Pretty soon one of the girls said something about the Bohemians of the Latin Quarter, probably aiming to show this New York chatterbox that Red Gap wasn't so far west as it looked. But Dulcie gave 'em the laugh. She said oh, dear, New York society had simply quit taking up Bohemians, it not being considered smart any longer, and did we really take them up here? The girls backed up at this. And Dulcie went on being superior. She said of course society people now and then made up a party and went down to Washington Square to look them over, but as for taking them up, oh, dear, no! It was more like a slumming party. One could stare at them, but one simply didn't know them.
And perhaps, if she could get Aunt Cora to chaperon them, they might make up one of these slumming parties some evening and go down to Red Gap's Latin Quarter; it might be amusing. Cora Wales glistened at this. She said she guessed people could now see how such goings-on were regarded by society in the true sense of the word. And it did give the girls a chill, calling the Bigler home a slum. But I still didn't see any stuff in Dulcie to vanquish Vernabelle.
And I didn't see it a minute later when Dulcie wolfed her tenth marshmallow and broke out about winter sports. She first said what perfectly darling snow we had here. This caused some astonishment, no one present having ever regarded snow as darling but merely as something to shovel or wade through. So Dulcie pronged off a piece of sticky chocolate cake and talked on. She said that everyone in New York was outdooring, and why didn't we outdoor. It was a shame if we didn't go in for it, with all this perfectly dandy snow. New York people had to go out of town for their winter sports, owing to the snow not being good for sport after it fell there; but here it was right at hand, and did we mean to say we hadn't organized a winter-sports club.
No one spoke, for no one could guess what you did to outdoor properly. About all they could think of was hustling out after another chunk for the fireplace or bringing a scuttle of coal up from the cellar. But they soon got the idea. Dulcie said right from this window she could see a corking hill for a toboggan slide, and it would be perfectly darling to be out there with plenty of hot coffee and sandwiches; and there must be some peachy trips for snowshoe parties with sandwiches and coffee at the end; or skating in the moonlight with a big bonfire and coffee and sandwiches.
She suggested other things with coffee and sandwiches and finally got up some real enthusiasm when she said she had brought some of the dearest sport toggery with her. The girls was excited enough when they found out you had to dress especial for it. They was willing to listen to anything like that if New York society was really mad about it, even if it conflicted with lifelong habits—no one in Red Gap but small boys having ever slid downhill.
And still I didn't suspect Dulcie was going to groundsluice Vernabelle. It looked like the Latin Quarter would still have the best of it, at least during a cold winter. Which goes to show that you can't tell what society will go mad about, even in Red Gap, when you can dress for it.
The girls had got a line on Dulcie and was properly impressed by her, and then with an evening affair at the Wales home the dancing men had their chance. Even some of the Bohemians was let to come, just to have 'em see that there was indeed a better life; and reports of Dulcie was such that all took advantage of it. The male sex was strong for the girl at once. She didn't know that life is anything but selective, or that all the arts round out one's appreciation of the beautiful, or that anything was "by way of being" something. But all the food she took didn't make her torpid; she giggled easily and had eyes like hothouse grapes, and in spite of her fat there was something about her, like Cousin Egbert said of Vernabelle. Anyway, she prevailed. Oswald Cummings, the pagan, for one, quickly side-stepped his destiny of splendid sins, and Hugo Jennings told Dulcie he had merely gone to this Latin Quarter as he would go to an animal show, never having meant for one moment to take Bohemians up, any more than New York society would.
First thing I hear, the winter-sports club has been organized, snowshoes sent for and a couple of toboggans, and a toboggan slide half a mile long made out in Price's Addition, starting at the top of the highest hill, where Lon's big board sign with the painted bungalow made a fine windshield, and running across some very choice building lots to the foot of the grade, where it stopped on the proposed site of the Carnegie Library. Lon was very keen about the sport himself after meeting Dulcie, and let a fire be built near his sign that burned it down one night, but he said it was all good advertising, more than he'd ever got out of being a Bohemian.
Of course there was a great deal of fuss about the proper sport toggery, but everyone got rigged out by the time the toboggans got there. Dulcie was a great help in this and was downtown every day advising one or another about the proper sweaters or blanket coats or peaked caps with tassels, or these here big-eyed boots. You'd meet her in a store with Stella Ballard, eating from a sack of potato chips; and half an hour later she'd be in another store with Daisy Estelle Maybury, munching from a box of ginger wafers; with always a final stop at the Bon Ton Kandy Kitchen for a sack of something to keep life in her on the way home. There really got to be so much excitement about winter sports that you hardly heard any more talk about the Latin Quarter. People got to speaking to each other again.
By the opening day of the sports club you wouldn't of thought any one in town had ever tried to get away from it all. Even them that thought it crazy came and stood round and said so. Cousin Egbert Floud said this Dulcie was some sparrow, but nutty—going out in the cold that way when nothing drove her out. Dulcie made a great hit with the club this first day, having the correct Canadian toggery and being entirely fearless in the presence of a toboggan. She'd zip to the bottom, come tramping back, shooting on all six, grab a sandwich—for not a morsel of food had passed her lips since she went down the time before—and do it all over again. And every last ex-Bohemian, even Edgar Tomlinson, fighting for the chance to save her from death by starvation! Dulcie played no favourites, being entranced with 'em all. She said they was the dearest gentleman friends she'd ever had. The way they was fighting for her favours she could of called 'em her gentleman frenzy. Ain't I the heinous old madcap, thinking of jokes like that?