And they admired him for it.
Once, when rather hungrily he sniffed at the odors of alcohol and tobacco, the host giggled, "Say, I hope you don't smell anything on my breath, Reverend—be fierce if you thought a good Methodist like me could ever throw in a shot of liquor!"
"It's not my business to smell anything except on Sundays," said Elmer amiably, and, "Come on now, Sister Gilson, let's try and fox-trot again. My gracious, you talk about me smelling for liquor! Think of what would happen if Brother Apfelmus knew his dear Pastor was slipping in a little dance! Mustn't tell on me, folks!"
"You bet we won't!" they said, and not even the elderly pietists on whom he called most often became louder adherents of the Reverend Elmer Gantry, better advertisers of his sermons, than these blades of the Young Married Set.
He acquired a habit of going to their parties. He was hungry for brisk companionship, and it was altogether depressing now to be with Cleo. She could never learn, not after ten efforts a day, that she could not keep him from saying "Damn!" by looking hurt and murmuring, "Oh, Elmer, how can you?"
He told her, regarding the parties, that he was going out to call on parishioners. And he was not altogether lying. His ambition was more to him now than any exalted dissipation, and however often he yearned for the mechanical pianos and the girls in pink kimonos of whom he so lickerishly preached, he violently kept away from them.
But the jolly wives of the Young Married Set— Particularly this Mrs. Gilson, Beryl Gilson, a girl of twenty-five, born for cuddling. She had a bleached and whining husband, who was always quarreling with her in a weakly violent sputtering; and she was obviously taken by Elmer's confident strength. He sat by her in "cozy-corners," and his arm was tense. But he won glory by keeping from embracing her. Also, he wasn't so sure that he could win her. She was flighty, fond of triumphs, but cautious, a city girl used to many suitors. And if she did prove kind— She was a member of his church, and she was talkative. She might go around hinting.
After these meditations he would flee to the hospitality of T. J. Rigg, in whose cheerfully sloven house he could relax
