of a thing, and transmitted it. When Terry played a martial
number you tapped the floor with your foot, and unconsciously
straightened your shoulders. When she played a home-and-mother
song you hoped that the man next to you didn't know you were
crying (which he probably didn't, because he was weeping, too).

At that time motion pictures had not attained their present
virulence. Vaudeville, polite or otherwise, had not yet been
crowded out by the ubiquitous film. The Bijou offered
entertainment of the cigar-box-tramp variety, interspersed with
trick bicyclists, soubrettes in slightly soiled pink, trained
seals, and Family Fours with lumpy legs who tossed each other
about and struck Goldbergian attitudes.

Contact with these gave Terry Sheehan a semiprofessional tone.
The more conservative of her townspeople looked at her askance.
There never had been an evil thing about Terry, but Wetona
considered her rather fly. Terry's hair was very black, and she
had a fondness for those little, close-fitting scarlet turbans.
Terry's mother had died when the girl was eight, and Terry's
father had been what is known as easygoing. A good-natured,
lovable, shiftless chap in the contracting business. He drove
around Wetona in a sagging, one-seated cart and never made any
money because he did honest work and charged as little for it as
men who did not. His mortar stuck, and his bricks did not
crumble, and his lumber did not crack. Riches are not acquired in
the contracting business in that way. Ed Sheehan and his
daughter were great friends. When he died (she was nineteen)
they say she screamed once, like a banshee, and dropped to the
floor.