“My nevvy took me to a show in Boston wunst,” said Old Man Bogle, tentatively, but he was silenced immediately and sternly.

“How kin a man combat evil,” he demanded, “if he hain’t familiar with the wiles of it?”

“He kin set his face to the right,” said the elder, “and tread the path.”

“You wouldn’t b’lieve the things I seen in that show,” said Bogle, waggling his head.

“Don’t intend to be called on to b’lieve ’em,” said the deacon.  “Look....  Comin’ acrost the bridge.  There’s Locker’s boy and that there Wife-ette, and him lookin’ like he’d enjoy divin’ down her throat.”

“Poor Jason,” said the elder, “he’s reapin’ the whirlwind.”

“Kin he be blind?”

“Somebody ought to take Jason off to one side and give him warnin’.”

The deacon considered, puckering his thin lips and cocking a hard old eye. “’Tain’t fer us to meddle,” he said, righteously.  “They’s a divine plan in ever’thing, and we hain’t able to see what’s behind all this here.  We’ll jest set and wait the outcome.”

That is what all Coldriver did:  it sat and awaited the outcome with ill-restrained enthusiasm, and while it waited it talked.  No word or gesture or movement of young Homer Locker and Yvette Hinchbrooke went undiscussed.  Nobody in town was unaware of Homer’s infatuation for the coffee demonstrator—­with the one exception of Homer’s father, who was too busy waiting upon the unaccustomed rush of trade to notice anything else.

On the fourth evening of Yvette’s stay in Coldriver there was a dance in the town hall.  Especial interest immediately, attached to this affair because of the speculations as to whether Homer would be so rash as to invite Yvette as his partner.  The village refused to believe the young man would fail them and remain away.  That would be a calamity not easily endured, so it set itself to plan its actions in case she made her appearance.  It wondered, how she would dress and how she would behave.

Every girl in the village who possessed clear title to a young man knew exactly how she would deport herself.  The night before the dance no less than a score of young men were informed with finality that they were not to dance with the stranger, nor to be seen in her vicinity.  Norma Grainger expressed the will of all when she told Will Peasley that if he danced one dance with that coffee girl she would up and go home alone.  In the beginning there was no definite concerted action; it was assured, however, that Yvette would have few partners.

Homer did not disappoint his friends.  During the first dance he entered the hall with Yvette, and the music all but stopped to stare.  Undeniably she was pretty.  It was not her prettiness the women resented, however, but her air and her clothes.  Actually she wore a dress cut low at the neck, and sleeveless.  Coldriver had heard of such garments, and there were those who actually believed them to exist and to be worn by certain women in European society among kings and dukes and other frightfully immoral people.  But that one should ever make its appearance in Coldriver, under their very eyes, was a thing so startling, so outrageous, as almost to demand the spontaneous formation of a vigilance committee.