“I can’t sit down, I must hurry home, but I couldn’t devote myself to my own selfish cares till I’d warned you, and heaven knows I don’t expect any thanks for trying to warn the town against her, there’s always so much evil in the world that folks simply won’t see or appreciate your trying to safeguard them——­And forcing herself in here to get in with you and Carrie, many ’s the time I’ve seen her doing it, and, thank heaven, she was found out in time before she could do any more harm, it simply breaks my heart and prostrates me to think what she may have done already, even if some of us that understand and know about things——­”

“Whoa-up!  Who are you talking about?”

“She’s talking about Fern Mullins,” Carol put in, not pleasantly.

“Huh?”

Kennicott was incredulous.

“I certainly am!” flourished Mrs. Bogart, “and good and thankful you may be that I found her out in time, before she could get you into something, Carol, because even if you are my neighbor and Will’s wife and a cultured lady, let me tell you right now, Carol Kennicott, that you ain’t always as respectful to—­you ain’t as reverent—­you don’t stick by the good old ways like they was laid down for us by God in the Bible, and while of course there ain’t a bit of harm in having a good laugh, and I know there ain’t any real wickedness in you, yet just the same you don’t fear God and hate the transgressors of his commandments like you ought to, and you may be thankful I found out this serpent I nourished in my bosom—­and oh yes! oh yes indeed! my lady must have two eggs every morning for breakfast, and eggs sixty cents a dozen, and wa’n’t satisfied with one, like most folks—­what did she care how much they cost or if a person couldn’t make hardly nothing on her board and room, in fact I just took her in out of charity and I might have known from the kind of stockings and clothes that she sneaked into my house in her trunk——­”

Before they got her story she had five more minutes of obscene wallowing.  The gutter comedy turned into high tragedy, with Nemesis in black kid gloves.  The actual story was simple, depressing, and unimportant.  As to details Mrs. Bogart was indefinite, and angry that she should be questioned.

Fern Mullins and Cy had, the evening before, driven alone to a barn-dance in the country. (Carol brought out the admission that Fern had tried to get a chaperon.) At the dance Cy had kissed Fern—­she confessed that.  Cy had obtained a pint of whisky; he said that he didn’t remember where he had got it; Mrs. Bogart implied that Fern had given it to him; Fern herself insisted that he had stolen it from a farmer’s overcoat—­which, Mrs. Bogart raged, was obviously a lie.  He had become soggily drunk.  Fern had driven him home; deposited him, retching and wabbling, on the Bogart porch.