Carol was shuddering with the vicarious shame which sensitive people feel when they listen to an “elocutionist” being humorous, or to a precocious child publicly doing badly what no child should do at all. She wanted to laugh at the gratified importance in Raymie's half-shut eyes; she wanted to weep over the meek ambitiousness which clouded like an aura his pale face, flap ears, and sandy pompadour. She tried to look admiring, for the benefit of Miss Sherwin, that trusting admirer of all that was or conceivably could be the good, the true, and the beautiful.
At the end of the third ornithological lyric Miss Sherwin roused from her attitude of inspired vision and breathed to Carol, “My! That was sweet! Of course Raymond hasn't an unusually good voice, but don't you think he puts such a lot of feeling into it?”
Carol lied blackly and magnificently, but without originality: “Oh yes, I do think he has so much FEELING!”
She saw that after the strain of listening in a cultured manner the audience had collapsed; had given up their last hope of being amused. She cried, “Now we're going to play an idiotic game which I learned in Chicago. You will have to take off your shoes, for a starter! After that you will probably break your knees and shoulder-blades.”
Much attention and incredulity. A few eyebrows indicating a verdict that Doc Kennicott's bride was noisy and improper.
“I shall choose the most vicious, like Juanita Haydock and myself, as the shepherds. The rest of you are wolves. Your shoes are the sheep. The wolves go out into the hall. The shepherds scatter the sheep through this room, then turn off all the lights, and the wolves crawl in from the hall and in the darkness they try to get the shoes away from the shepherds—who are permitted to do anything except bite and use black-jacks. The wolves chuck the captured shoes out into the hall. No one excused! Come on! Shoes off!”
Every one looked at every one else and waited for every one else to begin.
Carol kicked off her silver slippers, and ignored the universal glance at her arches. The embarrassed but loyal Vida Sherwin unbuttoned her high black shoes. Ezra Stowbody cackled, “Well, you're a terror to old folks. You're like the gals I used to go horseback-riding with, back in the sixties. Ain't much accustomed to attending parties barefoot, but here goes!” With a whoop and a gallant jerk Ezra snatched off his elastic-sided Congress shoes.
The others giggled and followed.
When the sheep had been penned up, in the darkness the timorous wolves crept into the living-room, squealing, halting, thrown out of their habit of stolidity by the strangeness of advancing through nothingness toward a waiting foe, a mysterious foe which expanded and grew more menacing. The wolves peered to make out landmarks, they touched gliding arms which did not seem to be attached to a body, they quivered with a rapture of fear. Reality had vanished. A yelping squabble suddenly rose, then Juanita Haydock's high titter, and Guy Pollock's astonished, “Ouch! Quit! You're scalping me!”