She conceded him that point.
"Say," he asked, struck by a thought, "how do you know what spirits are going to be in this? Who is going to write this thing, anyhow?"
"I am," said Mrs. Pottle.
§2
"It's not decent," objected Mr. Pottle fervidly. "How can I keep the respect of the community if I go round like this?"
He indicated his pink knees, which blushed like spring rosebuds beneath a somewhat nebulous toga of cheese-cloth.
"If I can't wear pants, I don't want to be the Spirit of History," he added.
"For the fifth and last time," said the tired and harassed voice of Mrs. Pottle, "you cannot wear pants. Spirits never do. That settles it. Not another word, Ambrose. Haven't I trouble enough without my own husband adding to it?"
She pressed her brow as if it ached. Piles of costumes, mostly tinsel and cheese-cloth, shields, tomahawks, bridles and bits of scenery were strewn about the Pottle parlor. She sank into a Morris chair, and stitched fiercely at an angel's wing. Her eyes were the eyes of one at bay.
"It's been one thing after another," she declaimed. "Those Gulicks are making my life miserable. And just now I had a note from Etta Runkle's mother saying that if in the Masque of the Fruits and Flowers of Botts County her little Etta has to be an onion while little Gertrude Crump is a violet, she won't lend us that white horse for the Paul Revere's Ride Scene. So I had to make that hateful stupid child of hers a violet and change Gertrude Crump to an onion and now Mrs. Crump is mad and won't let any of her children appear in the pageant."