to the eager children of the Sunday schools. Dressed all in white, and clutching firmly in their small hands the tiny stems of American flags, the pigmies, monstrous as only children can be when they become the witless mouths of slogans and crusades, charged hungrily, uttering their shrill cries, upon their Gulliver.
“There he is, children. Go get him.”
Swirling around the marked man in wild elves’dance, they sang with piping empty violence:
"We are some fond mother’s treasure, Men and women of to-morrow, For a moment’s empty pleasure Would you give us lifelong sorrow?
Think of sisters, wives, and mothers, Of helpless babes in some low slum, Think not of yourself, but others, Vote against the Demon Rum."
Eugene shuddered, and looked up at Gant’s white emblem with coy pride. They walked happily by unhappy alcoholics, deltaed in foaming eddies of innocence, and smiling murderously down at some fond mother’s treasure.
If they were mine I’d warm their little tails, they thought— privately.
Outside the corrugated walls of the warehouse, Gant paused for a moment to acknowledge the fervent congratulation of a group of ladies from the First Baptist Church: Mrs. Tarkinton, Mrs. Fagg Sluder, Mrs. C. M. McDonnel, and Mrs. W. H. (Pert) Pentland, who, heavily powdered, trailed her long skirt of gray silk with a musty rustle, and sneered elegantly down over her whaleboned collar. She was very fond of Gant.
“Where’s Will?” he asked.
“Feathering the pockets of the licker interests, when he ought to be down here doing the Lord’s Work,” she replied with Christian bitterness. “Nobody but you knows what I’ve had to put up with, Mr. Gant. You’ve had to put up with the queer Pentland streak, in your own home,” she added with lucid significance.
