“That’s different.  Not that I approve your doing it.  What do the Scriptures tell us?  ‘Strong drink is a mocker’!  But that’s entirely different from a teacher drinking with one of her own pupils.”

“Yes, it does sound bad.  Fern was silly, undoubtedly.  But as a matter of fact she’s only a year or two older than Cy and probably a good many years younger in experience of vice.”

“That’s—­not—­true!  She is plenty old enough to corrupt him!

“The job of corrupting Cy was done by your sinless town, five years ago!”

Mrs. Bogart did not rage in return.  Suddenly she was hopeless.  Her head drooped.  She patted her black kid gloves, picked at a thread of her faded brown skirt, and sighed, “He’s a good boy, and awful affectionate if you treat him right.  Some thinks he’s terrible wild, but that’s because he’s young.  And he’s so brave and truthful—­why, he was one of the first in town that wanted to enlist for the war, and I had to speak real sharp to him to keep him from running away.  I didn’t want him to get into no bad influences round these camps—­and then,” Mrs. Bogart rose from her pitifulness, recovered her pace, “then I go and bring into my own house a woman that’s worse, when all’s said and done, than any bad woman he could have met.  You say this Mullins woman is too young and inexperienced to corrupt Cy.  Well then, she’s too young and inexperienced to teach him, too, one or t’other, you can’t have your cake and eat it!  So it don’t make no difference which reason they fire her for, and that’s practically almost what I said to the school-board.”

“Have you been telling this story to the members of the school-board?”

“I certainly have!  Every one of ’em!  And their wives I says to them, ’’Tain’t my affair to decide what you should or should not do with your teachers,’ I says, ’and I ain’t presuming to dictate in any way, shape, manner, or form.  I just want to know,’ I says, ’whether you’re going to go on record as keeping here in our schools, among a lot of innocent boys and girls, a woman that drinks, smokes, curses, uses bad language, and does such dreadful things as I wouldn’t lay tongue to but you know what I mean,’ I says, ’and if so, I’ll just see to it that the town learns about it.’  And that’s what I told Professor Mott, too, being superintendent—­and he’s a righteous man, not going autoing on the Sabbath like the school-board members.  And the professor as much as admitted he was suspicious of the Mullins woman himself.”

II

Kennicott was less shocked and much less frightened than Carol, and more articulate in his description of Mrs. Bogart, when she had gone.

Maud Dyer telephoned to Carol and, after a rather improbable question about cooking lima beans with bacon, demanded, “Have you heard the scandal about this Miss Mullins and Cy Bogart?”

“I’m sure it’s a lie.”