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