitted, "Oh, they don't want
to hear me," he was clearing his throat, pulling his clean
handkerchief farther out of his breast pocket, and thrusting his
fingers between the buttons of his vest.
In her affection for Raymie's defender, in her desire to
"discover artistic talent," Carol prepared to be delighted by the
recital.
Raymie sang "Fly as a Bird," "Thou Art My Dove," and
"When the Little Swallow Leaves Its Tiny Nest," all in a
reasonably bad offertory tenor.
Carol was shuddering with the vicarious shame which
sensitive people feel when they listen to an "elocutionist" being
humorous, or to a precocious child publicly doing badly what
no child should do at all. She wanted to laugh at the gratified
importance in Raymie's half-shut eyes; she wanted to weep
over the meek ambitiousness which clouded like an aura his
pale face, flap ears, and sandy pompadour. She tried to look
admiring, for the benefit of Miss Sherwin, that trusting
admirer of all that was or conceivably could be the good, the
true, and the beautiful.
At the end of the third ornithological lyric Miss Sherwin
roused from her attitude of inspired vision and breathed to
Carol, "My! That was sweet! Of course Raymond hasn't
an unusually good voice, but don't you think he puts such
a lot of feeling into it?"
Carol lied blackly and magnificently, but without originality:
"Oh yes, I do think he has so much FEELING!"
She saw that after the strain of listening in a cultured
manner the audience had collapsed; had given up their last hope
of being amused. She cried, "Now we're going to play an
idiotic game which I learned in Chicago. You will have to
take off your shoes, for a starter! After that you will probably
break your knees and shoulder-blades."
Much attention and incredulity. A few eyebrows indicating
a verdict that Doc Kennicott's bride was noisy and improper.
"I shall choose the most vicious, like Juanita Haydock and
myself, as the shepherds. The rest of you are wolves. Your
shoes are the sheep. The wolves go out into the hall. The
shepherds scatter the sheep through this room, then turn off
all the lights, and the wolves crawl in from the hall and in the
darkness they try to get the shoes away from the shepherds--
who are permitted to do anything except bite and use black-
jacks. The wolves chuck the captured shoes out into the hall.
No one excused! Come on! Shoes off!"
Every one looked at every one else and waited for every
one else to begin.
Carol kicked off her silver slippers, and ignored the universal
glance at her arches. The embarrassed but loyal Vida Sherwin
unbuttoned her high black shoes. Ezra Stowbody cackled,
"Well, you're a terror to old folks. You're like the gals I
used to go horseback-riding with, back in the sixties. Ain't
much accustomed to attending parties barefoot, but here goes!"
With a whoop and a gallant jerk Ezra snatched off his elastic-
sided Congress shoes.
The others giggled and followed.
When the sheep had been penned up, in the darkness the
timorous wolves crept into the living-room, squealing, halting,
thrown out of their habit of stolidity by the strangeness of
advancing through nothingness toward a waiting foe, a
mysterious foe which expanded and grew more menacing. The
wolves peered to make out landmarks, they touched gliding
arms which did not seem to be attached to a body, they
quivered with a rapture of fear. Reality had vanished. A
yelping squabble suddenly rose, then Juanita Haydock's high
titter, and Guy Pollock's astonished, "Ouch! Quit! You're
scalping me!"
Mrs. Luke Dawson galloped backward on stiff hands and
knees into the safety of the lighted hallway, moaning, "I
declare, I nev' was so upset in my life!" But the propriety was
shaken out of her, and she delightedly continued to ejaculate
"Nev' in my LIFE" as she saw the living-room door opened
by invisible hands and shoes hurling through it, as she heard
from the darkness beyond the door a squawling, a bumping,
a resolute "Here's a lot of shoes. Come on, you wolves. Ow!
Y' would, would you!"
When Carol abruptly turned on the lights in the embattled
living-room, half of the company were sitting back against the
walls, where they had craftily remained throughout the
engagement, but in the middle of the floor Kennicott was wrestling
with Harry Haydock--their collars torn off, their hair in
their eyes; and the owlish Mr. Julius Flickerbaugh was
retreating from Juanita Haydock, and gulping with unaccustomed
laughter. Guy Pollock's discreet brown scarf hung down his
back. Young Rita Simons's net blouse had lost two buttons,
and betrayed more of her delicious plump shoulder than was
regarded as pure in Gopher Prairie. Whether by shock, disgust,
joy of combat, or physical activity, all the party were
freed from their years of social decorum. George Edwin Mott
giggled; Luke Dawson twisted his beard; Mrs. Clark insisted,
`I did too, Sam--I got a shoe--I never knew I could fight
so terrible!"
Carol was certain that she was a great reformer.
She mercifully had combs, mirrors, brushes, needle and
thread ready. She permitted them to restore the divine
decency of buttons.
The grinning Bea brought down-stairs a pile of soft thick
sheets of paper with designs of lotos blossoms, dragons, apes,
in cobalt and crimson and gray, and patterns of purple
birds flying among sea-green trees in the valleys of Nowhere.
