Homer did not disappoint his friends. During the first dance he entered the hall with Yvette, and the music all but stopped to stare. Undeniably she was pretty. It was not her prettiness the women resented, however, but her air and her clothes. Actually she wore a dress cut low at the neck, and sleeveless. Coldriver had heard of such garments, and there were those who actually believed them to exist and to be worn by certain women in European society among kings and dukes and other frightfully immoral people. But that one should ever make its appearance in Coldriver, under their very eyes, was a thing so startling, so outrageous, as almost to demand the spontaneous formation of a vigilance committee.
Even yet there was no concerted action, but sentiment was crystallizing. Homer and Yvette danced three dances, and Homer's face began to wear a scowl. No less than five young men approached by him with the purpose of securing them as partners for Yvette declined with brevity.
"What's the matter with you??" he demanded, belligerently. "There hain't no pertier girl nor no better dancer on the floor."
"Mebby so. Hain't noticed. Got all my dances took."
"Me too. My girl she says—"
"She says what?" snapped Homer.
"She says she'll go home if I dance with yourn."
"And I say," said Homer, with set jaw, "that you fellers is goin' to dance with Yvette, or there's goin' to be more fights in Coldriver 'n Coldriver ever see before. That's my say."
He announced he would be back after the next dance, and that somebody would dance with Yvette. "The feller that refuses," said he, "goes outside with me."
He went back to Yvette, who, not lacking in shrewdness, sensed something of the situation.