The cool, disdainful countenance of Meta Beggs returned to him: time, he divined, would not mark her in so sorry a fashion; to the last she would remain slimly rounded, graceful; her hands, like magnolia flowers, would never thicken and grow rough. He thought of Paris, of that life which, she said, would civilize him; he tried in vain to form an image of the cafes and little carriages, the bare-necked women drinking champagne. He recalled a burlesque show he had once seen in Stenton, called "The French Widows"; the revealed amplitude of the "widows" had been clad in vivid, stained pink tights; the scene in which they disported with a comic Irishman, a lugubrious Jew, was set with gilded palms, a saloon bar on one side and a tank on the other from which "Venus" rose flatly from a cotton sea. He dismissed that possibility of resemblance--it was too palpably at variance with what Meta Beggs would consider desirable; but, somehow, pink tights and Paris were synonymous in his thoughts. At any rate it was certain to be gay; the women would resemble Nickles' wife rather than his sister ... than Lettice as she would be in a few years. He recalled suddenly a neglected rite of hospitality, and from an obscure angle of the shed, produced a gallon jug. Drinking vessels were procured, and a pale, pungent whiskey poured out. Rutherford Berry sputtered and gasped over his glass; Sim Caley absorbed a brimming measure between breaths, without a wink of the eye; Gordon drank inattentively. The ceremony was repeated; a flare of color rose in Berry's pallid countenance, Sim's portion apparently evaporated from the glass. The whiskey made no visible impression on Gordon Makimmon. The jug was circulated again, and again. All at once Rutherford became drunk. He rose swaying, attempted to articulate, and fell, half in a stall. Simeon Caley pulled him out, slapped his back with a hard, gnarled palm, but was unable to arouse him from a profound stupor. "He ain't right strong," Sim observed with a trace of contempt, propping the figure in a limp angle against the wall. It was dark now, and he lit the hand lantern, cautiously closing the door. Outside the whippoorwills had begun to call. A determined rattling of pots and pans sounded from the kitchen. "How much is in her, Gord?" Sim asked. Gordon Makimmon investigated the jug. "She's near three quarters full," he announced. An expression of profound content settled upon Simeon Caley. The jug went round and round. Gordon grew a shade more punctilious than customary, he wiped the jug's mouth before passing it to Sim--at the premature retirement of Rutherford the glasses had been discarded as effete; but not a degree of the other's manner betrayed the influence of his Gargantuan draughts of liquor. The lantern flickered on the sloping, cobwebby roof, on the shaggy horses as they lay clumsily down to rest, on the crumpled figure of Gordon's sister's husband.