sausage!" she raged. "Have you no sense of modesty or decency? Beat it! Potato!"
When Adelbert had gone simpering out, cheeping, "Honest, I won't say anything," then Elmer fretted, "Golly, do you think he'll blackmail us?"
"Oh, no, Adelbert adores me. Us girls must stick together. But it does bother me. Suppose it'd been some other guest of the hotel! People misunderstand and criticize so. Tell you what let's do. Hereafter, in each town, let's hire a big house, furnished, for the whole crew. Still be independent, but nobody around to talk about us. And prob'ly we can get a dandy house quite cheap from some church-member. That would be lovely! When we get sick of working so hard all the time, we could have a party just for ourselves, and have a dance. I love to dance. Oh, of course I roast dancing in my sermons, but I mean—when it's with people like us, that understand, it's not like with worldly people, where it would lead to evil. A party! Though Art Nichols would get drunk. Oh, let him! He works so hard. Now you skip. Wait! Aren't you going to kiss me good morning?"
They made sure of Adelbert's loyalty by flattering him, and the press-agent had orders to find a spacious furnished house in the city to which they were going next.
The renting of furnished houses for the Falconer Evangelistic Party was a ripe cause for new quarrels with local committees, particularly after the party had left town.
There were protests by the infuriated owners that the sacred workers must have been, as one deacon-undertaker put it, "simply raising the very devil." He asserted that the furniture had been burned with cigarette stubs, that whisky had been spilled on rugs, that chairs had been broken. He claimed damages from the local committee; the local committee sent the claims on to Sharon; there was a deal of fervent correspondence; and the claims were never paid.
Though usually it did not come out till the series of meetings was finished, so that there was no interference with saving the world, these arguments about the private affairs of the evangelistic crew started most regrettable rumors. The un-
