new
ancient friends, Jennie and Capitolina and Toots.

If for a moment he had seen Tanis as withering and sentimental, he lost
that impression at Carrie Nork's dance. Mrs. Nork had a large house and
a small husband. To her party came all of the Bunch, perhaps thirty-five
of them when they were completely mobilized. Babbitt, under the name
of "Old Georgie," was now a pioneer of the Bunch, since each month it
changed half its membership and he who could recall the prehistoric days
of a fortnight ago, before Mrs. Absolom, the food-demonstrator, had
gone to Indianapolis, and Mac had "got sore at" Minnie, was a venerable
leader and able to condescend to new Petes and Minnies and Gladyses.

At Carrie's, Tanis did not have to work at being hostess. She was
dignified and sure, a clear fine figure in the black chiffon frock he
had always loved; and in the wider spaces of that ugly house Babbitt was
able to sit quietly with her. He repented of his first revulsion, mooned
at her feet, and happily drove her home. Next day he bought a violent
yellow tie, to make himself young for her. He knew, a little sadly, that
he could not make himself beautiful; he beheld himself as heavy, hinting
of fatness, but he danced, he dressed, he chattered, to be as young as
she was . . . as young as she seemed to be.

IV

As all converts, whether to a religion, love, or gardening, find as by
magic that though hitherto these hobbies have not seemed to exist, now
the whole world is filled with their fury, so, once he was converted
to dissipation, Babbitt discovered agreeable opportunities for it
everywhere.

He had a new view of his sporting neighbor, Sam Doppelbrau. The
Doppelbraus were respectable people, industrious people, prosperous
people, whose ideal of happiness was an eternal cabaret. Their life was
dominated by suburban bacchanalia of alcohol, nicotine, gasoline, and
kisses. They and their set worked capably all the week, and all week
looked forward to Saturday night, when they would, as they expressed
it, "throw a party;" and the thrown party grew noisier and noisier up to
Sunday dawn, and usually included an extremely rapid motor expedition to
nowhere in particular.

One evening when Tanis was at the theater, Babbitt found himself being
lively with the Doppelbraus, pledging friendship with men whom he
had for years privily denounced to Mrs. Babbitt as a "rotten bunch of
tin-horns that I wouldn't go out with, rot if they were the las