"But things seem to pile up all at once in our town. That very summer the fashion magazines was handed round with pages turned down at the more daring spots where ladies were shown in such things. It wasn't felt that they were anything for the little ones to see. But still, after all, wasn't it sensible, now really, when you come right down to it? and as a matter of fact isn't a modest woman modest in anything?—it isn't what she wears but how she conducts herself in public, or don't you think so, Mrs. Ballard?—and you might as well be dead as out of style, and would Lehman, the Square Tailor, be able to make up anything like that one there?—but no, because how would he get your measure?—and surely no modest woman could give him hers even if she did take it herself—anyway, you'd be insulted by all the street rowdies as you rode by, to say nothing of being ogled by men without a particle of fineness in their natures—but there's always something to be said on both sides, and it's time woman came into her own, anyway, if she is ever to be anything but man's toy for his idle moments—still it would never do to go to extremes in a narrow little town like this with every one just looking for an excuse to talk—but it would be different if all the best people got together and agreed to do it, only most of them would probably back out at the last moment and that smarty on the Recorder would try to be funny about it—now that one with the long coat doesn't look so terrible, does it? or do you think so?—of course it's almost the same as a skirt except when you climb on or something—a woman has to think of those things—wouldn't Daisy Estelle look rather stunning in that?—she has just the figure for it. Here's this No. 9872 with the Norfolk jacket in this mail-order catalogue—do you think that looks too theatrical, or don't you? Of course for some figures, but I've always been able to wear—And so forth, for a month or so.
"Late in the fall Henrietta Templeton Price done it. You may not know what that meant to Alonzo Price, Choice Villa Sites and Price's Addition to Red Gap. Alonzo is this kind: I met him the day Gussie Himebaugh had her accident when the mules she was driving to the mowing machine run away out on Himebaugh's east forty. Alonzo had took Doc Maybury out and passes me coming back. 'How bad was she hurt?' I asks. The poor thing looks down greatly embarrassed and mumbles: 'She has broken a limb.' 'Leg or arm?' I blurts out, forgetting all delicacy. You'd think I had him pinned down, wouldn't you? Not Lon, though. 'A lower limb,' says he, coughing and looking away.
"You see how men are till we put a spike collar and chain on 'em. When Henrietta declared herself Alonzo read the riot act and declared marital law. But there was Henrietta with the collar and chain and pretty soon Lon was saying: 'You're quite right, Pettikins, and you ought to have the thanks of the community for showing our ladies how to dress rationally on horseback. It's not only sensible and safe but it's modest—a plain pair of riding breeches, no coquetry, no frills, nothing but stern utility—of course I agree.'
"'I hoped you would, darling,' says Henrietta. She went to Miss Gunslaugh and had her make the costume, being one who rarely does things by halves. It was of blue velvet corduroy, with a fetching little bolero jacket, and the things themselves were fitted, if you know what I mean. And stern utility! That suit with its rosettes and bows and frogs and braid had about the same stern utility as those pretty little tin tongs that come on top of a box of candy—ever see anybody use one of those? When Henrietta got dressed for her first ride and had put on the Cuban Pink Face Balm she looked like one of the gypsy chorus in the Bohemian Girl opera.
"Alonzo gulped several times in rapid succession when he saw her, but the little man never starts anything he don't aim to finish, and it was too late to start it then. Henrietta brazened her way through Main Street and out to the country club and back, and next day she put them on again so Otto Hirsch, of the E-light Studio, could come up and take her standing by the horse out in front of the Price mansion. Then they was laid away until the Grand Annual Masquerade Ball of the Order of the Eastern Star, which is a kind of hen Masons, when she again gave us a flash of what New York society ladies was riding their horse in. As a matter of fact, Henrietta hates a horse like a rattlesnake, but she had done her pioneer work for once and all.
"Every one was now laughing and sneering at the old-fashioned divided skirt with which woman had endangered her life on a horse, and wondering how they had endured the clumsy things so long; and come spring all the prominent young society buds and younger matrons of the most exclusive set who could stay on a horse at all was getting theirs ready for the approaching season, Red Gap being like London in having its gayest season in the summer, when people can get out more. Even Mis' Judge Ballard fell for it, though hers was made of severe black with a long coat. She looked exactly like that Methodist minister, the old one, that we had three years ago.
