“Let's go over there and hear that girl play,” suggested Laurie suddenly, “Church is out and we'll make her play the bells. They're simply great. She's some player!”
Opal leaned back in her chair and regarded him through the fringes of her eyelashes, laughing a silvery peal that shivered into the reverence of the benediction like a shower of icicles going down the back. Marilyn heard and blended the Amen into the full organ to break the shock as the startled congregation moved restlessly, with half unclosed eyes. Elder Harricutt heard, shut his eyes tighter, and pressed severe lips together with resistance. This doubtless was that woman they called Cherry. That irreverent Mark Carter must be close at hand. And on the rose-vined porch Laurence Shafton felt the sting of the laugh and drew himself together:
“Oh, Laurie, Laurie!” she mocked, “You might as well be dead at Saybrook Inn or imprisoned for killing a family as fall in love with that girl. She isn't at all your kind. How would you look singing psalms? But come on, I'm game! I can see how she'll hate me. Can you walk?”
They sauntered slowly over to the church in the fragrant darkness, he leaning on a cane he had found by the door. The kindly, curious people coming out eyed them interestedly, looking toward the two cars in front of the parsonage, and wondered. It was a neighborhood where everybody took a kindly interest in everybody else, and the minister belonged to them all. Nothing went on at his house that they did not just love and dote on.
“Seems to me that girl has an awful low-necked dress for Sunday night,” said Mrs. Little to Mrs. Jones as they walked slowly down the street, “Did you catch the flash of those diamonds on her neck and fingers?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Jones contemptuously, “paint on her face too, thick as pie crust. I saw her come. She drove her own car and her dresses were up to her knees, and such stockings! With stripes like lace in them! And little slippers with heels like knitting needles! I declare, I don't know what this generation is coming to! I'm glad my Nancy never wanted to go away to boarding school. They say it's terrible, the boldness of young girls nowadays.”
“Well, if you'd ask me, I'd say she wasn't so very young!” declared Mrs. Little. “The light from the church door was full in her face when I was coming down the steps, and she looked as if she'd cut her eye teeth sometime past.”
“She had short hair,” said Mrs. Jones, “for she pulled off her hat and ran her fingers through it just like a boy. I was cutting bread at the pantry window when she drove up and I couldn't help seeing her.”
“Oh, when my sister was up in New York this spring she said she saw several old gray-haired women with bobbed hair. She said it was something terrible to see how the world had run to foolishness.”