Dear Vestal (or Virgin):

This socially impoverished community owes a great deal to you and your handsome “hubby” for providing it with a scandal that will amuse us all for years to come. But please do let us know whether your darling spouse will run for Congress, as a Colored Gempman, and thus enable you to flaunt your “charms” and your fifty-dollar hats in the higher (colored) circles in Washington as you have in G.R. Your fairy daughter, so “superior” to all the normal brats—we have long found her childish swank and parading very funny—will in Washington be able to associate with infants worthy of her, the precocious offspring of Negro professors, Jewish “experts” and Haitian ambassadors.

Doubtless any failure now on the part of your “better half” to earn a living will, as hitherto, be compensated for by the charity handed out by your impressive, even if slightly dreary, Papa.

You might tell your husband—did you ever chance to think of what a pretty “chorus boy” he would make?—that we are fed up with the arrogance of the niggers. The deah boy could not have picked a worse time to have allied himself with these gentry. So the niggers now demand the right to mix with the D.A.R., and the nigger wenches will not work in kitchens or laundries, because they are all ex-lieutenants, forsooth!

The Negroes—tell your delightful but singularly unalphabet sweetie—will not get along until they perceive that we are not one bit “prejudiced” against their enchanting complexions and noses, but against their preventable diseases, their parasites, their idleness and utter filth and abysmal ignorance. Of course all of us know that you appreciate all this about that ilk, and we are duly impressed by your loyalty in sticking to a member of that Neanderthal tribe. Gracious, what a good time he must give you when you cuddle and scream!!

Oh, don’t mention it, my dear Mrs. K., and I hope—and the numerous ladies whom I have heard discussing it all hope—that the interest which dear Mr. Eliot Hansen has always shown in you will develop into another “interesting situation.” We are all really very jealous of the neat arts and wrigglings you employ to attract these dubious types of males, and we shall observe your dual activities with impressment.

Or will Neilly and you get wise to yourselves and get out of town? The voice of Thersites is the voice of Truth.

A Friend Indeed

As she handed this case-history to Neil, Vestal said wildly, “Is there any chance of my proving that I have decent Negro blood, too?”

Chapter 39

New Year’s Day prophecy and hangovers were finished with, and Neil was primarily a man with a job, at the bank, in the realistic world of bonds and marble and Pruttery.

On Friday morning, ten days after New Year’s, Mr. Prutt called him into his office.