It is true that it came in droves to taste the coffee being demonstrated, for it was to be had without money and without price.  It came to see what it would not believe without seeing, and regarded the young woman with open suspicion and hostility.  It wondered what manner of young woman it could be who would harum-scarum around the country making coffee for every Tom, Dick, and Harry, and wearing a smile for everybody, and demeaning herself generally in a manner not heretofore observed.  It viewed and reviewed her hair, her slippers, her ankles, her frocks, and her ornaments.  The women folks, and especially the younger women, held frequent indignation meetings, and declared for the advisability of boycotting Locker unless he removed this menace from their midst.

But when it noticed, not later than the second day of Miss Yvette Hinchbrooke’s career in their midst, that young Homer Locker flapped about her like some over-grown insect about a street lamp, it took no pains to conceal its delight and devoutly hoped for the worst.

“Looks like Providence was steppin’ in,” said Elder Hooper to Deacon Pettybone.  “Dunno’s I ever see a more fittin’ as well as proper follerin’ up of sinful carelessness by sich consequences as might be expected to ensue.”

“Uh-huh!...  That there name of her’n.  Folks differs about the way to say it.  I been holdin’ out ag’in’ many for Wife-ette—­that way.  Looks like French or suthin’ furrin.  Others say it’s Weev-ette.  If ’twan’t for seemin’ to show interest in the baggage, dummed if I wouldn’t up and ask her.”

“Names don’t count,” said Old Man Bogle, oracularly.  “She hain’t to blame for pickin’ her name.  Her ma gave it to her out of a book, seems as though.  Nevertheless, ’tain’t no fit name for a woman, and, so fur’s I kin see, she fits her name like Ovid Nixon’s tailor pants fits his laigs.”

“She’s light,” said the elder.

“Sh’u’dn’t be s’prised,” said Old Man Bogle, rolling his eyes, “if she was one of them actoresses.  Venture to say she’s filled with worldly wisdom, that gal, and that sin and cuttin’ up different ways hain’t nothin’ strange nor unaccustomed to her.”

“While I was a-drinkin’ down her coffee out of that measly leetle cup,” said the deacon, “she was that brazen!  Acted like she’d took a fancy to me,” he said, with a sprucing back of his old shoulders.

“Got all the wiles of that there woman that danced off the head of John the Baptist,” said the elder, grimly.  “So she dasted even to tempt a deacon of the church.”

“She didn’t tempt me none,” snapped the deacon, “but I lay she was willin’.”

“I’ll venture,” said Old Man Bogle, with a light in his rheumy eyes, “that she hain’t no stranger to wearin’ tights.”

“Shame!” said the elder and the deacon, in a breath.  And then, from the deacon, in a tone which might have been a reflection of lofty satisfaction in a virtue, or which might have been something quite different, “I’ve read of them there tights, Elder, but I kin say with a clear conscience that I hain’t never witnessed a pair of ’em.”