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Updated: June 23, 2025
Not till the one required topic had been dealt with did the conversation become general. It was often and admiringly said of Vergil Gunch, "Gee, that fellow can get away with murder! Why, he can pull a Raw One in mixed company and all the ladies 'll laugh their heads off, but me, gosh, if I crack anything that's just the least bit off color I get the razz for fair!"
Frink pulled at his eye-glass cord as at a bell-rope, he cleared his throat and said that which was the custom: "I'll tell you, George: I'm a law-abiding man, but they do say Verg Gunch is a regular yegg, and of course he's bigger 'n I am, and I just can't figure out what I'd do if he tried to force me into anything criminal!"
I got to get hold of myself. I got to learn to play around and yet not make a fool of myself. I can do it, too, if folks like Verg Gunch 'll let me alone, and Myra 'll stay away. But poor kid, she sounds lonely. Lord, I don't want to hurt her!" Impulsively he wrote that they missed her, and her next letter said happily that she was coming home. He persuaded himself that he was eager to see her.
Now Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful important to tell you!" The women wriggled, and Babbitt was stirred to like naughtiness.
Babbitt saw that from the sidewalk Vergil Gunch was watching him. In vague disquiet he started the car and mechanically drove on, while Gunch's hostile eyes seemed to follow him all the way. "There's a lot of these fellows," Babbitt was complaining to his wife, "that think if workmen go on strike they're a regular bunch of fiends.
"You forgot to give um the address: 1658 Brimstone Avenue, Fiery Heights, Hell," Gunch chuckled, but the others felt that this was irreligious. And besides "probably it was just Chum making the knocks, but still, if there did happen to be something to all this, be exciting to talk to an old fellow belonging to way back in early times " A thud.
He considered telling her his worries about Gunch, but "oh, gosh, it was too much work to go into the whole thing and explain about Verg and everything." He was relieved when he put Tanis on a trolley; he was cheerful in the familiar simplicities of his office. At four o'clock Vergil Gunch called on him. Babbitt was agitated, but Gunch began in a friendly way: "How's the boy?
But say, when I get out in the tall grass, there's nothing will take but a lot of cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge in it here, he'd get the gate so fast it would make his head swim." Vergil Gunch summed it up: "Fact is, we're mighty lucky to be living among a bunch of city-folks, that recognize artistic things and business-punch equally.
Through all these diversions the Boosters were lunching on chicken croquettes, peas, fried potatoes, coffee, apple pie, and American cheese. Gunch did not lump the speeches. Presently he called on the visiting secretary of the Zenith Rotary Club, a rival organization. The secretary had the distinction of possessing State Motor Car License Number 5.
Frink, you and he being fellow-poets," said Louetta Swanson. "Fellow-poets, rats! Where d' you get that stuff?" protested Vergil Gunch.
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