"Maxine! You come right in the house, young lady. It's after nine o'clock."
The clock had struck eleven before Peter Brailsford, tossing on his bed, remembered the camp trailer which was to revolutionize motoring, the beautiful little green vans, complete with running water, small kitchens, electric lights run from storage batteries, even curtains at the windows. He went to sleep dreaming of Maxine, of sweet revenge, and of his trailers.
2
A Hallowe'en party at the Methodist Episcopal church in Brailsford Junction was a social event of the first magnitude. The Epworth Leaguers excelled Salem witch-burners in striking terror into one another's hearts and upsetting usually sturdy stomachs. They put skinned grapes in one another's hands in lieu of cats' eyes, poured thick red fluid down each other's necks after having realistically cut the jugular vein with rubber daggers, they removed boards on the dark stairs to the organ loft so that one fell ten feet into a pile of leaves in the woodshed, burned each other with red hot pokers which were in reality slivers of ice, and in general proved themselves worthy disciples of Torquemada. Unholy shrieks from belfry, organ loft, and song-book cupboard kept the girls mildly hysterical. No good young Methodist would have thought of missing the fun.
For days the entertainment committee had been decorating and ripping up the church. Half a cornfield and a wagon load of pumpkins had been transported to the basement and arranged realistically around the pillars and in the corners. Red leaves, jack-o'-lanterns, miles of orange tissue paper, black cats, witches, and tubs for apple bobbing completed the effect in the dimly lit cavern where early on Hallowe'en the young people began to gather.
Peter arrived at seven-thirty wearing a cardboard pumpkin head but otherwise uncostumed. He wanted to parade his stylish new green suit, his tie which would have enraged a bull, and his oxfords with exaggerated bows. Young Brailsford was celebrating his two-dollar-and-a-half raise at the "Trailer" where he had gained the ear of Mike O'Casey with his invention and had been promoted to the role of super office boy in charge of making blue prints for the draftsmen.
Radiating pride and self-assurance he strode across the room toward the knot of Epworth Leaguers in the far corner. But as he approached he felt an electric discharge of uncordiality which could mean but one thing. Bud Spillman, who was holding forth to his coterie of pretty girls and local scions, had been jeering at his expense. Peter was a farm boy and definitely an outsider.
"My, my! Ain't you stylish!" said the erstwhile football hero, dressed for the occasion in Roman toga and laurel wreath.
"Take that back or I'll give you a poke," warned Peter, forgetting that he stood on sacred ground.
"All right, hayseed. You look like you was all dressed up for greasing trailers."