“I--I don’t want to laugh,” Julie protested. “I--oh, I think the war’s awful!” she burst out. “I don’t want to laugh over any one’s going.” “Oh, well,” Elizabeth said carelessly. “I wouldn’t be s’prised if the war didn’t make a man out of him--the drill an’ all would be fine. But I tell him he’d better mind out, or he’ll be the goat of the whole camp.” Finding no chair to sit in, Elizabeth had been drifting about the shop, inspecting one showcase after another; now she came to rest at the counter behind which Julie was seated, and leaning nonchalantly against it, she did what was to Julie an amazing thing. She opened a gilt vanity-bag which she had been swinging, and taking from it a cigarette case, selected one and proceeded to light it with a knowing air. Julie knew, of course, that women did smoke cigarettes somewhere, but she had never seen them do it, much less light one in her discreet little shop. She was used to seeing the mountain women out in the country smoke pipes; indeed, her own grandmother on her father’s side had smoked and chewed as well. “But that’s different,” she told herself now. Her grandmother’s corncob pipe before a stone hearth seemed wholly in keeping with the old woman’s kerchief-covered head, her spinning wheel, her loom, and patchwork quilts. Not so Elizabeth’s insolent cigarette. That appeared to Julie an affront to her mother’s spirit, which always seemed to her still hovering dimly in the background of the little shop. She and her mother, living their gentle reserved lives there together, had made up the atmosphere, the soul, of the little establishment, pouring into it all the timid modesty, gentle propriety, and sincerity of their own hearts. They had neither of them had a brave or robust attitude toward life, but they had nevertheless woven a pattern that was adorned with a thousand tendernesses toward one another, with exquisite bits of understanding consideration, with gentle courtesies and kindnesses toward their neighbors, and with a careful honesty in all their dealings. Timid as they were, they yet had wrought an unseen mesh of life that had a delicate beauty all its own. And now to Julie, all that past that her mother and she had woven together was outraged by Elizabeth’s cigarette.