Every one looked at every one else and waited for every one else to begin.

Carol kicked off her silver slippers, and ignored the universal glance at her arches.  The embarrassed but loyal Vida Sherwin unbuttoned her high black shoes.  Ezra Stowbody cackled, “Well, you’re a terror to old folks.  You’re like the gals I used to go horseback-riding with, back in the sixties.  Ain’t much accustomed to attending parties barefoot, but here goes!” With a whoop and a gallant jerk Ezra snatched off his elastic-sided Congress shoes.

The others giggled and followed.

When the sheep had been penned up, in the darkness the timorous wolves crept into the living-room, squealing, halting, thrown out of their habit of stolidity by the strangeness of advancing through nothingness toward a waiting foe, a mysterious foe which expanded and grew more menacing.  The wolves peered to make out landmarks, they touched gliding arms which did not seem to be attached to a body, they quivered with a rapture of fear.  Reality had vanished.  A yelping squabble suddenly rose, then Juanita Haydock’s high titter, and Guy Pollock’s astonished, “Ouch!  Quit!  You’re scalping me!”

Mrs. Luke Dawson galloped backward on stiff hands and knees into the safety of the lighted hallway, moaning, “I declare, I nev’ was so upset in my life!” But the propriety was shaken out of her, and she delightedly continued to ejaculate “Nev’ in my life” as she saw the living-room door opened by invisible hands and shoes hurling through it, as she heard from the darkness beyond the door a squawling, a bumping, a resolute “Here’s a lot of shoes.  Come on, you wolves.  Ow!  Y’ would, would you!”

When Carol abruptly turned on the lights in the embattled living-room, half of the company were sitting back against the walls, where they had craftily remained throughout the engagement, but in the middle of the floor Kennicott was wrestling with Harry Haydock—­their collars torn off, their hair in their eyes; and the owlish Mr. Julius Flickerbaugh was retreating from Juanita Haydock, and gulping with unaccustomed laughter.  Guy Pollock’s discreet brown scarf hung down his back.  Young Rita Simons’s net blouse had lost two buttons, and betrayed more of her delicious plump shoulder than was regarded as pure in Gopher Prairie.  Whether by shock, disgust, joy of combat, or physical activity, all the party were freed from their years of social decorum.  George Edwin Mott giggled; Luke Dawson twisted his beard; Mrs. Clark insisted, “I did too, Sam—­I got a shoe—­I never knew I could fight so terrible!”

Carol was certain that she was a great reformer.

She mercifully had combs, mirrors, brushes, needle and thread ready.  She permitted them to restore the divine decency of buttons.

The grinning Bea brought down-stairs a pile of soft thick sheets of paper with designs of lotos blossoms, dragons, apes, in cobalt and crimson and gray, and patterns of purple birds flying among sea-green trees in the valleys of Nowhere.