Presently, the Corners said it would be a blessing if Thurley Precore would choose some other place to spend her summers. Whatever made her pa and ma drive into the town in the first place? She would get her “comeupment” for this smartness, to say nothing of a real white slave dance which she gave, at which she was auctioned off to a big fat man with white hair and a tucked, crêpe de chine shirt, who made his living playing on a little penny whistle! The devil did not have all the good times in the world—neither would Thurley Precore. The older generation had felt from the first it was not boding good luck to have so great a spirit develop suddenly via a partly demented recluse. Here was proof enough! For Thurley and her friends neither went to church nor patronized church social affairs. They lived “like they tell of,” was the report, “just as like to get up at three o’clock in the morning to go on hollerin’ and yellin’ like to wake the dead or else sleep like logs until noon ... and if Miss Clergy thought she had done a smart thing in makin’ so much out of Thurley because Thurley _used_ to be able to carry a tune, she had an awful awakening ahead of her!” “She’ll never get her married off to no one,” the village further commented, when Thurley in a tight fitting black habit had cantered up and down the streets on a snowy white mare, while a moving picture man from New York patiently lurked along the roadside to catch a few poses. “Dan Birge ought to go down on his knees to thank Lorraine for marryin’ him ... but does he? Oh, no, when he gets down on his knees it’s only to tie up Thurley’s shoe latches! Never mindin’ his business nor his wife’s fadin’—nor the sport they make of him right to his face—he’s a worse fool than they are!” When the Corners became aware that Thurley’s terrier, Taffy, had several sets of harness and sweaters, they decided it was far more depraved than Dan Birge’s buying a dog and having him ride in the front seat of the car. Following on the heels of this discovery, the terrier had a birthday party with a frosted cake and three candles, and the newspaper editor admitted that they had sent in a paragraph describing the event, fully expecting it would be published. Upon being pressed for the details, the editor said the sum total of the description read, “Taffy Precore was the proud recipient of many handsome gifts, including a set of white rubbers from Madame Lissa Dagmar and an unusually attractive travelling coat from Collin Hedley. Covers were laid for fourteen and special out-of-town guests were Woofie Airedale, whose guardian is Siri Mantenelli, the opera singer, and Ogre, foster child of Ernestine Christian!”