United States or Saint Martin ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


She confided to me that Bohemians was a messy lot to clean up after, raining cigarette ashes over everything; and also it was pretty hard to have raised a child to Metta's age only to see her become a cigarette fiend overnight, and having these mad revels with currant wine and other intoxicants and Metta was even using a lip stick!

It shows you what a hold Vernabelle was by way of getting on Red Gap. It was sure one season of triumph for Metta Bigler, who lurked proudly in the background as manager. Metta's mother wasn't near so thrilled as Metta, though.

And Metta's mother wasn't the only one in town looking sidewise at these Bohemian doings. There was them that held aloof from the beginning and would give their bitter reasons at every opportunity. These was the ultra-conservative element of the North Side set, and what they said about the new Latin Quarter was a plenty.

It was mostly clouds and figures of females, some with ladies' wearing apparel and many not, engaged in dancing or plucking fruit or doing up their hair. Quite different stuff from Metta's innocent pictures of kittens and grapes and daffodils.

Everyone said yes, quite so; and they all tried to handle their wine like it was a rare old vintage. But you can't hold much wassail on the juice of the elderberry; it ain't the most jocund stuff the world as fermented by Metta's mother. However, it livened things up a bit and Vernabelle set down her glass and chattered some more.

She said of course she couldn't keep Metta's guest from being a Bohemian, but she would have to be it alone. She wasn't going to have a whole mob coming round every day and being Bohemians all over the place, it being not only messy but repugnant alike to sound morality and Christian enlightenment. And that settled it. Our town was safe for one more winter.

They gathered daily in Metta's studio, the women setting round in smocks, they all took to wearing smocks, of course, while hungry-eyed Vernabelle got the men to tell her all about themselves, and said wasn't it precious that a few choice spirits could thus meet in the little half-lighted hour, away from it all, and be by way of forgetting that outer world where human souls are bartered in the market place.

She didn't one bit relish having her neat home referred to as a slum, say nothing of having her only child using a lip stick and acting like an abandoned woman with cigarettes and the wine cup. She said just that to me, Metta's mother did.

I reckoned she must be the Miss Smith and the glass blower I'd already heard about that morning. Of course "Miss Smith" didn't sound like much, but Vernabelle Smith was different. That name Vernabelle made all the difference in the world. You sort of forgot the ensuing Smith. That same afternoon about four P.M. I dropped round to the Bigler house. Metta's mother let me in.

Russy didn't want it to, but it crept in through the key-hole, it must have been the key-hole, for the door was shut the minute Metta's skirt had whisked through. But one thing Russy had to be thankful for, Metta didn't know it was there in the room. As far as that went, it was a kind-hearted Lie.