But there is a devil in this Avanel. And so she says, partly because she thinks it, and partly because she knows it will annoy me: “I wonder if the Lincoln residence was located among the best people when it was built?” And then, as the silence grows deadly on my side of the conversation: “My grandmother once told me that Mrs. Lincoln was really a fashionable person and not of poor-white stock like Lincoln and I am glad to hear it. He must have been a great trial to her, with her refined instincts.” My silence growing even more deadly she continues:—“I am sorry the Lincoln residence is not in a more fashionable region today. I wonder if they can move it out by the Country Club. Springfield is all ‘society,’ you know, and you might as well admit it.... I wish if they leave the residence here they would move these common houses and build a great Greek Temple over the Lincoln home, and make a park for about two hundred yards each way and have big avenues leading up to it and allow no common person to live anywhere near here. Lincoln was after all the greatest person since Jesus and we ought to show some sense of it.” We stroll on and on, and Avanel, being not yet twenty, as this world counts the years, is somewhat forgiven for these discursive remarks. She does not want to be forgiven, and hates my pious forbearance and at last says: “I simply cannot stand that cheap cowboy hat you wear. It is simply a ridiculous pose or else the instinct of a rotter.” So I take Miss Avanel Boone firmly by the arm and turn her toward town and at my insistence we step into the first gentlemen’s furnishing store we encounter and I urge her to help the clerk pick out a hat for me. They select one that is hardly a hair’s breadth different from the one I have been wearing. I pay for it in paper money, “to please old Black Hawk Boone,” as I explain to the humorous clerk. Avanel seems placated by this quip, though there is no reason on earth why she should be. She begins to behave like a Christian at once and stays so, all the way to her door. And I bid her good evening and she gives me the word I may soon see her dancing. CHAPTER IX TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT OVER WHETHER PEOPLE WITH BURIED GOLD SHALL MONOPOLIZE THE FLYING PRIVILEGE. May 15, 2018:—It is the evening of this day and Avanel is quite busy in her parlor with costumes. I am invited for dinner with her and old Boone. I am to help her immediately after to the theatre with her costumes that I am to carry in two heavy suitcases. Three friends of Avanel’s have prepared the dinner and serve it in true communal fraternity. According to their chatter the coming event is all in the spirit of a college lark or grand commencement occasion, rather than a churchly event.