Boosters' are sore, the way you go on deliberately
touting Doane and his bunch of hell-hounds, and talking about being
liberal--which means being wishy-washy--and even saying this preacher
guy Ingram isn't a professional free-love artist. And then the way you
been carrying on personally! Joe Pumphrey says he saw you out the other
night with a gang of totties, all stewed to the gills, and here to-day
coming right into the Thornleigh with a--well, she may be all right and
a perfect lady, but she certainly did look like a pretty gay skirt for
a fellow with his wife out of town to be taking to lunch. Didn't look
well. What the devil has come over you, George?"

"Strikes me there's a lot of fellows that know more about my personal
business than I do myself!"

"Now don't go getting sore at me because I come out flatfooted like a
friend and say what I think instead of tattling behind your back, the
way a whole lot of 'em do. I tell you George, you got a position in the
community, and the community expects you to live up to it. And--Better
think over joining the Good Citizens' League. See you about it later."

He was gone.

That evening Babbitt dined alone. He saw all the Clan of Good Fellows
peering through the restaurant window, spying on him. Fear sat beside
him, and he told himself that to-night he would not go to Tanis's flat;
and he did not go . . . till late.

CHAPTER XXX

I

THE summer before, Mrs. Babbitt's letters had crackled with desire to
return to Zenith. Now they said nothing of returning, but a wistful
"I suppose everything is going on all right without me" among her dry
chronicles of weather and sicknesses hinted to Babbitt that he hadn't
been very urgent about her coming. He worried it:

"If she were here, and I went on raising cain like I been doing, she'd
have a fit. I got to get hold of myself. I got to learn to play around
and yet not make a fool of myself. I can do it, too, if folks like
Verg Gunch 'll let me alone, and Myra 'll stay away. But--poor kid, she
sounds lonely. Lord, I don't want to hurt her!"

Impulsively he wrote that they missed her, and her next letter said
happily that she was coming home.

He persuaded himself that he was eager to see her. He bought roses
for the house, he ordered squab for dinner, he had the car cleaned and
polished. All the way home from the station with her he was adequate
in his accounts of Ted's success in basket-ball at the university, but
befor