nolia flowers, would never thicken and grow rough.
He thought of Paris, of that life which, she said,
would civilize him; he tried in vain to form an image
of the cafes and little carriages, the bare-necked
women drinking champagne. He recalled a burlesque
show he had once seen in Stenton, called "The
French Widows"; the revealed amplitude of the
"widows" had been clad in vivid, stained pink
tights; the scene in which they disported with a
comic Irishman, a lugubrious Jew, was set with
gilded palms, a saloon bar on one side and a tank
on the other from which "Venus" rose flatly from a
cotton sea. He dismissed that possibility of resemblance --
it was too palpably at variance with
what Meta Beggs would consider desirable; but,
somehow, pink tights and Paris were synonymous in
his thoughts. At any rate it was certain to be gay;
the women would resemble Nickles' wife rather than
his sister... than Lettice as she would be in a
few years.

He recalled suddenly a neglected rite of hospitality,
and from an obscure angle of the shed, produced
a gallon jug. Drinking vessels were procured, and
a pale, pungent whiskey poured out. Rutherford
Berry sputtered and gasped over his glass; Sim Caley
absorbed a brimming measure between breaths,
without a wink of the eye; Gordon drank inattentively.
The ceremony was repeated; a flare of color

[[227]]

p226 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p227w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p228

v?