So I come down to Red Gap about December first hoping to hole up for the winter and get thoroughly warmed through before spring.  Little did I know our growing metropolis was to be torn by dissension until you didn’t know who was speaking to who.  And all because of a lady Bohemian from Washington Square, New York City, who had crept into our midst and started a Latin Quarter overnight.  The first day I was downtown I overheard two ladies saying something about the new Latin Quarter.  That mystified me, because I knew the town had been lidded tight since Lon Price went out of office as mayor.  Then I meet Mrs. Judge Ballard in the Boston Cash Store and she says have I met a Miss Smith from New York who is visiting here.  I said I had not.  It didn’t sound exciting.  Some way “a Miss Smith” don’t excite you overly, no matter where she hails from.  So I dismissed that and went on with my shopping.  Next I meet Egbert Floud, who is also down for the winter to rest beside a good coal stove, and we ask each other what’s the good word and is anything new.  Cousin Egbert says nothing is new in Red Gap except a Bohemian glass blower from Grinitch Village, New York.  He says he ain’t seen her blow glass yet, but he’s going some night, because them Bohemian glass blowers down to the fair was right fascinating, and don’t I think Grinitch is a bum name for a town?  He says when I see this glass blower I’ll feel like asking animal, vegetable, or mineral, because he has seen her in the post office with Metta Bigler and she looks like a nut.

I tell the poor old zany he sounds simple-minded himself and I can’t make a lick of sense out of what he’s said, except I know this village ain’t spelled that way.  He’s telling me that’s the way it’s spoken anyway, and about how he brought home a glass watch chain that these Bohemians blowed at the fair, when along come Metta Bigler herself and stops to shake hands, so Cousin Egbert slinks off.

I got to tell you about Metta.  She’s our artist; gives lessons in oil painting and burnt wood and other refinements.  People can take six lessons off Metta and go home and burn all the Indian heads on leather sofa pillows that you’d ever want to see.  Also she can paint a pink fish and a copper skillet and a watermelon with one slice cut out as good as any one between here and Spokane.  She’s a perfectly good girl, falling on thirty, refers to herself without a pang as a bachelor girl, and dresses as quiet as even a school-teacher has to in a small town.

Well, Metta rushes up to me now, all glowing and girlish, and says I must come to her studio that very afternoon and meet her dear old chum, Vernabelle Smith, that is visiting her from Washington Square, New York.  She and Vernabelle met when they were completing their art education in the Latin Quarter of Chicago, and Vernabelle had gone down to New York and got into all the new movements and among people who was doing things, and was now very, very advanced being what