arried this-here girl from the Cities? He used to spit---Gee!
Some shot! He could hit a tree ten feet off."

This was news to the girl from the Cities.

"Say, how is she?" continued Earl.

"Huh? How's who?"

"You know who I mean, smarty."

A tussle, a thumping of loose boards, silence, weary narration from Cy:

"Mrs. Kennicott? Oh, she's all right, I guess." Relief to Carol, below.
"She gimme a hunk o' cake, one time. But Ma says she's stuck-up as hell.
Ma's always talking about her. Ma says if Mrs. Kennicott thought as much
about the doc as she does about her clothes, the doc wouldn't look so
peaked."

Spit. Silence.

"Yuh. Juanita's always talking about her, too," from Earl. "She says
Mrs. Kennicott thinks she knows it all. Juanita says she has to laugh
till she almost busts every time she sees Mrs. Kennicott peerading along
the street with that 'take a look--I'm a swell skirt' way she's got. But
gosh, I don't pay no attention to Juanita. She's meaner 'n a crab."

"Ma was telling somebody that she heard that Mrs. Kennicott claimed she
made forty dollars a week when she was on some job in the Cities, and
Ma says she knows posolutely that she never made but eighteen a week--Ma
says that when she's lived here a while she won't go round making a fool
of herself, pulling that bighead stuff on folks that know a whole lot
more than she does. They're all laughing up their sleeves at her."

"Say, jever notice how Mrs. Kennicott fusses around the house? Other
evening when I was coming over here, she'd forgot to pull down the
curtain, and I watched her for ten minutes. Jeeze, you'd 'a' died
laughing. She was there all alone, and she must 'a' spent five minutes
getting a picture straight. It was funny as hell the way she'd stick out
her finger to straighten the picture--deedle-dee, see my tunnin' 'ittle
finger, oh my, ain't I cute, what a fine long tail my cat's got!"

"But say, Earl, she's some good-looker, just the same, and O Ignatz! the
glad rags she must of bought for her wedding. Jever notice these low-cut
dresses and these thin shimmy-shirts she wears? I had a good squint at
'em when they were out on the line with the wash. And some ankles she's
got, heh?"

Then Carol fled.

In her innocence she had not known that the whole town could discuss
even her garments, her body. She felt that she was being dragged naked
down Main Street.

The moment it was dusk she pulled down the window-shades, all the shades
fl