"Most of the younger set used the mail-order catalogue, their figures still permitting it. And maybe there wasn't a lot of trying on behind drawn blinds pretty soon, and delighted giggles and innocent girlish wonderings about whether the lowest type of man really ogles as much under certain circumstances as he's said to. And the minute the roads got good the telephone of Pierce's Livery, Feed, and Sale Stable was kept on the ring. Then the social upheaval was on. Of course any of 'em looked quiet after Henrietta's costume, for none of the girls but Beryl Mae Macomber, a prominent young society bud, aged seventeen, had done anything like that. But it was the idea of the thing.
"A certain element on the South Side made a lot of talk and stirred things up and wrote letters to the president of the Civic Purity League, who was Mis' Judge Ballard herself, asking where this unspeakable disrobing business was going to end and calling her attention to the fate that befell Sodom and Gomorrah. But Mis' Ballard she's mixed on names and gets the idea these parties mean Samson and Delilah instead of a couple of twin cities, like St. Paul and Minneapolis, and she writes back saying what have these Bible characters got to do with a lady riding on horseback—in trousers, it is true, but with a coat falling modestly to the knee on each side, and certain people had better be a little more fussy about things that really matter in life before they begin to talk. She knew who she was hitting at all right, too. Trust Mis' Ballard!
"It was found that there was almost the expected amount of ogling from sidewalk loafers, at first. As Daisy Estelle Maybury said, it seemed as if a girl couldn't show herself on the public thoroughfare without being subjected to insult. Poor Daisy Estelle! She had been a very popular young society belle, and was considered one of the most attractive girls in Red Gap until this happened. No one had ever suspected it of her in the least degree up to that time. Of course it was too late after she was once seen off her horse. Them that didn't see was told in full detail by them that did. Most of the others was luckier. Beryl Mae Macomber in her sport shirt and trouserettes complained constantly about the odious wretches along Main Street and Fourth, where the post office was. She couldn't stop even twenty minutes in front of the post office, minding her own business and waiting for some one she knew to come along and get her mail for her, without having dozens of men stop and ogle her. That, of course, was during the first two weeks after she took to going for the mail, though the eternal feminine in Beryl Mae probably thought the insulting glances was going to keep up forever.
"I watched the poor child one day along in the third week, waiting there in front of the post office after the four o'clock mail, and no one hardly ogled her at all except some rude children out from school. What made it more pitiful, leaning right there against the post office front was Jack Shiels, Sammie Hamilton, and little old Elmer Cox, Red Gap's three town rowdies that ain't done a stroke of work since the canning factory closed down the fall before, creatures that by rights should have been leering at the poor child In all her striking beauty. But, no; the brutes stand there looking at nothing much until Jack Shiels stares a minute at this horse Beryl Mae is on and pipes up: 'Why, say, I thought Pierce let that little bay runt go to the guy that was in here after polo ponies last Thursday. I sure did.' And Sam Hamilton wakes up and says: 'No, sir; not this one. He got rid of a little mare that had shoulders like this, but she was a roan with kind of mule ears and one froze off.' And little old Elmer Cox, ignoring this defenceless young girl with his impudent eyes, he says: 'Yes, Sam's right for once. Pierce tried to let this one go, too, but ain't you took a look at his hocks!' Then along comes Dean Duke, the ratty old foreman in Pierce's stable, and he don't ogle a bit, either, like you'd expect one of his debased calibre to, but just stops and talks this horse over with 'em and says yes, it was his bad hocks that lost the sale, and he tells 'em how he had told Pierce just what to do to get him shaped up for a quick sale, but Pierce wouldn't listen to him, thinking he knew it all himself; and there the four stood and gassed about this horse without even seeing Beryl Mae, let alone leering at her. I bet she was close to shedding tears of girlish mortification as she rode off without ever waiting for the mail. Things was getting to a pretty pass. If low creatures lost to all decent instincts, like these four, wouldn't ogle a girl when she was out for it, what could be expected of the better element of the town? Still, of course, now and then one or the other of the girls would have a bit of luck to tell of.