They glided from these serious topics into the jocose insults which are the wit of Main Street.  Sam Clark was particularly apt at them.  “What’s this wild-eyed sale of summer caps you think you’re trying to pull off?” he clamored at Harry Haydock.  “Did you steal ’em, or are you just overcharging us, as usual? . . .  Oh say, speaking about caps, d’I ever tell you the good one I’ve got on Will?  The doc thinks he’s a pretty good driver, fact, he thinks he’s almost got human intelligence, but one time he had his machine out in the rain, and the poor fish, he hadn’t put on chains, and thinks I——­”

Carol had heard the story rather often.  She fled back to the dancers, and at Dave Dyer’s masterstroke of dropping an icicle down Mrs. McGanum’s back she applauded hysterically.

They sat on the floor, devouring the food.  The men giggled amiably as they passed the whisky bottle, and laughed, “There’s a real sport!” when Juanita Haydock took a sip.  Carol tried to follow; she believed that she desired to be drunk and riotous; but the whisky choked her and as she saw Kennicott frown she handed the bottle on repentantly.  Somewhat too late she remembered that she had given up domesticity and repentance.

“Let’s play charades!” said Raymie Wutherspoon.

“Oh yes, do let us,” said Ella Stowbody.

“That’s the caper,” sanctioned Harry Haydock.

They interpreted the word “making” as May and King.  The crown was a red flannel mitten cocked on Sam Clark’s broad pink bald head.  They forgot they were respectable.  They made-believe.  Carol was stimulated to cry: 

“Let’s form a dramatic club and give a play!  Shall we?  It’s been so much fun tonight!”

They looked affable.

“Sure,” observed Sam Clark loyally.

“Oh, do let us!  I think it would be lovely to present ’Romeo and Juliet’!” yearned Ella Stowbody.

“Be a whale of a lot of fun,” Dr. Terry Gould granted.

“But if we did,” Carol cautioned, “it would be awfully silly to have amateur theatricals.  We ought to paint our own scenery and everything, and really do something fine.  There’d be a lot of hard work.  Would you—­would we all be punctual at rehearsals, do you suppose?”

“You bet!” “Sure.”  “That’s the idea.”  “Fellow ought to be prompt at rehearsals,” they all agreed.

“Then let’s meet next week and form the Gopher Prairie Dramatic Association!” Carol sang.

She drove home loving these friends who raced through moonlit snow, had Bohemian parties, and were about to create beauty in the theater.  Everything was solved.  She would be an authentic part of the town, yet escape the coma of the Village Virus. . . .  She would be free of Kennicott again, without hurting him, without his knowing.

She had triumphed.

The moon was small and high now, and unheeding.

II