But even this atrocity was matched—Dan Birge had given Taffy an expensive feed tray and was present at the party. Hazel Mitchell took the day off to circulate the rumor which developed into the report that the tray was not aluminum but Haviland china with a hand-painted monogram in the center! Had Dan been seen kissing Thurley he could not have been more bitterly condemned. Truly, Thurley Precore must get her “comeuppance.” Ali Baba summarized it one late summer’s day as he watched Caleb, Polly and Thurley play tennis against Collin, returned from Bliss’s hermitage, Mark and Lissa. “Well, Betsey,” he said, leaning on his lawn-mower handle, “these women covered with lady powder and their dresses cut so low as to leave a fust rate advertisin’ space and these fellers a-whangin’ and a-bangin’ at their fiddles or tryin’ to paint a pretty little blue lake to look like a green icicle and none of ’em mendin’ a sock or drivin’ a nail or carin’ about anything except who can eat the most or laff the loudest, all of ’em thinkin’ ‘what’s yours is mine and what’s mine is my own’—I want to tell you Thurley’s got to get rid of the whole bunch, if she’s goin’ to be worth a pinch of snuff. This way she’ll neither be fish nor flesh nor good red herring!” CHAPTER XXVIII After a busy but personally unsatisfactory winter, the war clouds for America gathering without pause, Thurley admitted to Ernestine that she now understood the need for nerve specialists, that she agreed fully with him who has said, “a state of emotion without some action as an outlet is immoral,” and she proceeded to drink more black coffee and light wine than was good for her, jeopardize her eyes by midnight reading of morbid Russian novels and to carry on half a dozen affairs with Mark as a sort of everlasting threat in Lissa’s direction. Yet in her work Thurley had increased in ability and interpretation; her _Juliet_, _Ophelia_ and _La Tosca_ were each welcomed as superb achievements. “Because, my child, you are burning up your personal habits and tastes and nice Jersey cow nerves,” Ernestine said with delicious melancholy. “I knew it was inevitable—you could never stay the rosy-cheeked schoolgirl. You’ll keep on using up your personal endowments. Fame is a cruel stepmother to personal happiness and you’ll be like the rest of us—quite impossible except when you are before the public.” At which decree Thurley fled to engage in a rousing afternoon of ice skating with Mark, only to have Lissa dart down on them with her purring, dangerous smile and rescue Mark. She then sent him on an errand and drove Thurley home in order to bestow a few feminine scratches.