Annette and her frocks were the main topics of conversation that week in Polktown. Interest in the new railroad waned and Janice’s automobile was likewise relegated to the background. After the Prices’ party Mrs. Hutchins and the other dressmakers of the town were immediately rushed with work. Mr. Massey, who kept a side line of books and periodicals, sold out his latest pattern magazines almost at once. A furore of frock-making took hold upon the mothers of the town.
It was mostly the girls of about Annette’s age who began this aping of the ultra-fashions; but the disease spread until many of the staid matrons of the town were refurbishing their summer frocks, or having new ones made more in accord with the pictures in Aunt ’Mira’s story papers.
It was a bit of male gossip that Mr. John-Ed. Hutchins was scarcely seen out of the house for the next fortnight. It was a long-established fiction that Mr. John-Ed. was “weakly” and could not work. At least, he never did work—much; but he was not too weak to pull basting threads, and when his wife was “driv with work,” in Polktown parlance, she kept her otherwise useless spouse busy at this end of the dressmaking art. Mrs. Hutchins admitted that she hadn’t been so busy before in years.
Miss Link, the plump, little, near-sighted milliner, who always seemed to be lurking like a bespectacled spider behind her half blind on High Street, got near enough to Annette during the first few days of her stay at the Inn to copy one or two of the city girl’s hats, and she put them in a prominent position in her show window for “bait.” Harlan, the shoeman, immediately got in a stock of pumps and spats, and Icivilly Sprague bought the first pair of the latter ever sold in Polktown.
Icivilly’s brother, Sam, had a remarkably long neck, and he was addicted to attacks of quinsy sore throat at all times of the year. The unfortunate Sam had a bad attack the very night his sister brought home the spats, and Mrs. Sprague strapped a warm poultice on Sam’s long neck with one of the spats.
“There!” said the indignant lady, who had forbidden her daughter’s wearing the things the instant she saw them. “There! them do-funnies is good for suthin’, I vum! They jest fit Sam’s throat, an’ mebbe he’ll git some wear out o’ them.”
Janice kept out of the way of Frank Bowman’s sister until Saturday afternoon. Even then she planned to escape by taking Marty for a drive into the country in reward for his sticking all the week to his job.
“I gotter see Frank before we start,” the boy said. “Or—can’t we drive down by the ho-tel? I won’t stop but a minute. And say, Janice! Nelse Haley’s back. Did you know it?”
Janice was fortunately examining the “innards,” as Uncle Jason called it, of the automobile, and could hide her face from Marty. “No; I had not heard of his return,” she said. “I guess this is all right. Anyway, we’ll start.”
She could not see how she was to escape going to the Inn with Marty; and then, she suddenly hoped, by driving through the main street of the town they might see Nelson. Perhaps he would go with them in the car. She did not give much attention to Marty’s chatter until the boy said: