Ellen’s formal renouncing of goodness helped us find our place in the grown-up world. Her gayety had always made her overstep the bounds of perfect decorum demanded of young women in my generation, and she set about carrying out her resolution which she told me about. I remember well the shocked sort of quiver with which I recognized myself, even staid Roberta, in her question:—

“Roberta, when you’re in company, don’t you ever want to do foolish things? When you see a lot of solemn people saying good-bye downstairs, don’t you want to slide down the banister into their midst? When Edward Graham used to lecture me, again and again I’ve wanted to take his hand and skip down the street singing, ‘Hippity Hop to the Barber Shop,’ and see what he’d do. I’ve always wanted to do all the foolish things I’ve thought of when I was in company, and now, Roberta, I’m going to!” I had had these erring impulses. Who has not? In each of us there is a hinterland where thoughts as fantastic as anything that happens in dreams gambol around with the irresponsibility of monkeys. Ellen translated a certain amount of these into action—and see what happened.

This is what makes virtue so discouraging in an imperfect world. It was her naughtiness which advertised to the world of men, “I am a sweet and adorable person; I can make you laugh, and I can make you dream, and I have no fear.” Ellen now acted before strangers with the inspired foolishness which most of us keep for those best known to us. Even for them this mad spirit is not at our beck and call, but must wait for the time and place to bring it out. Youth, empty of such lovely, high-spirited, and drunken moments, must be very sad.

The divine folly of such mirth is only for the partaker; one must feel the wine of life coursing through one to understand its spiritual significance. Joy-drunken young people seem to outsiders silly, if they don’t seem wanton; and while the things that we did would seem mild enough if I told them, they set our little New England town by the ears during the year that followed.

Our little coterie gradually acquired the reputation of giddiness among the older people, while we steadily became leaders among those of our own age, and Ellen the central flame around which we revolved. I myself thought her too audacious, and even when carried away by her I used to remonstrate seriously with her. This accomplished nothing, but it eased my own conscience.

Edward Graham, who had come back to teach in the academy, also lectured Ellen continually. He was one of those tenacious men who desire a thing all the more when they have lost it, and I think the full flowering of his affection for Ellen only came after he knew he couldn’t have her. I think it might never have come otherwise. His love for her was deep and fundamental, and the sort of love men treat like the air they breathe; but had she married him and been the docile wife she would have been, he might never even have known himself to what extent he cared, and still less have shown it to her. They continued to see much of each other, because he had put to her the plausible story that they could still be friends, and she, of course, eagerly assented, wishing to make what little reparation she could, and not realizing that at the back of his mind was a determination to win her at whatever cost.

Now her growing popularity and light-mindedness caused him anguish. Her growing popularity aroused in him a leaden jealousy. He alternated from mad blame to pleading affection. His devotion to her was a continual pain, and yet in her gentleness she didn’t know how to escape it, and his criticisms bred in her a certain defiance of the world and of conventions and made her more extravagant. I suppose it was because it came as a climax of a number of smaller follies that the town took so much notice of the famous “Young People’s Party,” given by the gentle Mr. Sylvester. I well remember the next day. I see myself demure in my grandmother’s kitchen, demure and gingham-aproned, my hands in dough, my hair sleek under its net. I see Ellen, a blue ribbon around her hair, a sparkle in her eye, her little feet crossed, with all the look of the cat which has swallowed the canary, and is glad of it. This is what sin had brought her to, you see. Mrs. Payne sat, sweet and helpless-looking, in one chair, and my grandmother creaked portentously back and forth, her hands folded on the place she called her waist-line, saying to Sarah Grant:—

“It couldn’t have been hens, Sarah.”

“It was hens,” said Miss Sarah accusingly. “They went out to the hen-yard and brought each hen into the house, and they flew around and broke two vases.” Her eyes meantime had not quitted Ellen, who at this inopportune moment snickered with happy recollection. “Ellen,” her aunt broke off accusingly, “did you think of bringing those hens into the house?”

