“Not really petrified at all, of course,” said Mrs. Fletcher meditatively. She drew herself up. “I’d ’a’ felt something,” she said proudly.

“Shoot! I did feel somethin’,” said Leota. “I tole Fred when I got home I felt so funny. I said, ‘Fred, that ole petrified man sure did leave me with a funny feelin’.’ He says, ‘Funny-haha or funny-peculiar?’ and I says, ‘Funny-peculiar.’” She pointed her comb into the air emphatically.

“I’ll bet you did,” said Mrs. Fletcher.

They both heard a crackling noise.

Leota screamed, “Billy Boy! What you doin’ in my purse?”

“Aw, I’m just eatin’ these ole stale peanuts up,” said Billy Boy.

“You come here to me!” screamed Leota, recklessly flinging down the comb, which scattered a whole ashtray full of bobby pins and knocked down a row of Coca-Cola bottles. “This is the last straw!”

“I caught him! I caught him!” giggled Mrs. Fletcher. “I’ll hold him on my lap. You bad, bad boy, you! I guess I better learn how to spank little old bad boys,” she said.

Leota’s eleven o’clock customer pushed open the swing-door upon Leota paddling him heartily with the brush, while he gave angry but belittling screams which penetrated beyond the booth and filled the whole curious beauty parlor. From everywhere ladies began to gather round to watch the paddling. Billy Boy kicked both Leota and Mrs. Fletcher as hard as he could, Mrs. Fletcher with her new fixed smile.

Billy Boy stomped through the group of wild-haired ladies and went out the door, but flung back the words, “If you’re so smart, why ain’t you rich?”

A Still Moment

Lorenzo Dow rode the Old Natchez Trace at top speed upon a race horse, and the cry of the itinerant Man of God, “I must have souls! And souls I must have!” rang in his own windy ears. He rode as if never to stop, toward his night’s appointment.

It was the hour of sunset. All the souls that he had saved and all those he had not took dusky shapes in the mist that hung between the high banks, and seemed by their great number and density to block his way, and showed no signs of melting or changing back into mist, so that he feared his passage was to be difficult forever. The poor souls that were not saved were darker and more pitiful than those that were, and still there was not any of the radiance he would have hoped to see in such a congregation.

“Light up, in God’s name!” he called, in the pain of his disappointment.