expertness in coarse malice; hen-like genteel women with small mouths and mean little figures that tried for personality with trimmings and feather boas and all other adornments irrelevant to the structure of the human body; flappers who swung scarlet bows on their plaits and otherwise assailed their Presbyterian environment by glad cries of the appearance; and on all these faces the smirk of superior sagacity that vulgar people give to the untriumphant ideal.  “I must work out the ethics of suicide this evening,” thought Ellen chokingly, “for if the world’s like this it’s the wisest thing to do.  But not, of course, until mother’s gone.”

She mechanically offered a paper to a passing flapper, who rejected it with a scornful exclamation, “’Deed no, Ellen Melville!  I think you’re mad.”  Ellen recognised her as a despised schoolfellow and gnashed her teeth at being treated like this by a poor creature who habitually got thirty per cent, in her arithmetic examination.  “Mad, am I?  Not so mad as you, my dear, thinking you look like Phyllis Dare with yon wee, wee pigtail.  You evidently haven’t realised that a Scotch girl can’t help looking sensible.  That graceful butterfly frivolity that comes so easy to the English, and, I’ve haird, the French, is not for us.  I think it’s something about our ankles that prevents us.”  She looked at the girl’s feet, said “Ay!” in a manner that hinted that they confirmed her theory, and turned away, remarking over her shoulder, “Mind you, I admire your spirit, setting out to look like one of these light English actresses when your name’s Davidina Todd.”  The wind was trying to tear the poster from the cord that held it to her waist, the cold was making her sniff, and as she gave her back to this flimsy little fool she caught sight of a minister standing a yard or two away and giggling “Tee hee!” at her.  It was too much.  She darted down on him.  “Are you not Mr. Hunter of the Middleton Place United Free Church?” she asked, making her voice sound soft and cuddly.

He wiped the facetiousness from his face and assented with a polite bob.  Perhaps she was the daughter of an elder.  Quite nice people were taking up this nonsense.

“I heard you preach last Sunday,” she said, glowing with interest.  He began to look coy.  Then her voice changed to something colder than the wind.  “The most lamentable sairmon I ever listened to.  Neither lairning nor inspiration.  And a read sairmon, too.”

As his black back threaded through the traffic remorse fell upon her.  “Here’s an opportunity for doing quiet, uncomplaining service to the Cause,” she reproached herself, “and I’m turning it into a fair picnic for my tongue.”  Everyone was rubbish, and she herself was no exception.  Her hair was nearly down.  And she had to stay there for another hour.