f the house
front, Colonel Morrison accused the Conklins of hanging out their stamp
collection to let the neighbors see it. This was the only side of the
rug question we ever heard in our office until Miss Larrabee came; then
she told us that one of the first requirements of a howling dervish was
to be able to quote from Priscilla Winthrop's Rug book from memory. The
Rug book, the China book and the Old Furniture book were the three
sacred scrolls of the sect.

All this was news to us. However, through Colonel Morrison, we had
received many years ago another sidelight on the social status of the
Conklins. It came out in this way: Time honored custom in our town
allows the children of a home where there is an outbreak of social
revelry, whether a church festival or a meeting of the Cold-Nosed Whist
Club, to line up with the neighbor children on the back stoop or in the
kitchen, like human vultures, waiting to lick the ice-cream freezer and
to devour the bits of cake and chicken salad that are left over. Colonel
Morrison told us that no child was ever known to adorn the back yard of
the Conklin home while a social cataclysm was going on, but that when
Mrs. Morrison entertained the Ladies' Literary League, children from the
holy Conklin family went home from his back porch with their faces
smeared with chicken croquettes and their hands sticky with jellycake.

This story never gained general circulation in town, but even if it had
been known of all men it would not have shaken the faith of the
devotees. For they did not smile when Priscilla Winthrop began to refer
to old Frank Hagan, who came to milk the Conklin cow and curry the
Conklin horse, as "Francois, the man," or to call the girl who did the
cooking and general housework "Cosette, the maid," though every one of
the dozen other women in town whom "Cosette, the maid" had worked for
knew that her name was Fanny Ropes. And shortly after that the homes of
the rich and the great over on the hill above Main Street began to fill
with Lisettes and Nanons and Fanchons, and Mrs. Julia Neal Worthington
called her girl "Grisette," explaining that they had always had a
Grisette about the house since her mother first went to housekeeping in
Peoria, Illinois, and it sounded so natural to hear the name that they
always gave it to a new servant. This story came to the office through
the Young Prince, who chuckled over it during the whole hour he consumed
in writing Ezra Worthington