"A good many of the mothers thought they'd rather not have them exposed to ... er ... professional methods." As an afterthought he tried to give it the cast of a priestly remonstrance which he must have seen didn't in the least impose on me. I suppose it was the fear of how I might put it to one of his best paying parishioners that led him to go around to the store the next morning and make matters worse by explaining to Tommy that though the children weren't to be contaminated by my professionalism, it could probably be arranged for me to "recite something." To do Tommy justice, he was as mad as a hatter. Being so much nearer to village-mindedness himself, I suppose my husband could better understand the mean envy of my larger opportunity, but his obduracy in maintaining that I had been offended led to the only real initiative he ever showed in all the time I was married to him. "I'd just like to _show_ them!" he kept sputtering. All at once he cheered up with a snort. "_I'll_ show them!" He was very busy all the evening with letters which he went out on purpose to post, with the result that when a few days later he made his contribution to the fireworks fund, he made it a little larger, as became a live business man, on the ground that he wouldn't be able to participate as his wife had "accepted an invitation to take charge of the programme at Newton Centre." Newton Centre was ten miles away, and though I couldn't do much on account of the difficulty of rehearsals, I managed to make the announcement of it in the county paper convey to them that what they had missed wasn't quite to be sicklied over with Mrs. Miller's asseveration of a notable want of moral particularity at Newton Centre. The very first time I went out to a Sunday-school social thereafter it was made plain to me that if I wanted to take up the annual Library entertainment, it was open to me. "And I always will say," Mrs. Miller conceded, "that there's nobody can make your children seem such a credit to you as Mrs. Bettersworth." "It's a regular talent you have," Mrs. Harvey backed her up, "like a person in the Bible." This scriptural reference came in so aptly that I could see several ladies nodding complacently. Mrs. Ross sailed quite over them and landed on the topmost peak of approbation. "I've always believed," she asserted, "that a Christian woman on the stage would have an uplifting influence."