So now the Latin Quarter had begun, and in no time at all it was going strong.  It seemed like everybody had long been wanting to get away from it all but hadn’t known how.  They gathered daily in Metta’s studio, the women setting round in smocks, they all took to wearing smocks, of course, while hungry-eyed Vernabelle got the men to tell her all about themselves, and said wasn’t it precious that a few choice spirits could thus meet in the little half-lighted hour, away from it all, and be by way of forgetting that outer world where human souls are bartered in the market place.

Of course the elderberry wine was by way of giving plumb out after the second half-lighted hour, but others come forward with cherished offerings.  Mrs. Dr. Percy Hailey Martingale brought round some currant wine that had been laid down in her cellar over a year ago, and Beryl Mae Macomber pilfered a quart of homemade cherry brandy that her aunt had been saving against sickness, and even Mrs. Judge Ballard kicked in with some blackberry cordial made from her own berries, though originally meant for medicine.

Lon Price was a feverish Bohemian from the start, dropping in almost every day to tell Vernabelle all about himself and get out of convention’s shell into the raw throb of life, as it was now being called.  Lon always was kind of light-minded, even after the state went dry.  He told Vernabelle he had a treasured keepsake hid away which he would sacrifice to Bohemia at the last moment, consisting of one quart bottle of prime old rye.  And he was going to make over to her a choice building lot in Price’s Addition, right near the proposed site of the Carnegie library, if Vernabelle would put up something snappy on it in the way of a Latin Quarter bungalow.

Lon also added Jeff Tuttle to the Bohemians the day that old horned toad got down from his ranch.  After going once Jeff said darned if he hadn’t been a Bohemian all his life and never knew what was the matter with him.  Vernabelle had him telling her all about himself instantly.  She said he was such a colourful bit, so virile and red-blooded, and she just knew that when he was in his untamed wilderness he put vine leaves in his hair and went beautifully barefoot.  She said it wasn’t so much him as the inevitability of him.  She’d said this about Cousin Egbert, too, but she was now saying of this old silly that he had a nameless pathos that cut to her artist’s heart.  It seems Cousin Egbert had gone round a couple times more looking for glass blowing and getting disappointed.

And there was new Bohemians every day.  Otto Gashwiler, that keeps books for the canning factory, and Hugo Jennings, night clerk of the Occidental Hotel, was now prominent lights of the good old Latin Quarter passing their spare moments there where they could get away from it all, instead of shaking dice at the Owl cigar store, like they used to.  And Oswald Cummings of the Elite Bootery, was another.  Oswald