"These," Carol announced, "are real Chinese masquerade
costumes. I got them from an importing shop in Minneapolis.
You are to put them on over your clothes, and please forget
that you are Minnesotans, and turn into mandarins and coolies and--
and samurai (isn't it?), and anything else you can think of."
While they were shyly rustling the paper costumes she
disappeared. Ten minutes after she gazed down from the stairs
upon grotesquely ruddy Yankee heads above Oriental robes,
and cried to them, "The Princess Winky Poo salutes her
court!"
As they looked up she caught their suspense of admiration.
They saw an airy figure in trousers and coat of green brocade
edged with gold; a high gold collar under a proud chin; black
hair pierced with jade pins; a languid peacock fan in an out-
stretched hand; eyes uplifted to a vision of pagoda towers.
When she dropped her pose and smiled down she discovered
Kennicott apoplectic with domestic pride--and gray Guy Pollock
staring beseechingly. For a second she saw nothing in
all the pink and brown mass of their faces save the hunger
of the two men.
She shook off the spell and ran down. "We're going to
have a real Chinese concert. Messrs. Pollock, Kennicott, and,
well, Stowbody are drummers; the rest of us sing and play the
fife."
The fifes were combs with tissue paper; the drums were
tabourets and the sewing-table. Loren Wheeler, editor of the
Dauntless, led the orchestra, with a ruler and a totally
inaccurate sense of rhythm. The music was a reminiscence of
tom-toms heard at circus fortune-telling tents or at the
Minnesota State Fair, but the whole company pounded and puffed
and whined in a sing-song, and looked rapturous.
Before they were quite tired of the concert Carol led them
in a dancing procession to the dining-room, to blue bowls of
chow mein, with Lichee nuts and ginger preserved in syrup.
None of them save that city-rounder Harry Haydock had
heard of any Chinese dish except chop sooey. With agreeable
doubt they ventured through the bamboo shoots into the
golden fried noodles of the chow mein; and Dave Dyer did
a not very humorous Chinese dance with Nat Hicks; and
there was hubbub and contentment.
Carol relaxed, and found that she was shockingly tired. She
had carried them on her thin shoulders. She could not keep
it up. She longed for her father, that artist at creating
hysterical parties. She thought of smoking a cigarette, to shock
them, and dismissed the obscene thought before it was quite
formed. She wondered whether they could for five minutes
be coaxed to talk about something besides the winter top of
Knute Stamquist's Ford, and what Al Tingley had said about
his mother-in-law. She sighed, "Oh, let 'em alone. I've
done enough." She crossed her trousered legs, and snuggled
luxuriously above her saucer of ginger; she caught Pollock's
congratulatory still smile, and thought well of herself for having
thrown a rose light on the pallid lawyer; repented the heretical
supposition that any male save her husband existed; jumped
up to find Kennicott and whisper, "Happy, my lord? . . .
No, it didn't cost much!"
"Best party this town ever saw. Only---- Don't cross your
legs in that costume. Shows your knees too plain."
She was vexed. She resented his clumsiness. She returned
to Guy Pollock and talked of Chinese religions--not that she
knew anything whatever about Chinese religions, but he had
read a book on the subject as, on lonely evenings in his office,
he had read at least one book on every subject in the world.
Guy's thin maturity was changing in her vision to flushed youth
and they were roaming an island in the yellow sea of chatter
when she realized that the guests were beginning that cough
which indicated, in the universal instinctive language, that
they desired to go home and go to bed.
While they asserted that it had been "the nicest party
they'd ever seen--my! so clever and original," she smiled
tremendously, shook hands, and cried many suitable things
regarding children, and being sure to wrap up warmly, and
Raymie's singing and Juanita Haydock's prowess at games.
Then she turned wearily to Kennicott in a house filled with
quiet and crumbs and shreds of Chinese costumes.
He was gurgling, "I tell you, Carrie, you certainly are a
wonder, and guess you're right about waking folks up. Now
you've showed 'em how, they won't go on having the same old
kind of parties and stunts and everything. Here! Don't touch
a thing! Done enough. Pop up to bed, and I'll clear up."
His wise surgeon's-hands stroked her shoulder, and her
irritation at his clumsiness was lost in his strength.
V
From the Weekly Dauntless:
One of the most delightful social events of recent months was
held Wednesday evening in the housewarming of Dr. and Mrs.
Kennicott, who have completely redecorated their charming home
on Poplar Street, and is now extremely nifty in modern color
scheme. The doctor and his bride were at home to their numerous
friends and a number of novelties in diversions were held, including
a Chinese orchestra in original and genuine Oriental costumes, of
which Ye Editor was leader. Dainty refreshments were served
in true Oriental style, and one and all voted a delightful time.
VI
The week after, the Chet Dashaways gave a party. The
circle of mourners kept its place all evening, and Dave Dyer
did the "stunt" of the Norwegian and the hen. _