“We were hawking,” explained Ellen. “I brought mine in on my wrist and it flew across and perched on John Seymore’s shoulder. That’s how we told off partners for ‘Authors’; everybody got a hen, and on whichever boy’s shoulder it perched,—and often it wouldn’t perch,—that’s what really happened.” She laughed; her mother laughed; I laughed. Whoever reads this will sympathize with Aunt Sarah, because it doesn’t seem witty for a grown company of young men and young girls to have behaved that way in the house of their minister. It had been a golden moment, I assure you,—a party that stood out;—and if ever the laughter of the Greeks was heard in that staid, old New England town it was when Ellen Payne stood aloft on the hassock, a squawking hen trembling indignantly on her wrist; and she at that moment looked both beautiful and absurd. Miss Sarah Grant saw nothing of all this.

“I am chagrined,” she said. “Have you no respect for life?” And she walked away heavily.

Ellen spent the afternoon gathering expiatory pond-lilies of which her aunt was as a rule fond. She waded in the pond during the whole afternoon, her skirts trussed up scandalously, emerging with a stocking of black mud on either foot. She was sunburned, she was mosquito-bitten, she was happy, she sung aloud for joy on her way home; and when she left the offering at her aunt’s door, this lady said: “These are very pretty, Ellen, and I thank you, but I wish, my dear, that you had made me some little gift that is a testimony of your industry.”

It was on our way home that we were stopped by some women from the other church, who asked me:—

“Roberta, is it really true that you and Ellen started to bring in hens to the minister’s house at the Young People’s Party?”

“Roberta never started it,” said Ellen, who was easily drawn in ways like this.

“We thought they were joking when they told us,” said Mrs. Mary Snow, who was a widow and very precise.

“Well,” said Miss Amelia Barton, “I should think Mr. Sylvester would have prevented it.”

“Mr. Sylvester enjoyed it, the fowls enhanced the party,” said Ellen. I pulled her along. “Hateful gossips,” she said. As we passed the house where Edward Graham was living, this illustrious young man joined us for the purpose of saying:—

“You remember, Ellen, I told you at the party, when I first saw you coming in with the hen, that you had far better leave it outside. The whole town is talking and buzzing.”

“The whole town disgusts me deeply,” cried Ellen, “and so does any one who lets the buzzing reach my ears.”

“You ought to want to know the reaction of the things you do,” retorted Graham, whose belief in his moralities made him irritable when attacked. “You are criticizing Mr. Sylvester for permitting it and I think you went much too far.”

When Edward Graham moralized on the subject Ellen replied flippantly:—

“It is that you and everybody else criticize anything you’re not used to. What’s the harm in hens; what evil does bringing a hen into the minister’s house lead to? Does it make you want to go and take the amber beads off a baby’s neck just because I brought in a hen and it perched on John Seymore’s shoulder? John Seymore didn’t mind it, and he’s studying for the ministry. It is people like you, who talk about an innocent thing like a hen, and fuss over it as if it was something bad, who do harm,” cried Ellen; and she swept me along with her. She comments in this fashion about the episode:—

“At the party we were all very happy, and there’s no rule that says that a thing must be of a worthy sort before we may laugh at it. That’s one of the nice things about laughing, there’s no rhyme or reason to it. It was not among those things that mother talks of that undermine our fineness of perception. But Mr. Sylvester didn’t realize how people were going to feel about it, and now they are all talking and tongue-wagging as though something terrible had happened. Am I wrong, or are they? I think they are, and I hate them for it, and I feel as though that was the worst thing I had done, because I hate poor Edward Graham and I hate Mrs. Snow and Miss Barton because of their smallness and injustice; and aren’t they more wicked to talk about innocent things and gossip about young people and make those who are happy feel uncomfortable and sinful? It makes me want to break a window when I think how virtuous they feel.”