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do with him?ā€ insisted Carol.

Mrs. Bogart was puzzled, gave it up, went on. This morning, when she had faced both of them, Cy had manfully confessed that all of the blame was on Fern, because the teacherā ā€”his own teacherā ā€”had dared him to take a drink. Fern had tried to deny it.

ā€œThen,ā€ gabbled Mrs. Bogart, ā€œthen that woman had the impudence to say to me, ā€˜What purpose could I have in wanting the filthy pup to get drunk?ā€™ Thatā€™s just what she called himā ā€”pup. ā€˜Iā€™ll have no such nasty language in my house,ā€™ I says, ā€˜and you pretending and pulling the wool over peopleā€™s eyes and making them think youā€™re educated and fit to be a teacher and look out for young peopleā€™s moralsā ā€”youā€™re worse ā€™n any streetwalker!ā€™ I says. I let her have it good. I waā€™nā€™t going to flinch from my bounden duty and let her think that decent folks had to stand for her vile talk. ā€˜Purpose?ā€™ I says, ā€˜Purpose? Iā€™ll tell you what purpose you had! Ainā€™t I seen you making up to everything in pants thatā€™d waste time and pay attention to your impertā€™nence? Ainā€™t I seen you showing off your legs with them short skirts of yours, trying to make out like you was so girlish and la-de-da, running along the street?ā€™ā€Šā€

Carol was very sick at this version of Fernā€™s eager youth, but she was sicker as Mrs. Bogart hinted that no one could tell what had happened between Fern and Cy before the drive home. Without exactly describing the scene, by her power of lustful imagination the woman suggested dark country places apart from the lanterns and rude fiddling and banging dance-steps in the barn, then madness and harsh hateful conquest. Carol was too sick to interrupt. It was Kennicott who cried, ā€œOh, for Godā€™s sake quit it! You havenā€™t any idea what happened. You havenā€™t given us a single proof yet that Fern is anything but a rattlebrained youngster.ā€

ā€œI havenā€™t, eh? Well, what do you say to this? I come straight out and I says to her, ā€˜Did you or did you not taste the whisky Cy had?ā€™ and she says, ā€˜I think I did take one sipā ā€”Cy made me,ā€™ she said. She owned up to that much, so you can imagineā ā€”ā€

ā€œDoes that prove her a prostitute?ā€ asked Carol.

ā€œCarrie! Donā€™t you never use a word like that again!ā€ wailed the outraged Puritan.

ā€œWell, does it prove her to be a bad woman, that she took a taste of whisky? Iā€™ve done it myself!ā€

ā€œThatā€™s different. Not that I approve your doing it. What do the Scriptures tell us? ā€˜Strong drink is a mockerā€™! But thatā€™s entirely different from a teacher drinking with one of her own pupils.ā€

ā€œYes, it does sound bad. Fern was silly, undoubtedly. But as a matter of fact sheā€™s only a year or two older than Cy and probably a good many years younger in experience of vice.ā€

ā€œThatā€™sā ā€”notā ā€”true! She is plenty old enough to corrupt him!ā€

ā€œThe job of corrupting Cy was done by your sinless town, five years ago!ā€

Mrs. Bogart did not rage in return. Suddenly she was hopeless. Her head drooped. She patted her black kid gloves, picked at a thread of her faded brown skirt, and sighed, ā€œHeā€™s a good boy, and awful affectionate if you treat him right. Some thinks heā€™s terrible wild, but thatā€™s because heā€™s young. And heā€™s so brave and truthfulā ā€”why, he was one of the first in town that wanted to enlist for the war, and I had to speak real sharp to him to keep him from running away. I didnā€™t want him to get into no bad influences round these campsā ā€”and then,ā€ Mrs. Bogart rose from her pitifulness, recovered her pace, ā€œthen I go and bring into my own house a woman thatā€™s worse, when allā€™s said and done, than any bad woman he could have met. You say this Mullins woman is too young and inexperienced to corrupt Cy. Well then, sheā€™s too young and inexperienced to teach him, too, one or tā€™other, you canā€™t have your cake and eat it! So it donā€™t make no difference which reason they fire her for, and thatā€™s practically almost what I said to the school-board.ā€

ā€œHave you been telling this story to the members of the school-board?ā€

ā€œI certainly have! Every one of ā€™em! And their wives I says to them, ā€˜ā€Šā€™Tainā€™t my affair to decide what you should or should not do with your teachers,ā€™ I says, ā€˜and I ainā€™t presuming to dictate in any way, shape, manner, or form. I just want to know,ā€™ I says, ā€˜whether youā€™re going to go on record as keeping here in our schools, among a lot of innocent boys and girls, a woman that drinks, smokes, curses, uses bad language, and does such dreadful things as I wouldnā€™t lay tongue to but you know what I mean,ā€™ I says, ā€˜and if so, Iā€™ll just see to it that the town learns about it.ā€™ And thatā€™s what I told Professor Mott, too, being superintendentā ā€”and heā€™s a righteous man, not going autoing on the Sabbath like the school-board members. And the professor as much as admitted he was suspicious of the Mullins woman himself.ā€

II

Kennicott was less shocked and much less frightened than Carol, and more articulate in his description of Mrs. Bogart, when she had gone.

Maud Dyer telephoned to Carol and, after a rather improbable question about cooking lima beans with bacon, demanded, ā€œHave you heard the scandal about this Miss Mullins and Cy Bogart?ā€

ā€œIā€™m sure itā€™s a lie.ā€

ā€œOh, probably is.ā€ Maudā€™s manner indicated that the falsity of the story was an insignificant flaw in its general delightfulness.

Carol crept to her room, sat with hands curled tight together as she listened to a plague of voices. She could hear the town yelping with it, every soul of them, gleeful at new details, panting to win importance by having details of their own to add. How well they would make up for what they had been afraid to do by imagining it in

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