Never before had her boy been drunk, shrieked Mrs. Bogart.  When Kennicott grunted, she owned, “Well, maybe once or twice I’ve smelled licker on his breath.”  She also, with an air of being only too scrupulously exact, granted that sometimes he did not come home till morning.  But he couldn’t ever have been drunk, for he always had the best excuses:  the other boys had tempted him to go down the lake spearing pickerel by torchlight, or he had been out in a “machine that ran out of gas.”  Anyway, never before had her boy fallen into the hands of a “designing woman.”

“What do you suppose Miss Mullins could design to do with him?” insisted Carol.

Mrs. Bogart was puzzled, gave it up, went on.  This morning, when she had faced both of them, Cy had manfully confessed that all of the blame was on Fern, because the teacher—­his own teacher—­had dared him to take a drink.  Fern had tried to deny it.

“Then,” gabbled Mrs. Bogart, “then that woman had the impudence to say to me, ’What purpose could I have in wanting the filthy pup to get drunk?’ That’s just what she called him—­pup.  ’I’ll have no such nasty language in my house,’ I says, ’and you pretending and pulling the wool over people’s eyes and making them think you’re educated and fit to be a teacher and look out for young people’s morals—­you’re worse ’n any street-walker!’ I says.  I let her have it good.  I wa’n’t going to flinch from my bounden duty and let her think that decent folks had to stand for her vile talk.  ‘Purpose?’ I says, ’Purpose?  I’ll tell you what purpose you had!  Ain’t I seen you making up to everything in pants that’d waste time and pay attention to your impert’nence?  Ain’t I seen you showing off your legs with them short skirts of yours, trying to make out like you was so girlish and la-de-da, running along the street?’”

Carol was very sick at this version of Fern’s eager youth, but she was sicker as Mrs. Bogart hinted that no one could tell what had happened between Fern and Cy before the drive home.  Without exactly describing the scene, by her power of lustful imagination the woman suggested dark country places apart from the lanterns and rude fiddling and banging dance-steps in the barn, then madness and harsh hateful conquest.  Carol was too sick to interrupt.  It was Kennicott who cried, “Oh, for God’s sake quit it!  You haven’t any idea what happened.  You haven’t given us a single proof yet that Fern is anything but a rattle-brained youngster.”

“I haven’t, eh?  Well, what do you say to this?  I come straight out and I says to her, ‘Did you or did you not taste the whisky Cy had?’ and she says, ‘I think I did take one sip—­Cy made me,’ she said.  She owned up to that much, so you can imagine——­”

“Does that prove her a prostitute?” asked Carol.

“Carrie!  Don’t you never use a word like that again!” wailed the outraged Puritan.

“Well, does it prove her to be a bad woman, that she took a taste of whisky?  I’ve done it myself!”