a real sport!" when
Juanita Haydock took a sip. Carol tried to follow; she believed that she
desired to be drunk and riotous; but the whisky choked her and as she
saw Kennicott frown she handed the bottle on repentantly. Somewhat too
late she remembered that she had given up domesticity and repentance.

"Let's play charades!" said Raymie Wutherspoon.

"Oh yes, do let us," said Ella Stowbody.

"That's the caper," sanctioned Harry Haydock.

They interpreted the word "making" as May and King. The crown was a red
flannel mitten cocked on Sam Clark's broad pink bald head. They forgot
they were respectable. They made-believe. Carol was stimulated to cry:

"Let's form a dramatic club and give a play! Shall we? It's been so much
fun tonight!"

They looked affable.

"Sure," observed Sam Clark loyally.

"Oh, do let us! I think it would be lovely to present 'Romeo and
Juliet'!" yearned Ella Stowbody.

"Be a whale of a lot of fun," Dr. Terry Gould granted.

"But if we did," Carol cautioned, "it would be awfully silly to have
amateur theatricals. We ought to paint our own scenery and everything,
and really do something fine. There'd be a lot of hard work. Would
you--would we all be punctual at rehearsals, do you suppose?"

"You bet!" "Sure." "That's the idea." "Fellow ought to be prompt at
rehearsals," they all agreed.

"Then let's meet next week and form the Gopher Prairie Dramatic
Association!" Carol sang.

She drove home loving these friends who raced through moonlit snow,
had Bohemian parties, and were about to create beauty in the theater.
Everything was solved. She would be an authentic part of the town,
yet escape the coma of the Village Virus. . . . She would be free of
Kennicott again, without hurting him, without his knowing.

She had triumphed.

The moon was small and high now, and unheeding.

II

Though they had all been certain that they longed for the privilege of
attending committee meetings and rehearsals, the dramatic association as
definitely formed consisted only of Kennicott, Carol, Guy Pollock,
Vida Sherwin, Ella Stowbody, the Harry Haydocks, the Dave Dyers, Raymie
Wutherspoon, Dr. Terry Gould, and four new candidates: flirtatious Rita
Simons, Dr. and Mrs. Harvey Dillon and Myrtle Cass, an uncomely but
intense girl of nineteen. Of these fifteen only seven came to the first
meeting. The rest telephoned their unparalleled regrets and engagements
and illnesses, and announced that they woul