"Queer it didn't show itself before," said Bowman sensibly. "I am more inclined to believe that Joe Bodley is playing tricks. Why! he's kept bar in the city and I know he was telling some of the scatter-brained young fools who hang around the Inn, that he's often seen 'peter' used in men's drink to knock them out. 'Peter,' you know, is 'knock-out drops!'"
"No, I don't know," said Janice, with disgust. "Or, I didn't till you told me."
"Forgive me, Janice," the civil engineer said humbly. "I was only explaining."
"Oh, I'm not blaming you at all," she said. "But I am angry to think that my own mind—as well as everybody's mind in Polktown—is being contaminated from this barroom. We are all learning saloon phrases. I never heard so much slang from Marty and the other boys, as I have caught the last few weeks. Having liquor sold in Polktown is giving us a new language."
"Well," said Bowman, as the lights of the Inn came in sight, "I hadn't thought of it that way. But I guess you are right. Now, now, Janice, what had we better do? Hear the noise?"
"What kind of dance is it?" asked Janice, in disgust. "I should think that it was a sailor's dance hall, or a lumber camp dance. I have heard of such things."
"It's going a little too strong for Lem Parraday himself to-night, I guess. Marm shuts herself in their room upstairs, I understand, and reads her Bible and prays."
"Poor woman!"
"She's of the salt of the earth," said Bowman warmly. "But she can't help herself. Lem would do it. The Inn did not pay. And it is paying now. At least, he says it is."
"It won't pay them in the end if this keeps up," said Janice, listening to the stamping and the laughter and the harsh sounds of violins and piano. "Surely Hopewell isn't making all that—that music?"