The Gay Cockade

Stories of American women at the moment the old certainties stop holding - a marriage, a war, an inheritance - told in the light, sharp manner that made Temple Bailey one of the best-paid magazine writers in the country. The title story takes its name from the way a young clerk wears his youth, and from the play he writes about it. Fifty-nine plates of American painting by Edward Lamson Henry and Childe Hassam, from colonial houses to a rainy Boston street, match the small towns and old certainties these stories turn on.