Most of the Jolly Seventeen were young married women, with their husbands as associate members.  Once a week they had a women’s afternoon-bridge; once a month the husbands joined them for supper and evening-bridge; twice a year they had dances at I. O. O. F. Hall.  Then the town exploded.  Only at the annual balls of the Firemen and of the Eastern Star was there such prodigality of chiffon scarfs and tangoing and heart-burnings, and these rival institutions were not select—­hired girls attended the Firemen’s Ball, with section-hands and laborers.  Ella Stowbody had once gone to a Jolly Seventeen Soiree in the village hack, hitherto confined to chief mourners at funerals; and Harry Haydock and Dr. Terry Gould always appeared in the town’s only specimens of evening clothes.

The afternoon-bridge of the Jolly Seventeen which followed Carol’s lonely doubting was held at Juanita Haydock’s new concrete bungalow, with its door of polished oak and beveled plate-glass, jar of ferns in the plastered hall, and in the living-room, a fumed oak Morris chair, sixteen color-prints, and a square varnished table with a mat made of cigar-ribbons on which was one Illustrated Gift Edition and one pack of cards in a burnt-leather case.

Carol stepped into a sirocco of furnace heat.  They were already playing.  Despite her flabby resolves she had not yet learned bridge.  She was winningly apologetic about it to Juanita, and ashamed that she should have to go on being apologetic.

Mrs. Dave Dyer, a sallow woman with a thin prettiness devoted to experiments in religious cults, illnesses, and scandal-bearing, shook her finger at Carol and trilled, “You’re a naughty one!  I don’t believe you appreciate the honor, when you got into the Jolly Seventeen so easy!”

Mrs. Chet Dashaway nudged her neighbor at the second table.  But Carol kept up the appealing bridal manner so far as possible.  She twittered, “You’re perfectly right.  I’m a lazy thing.  I’ll make Will start teaching me this very evening.”  Her supplication had all the sound of birdies in the nest, and Easter church-bells, and frosted Christmas cards.  Internally she snarled, “That ought to be saccharine enough.”  She sat in the smallest rocking-chair, a model of Victorian modesty.  But she saw or she imagined that the women who had gurgled at her so welcomingly when she had first come to Gopher Prairie were nodding at her brusquely.

During the pause after the first game she petitioned Mrs. Jackson Elder, “Don’t you think we ought to get up another bob-sled party soon?”

“It’s so cold when you get dumped in the snow,” said Mrs. Elder, indifferently.

“I hate snow down my neck,” volunteered Mrs. Dave Dyer, with an unpleasant look at Carol and, turning her back, she bubbled at Rita Simons, “Dearie, won’t you run in this evening?  I’ve got the loveliest new Butterick pattern I want to show you.”