duty to-day.”
An architect and builder from the next State had lately ventured to
set up a small business in this unpromising village, and his sign
had now been hanging out a week. Not a customer yet; he was a
discouraged man, and sorry he had come. But his weather changed
suddenly now. First one and then another chief citizen’s wife said
to him privately:
“Come to my house Monday week–but say nothing about it for the
present. We think of building.”
He got eleven invitations that day. That night he wrote his
daughter and broke off her match with her student. He said she
could marry a mile higher than that.
Pinkerton the banker and two or three other well-to-do men planned
country-seats–but waited. That kind don’t count their chickens
until they are hatched.
The Wilsons devised a grand new thing–a fancy-dress ball. They
made no actual promises, but told all their acquaintanceship in
confidence that they were thinking the matter over and thought they
should give it–“and if we do, you will be invited, of course.”
People were surprised, and said, one to another, “Why, they are
crazy, those poor Wilsons, they can’t afford it.” Several among the
nineteen said privately to their husbands, “It is a good idea, we
will keep still till their cheap thing is over, then WE will give
one that will make it sick.”
The days drifted along, and the bill of future squanderings rose
higher and higher, wilder and wilder, more and more foolish and
reckless. It began to look as if every member of the nineteen would
not only spend his whole forty thousand dollars before receiving-
day, but be actually in debt by the time he got the money. In some
cases light-headed people did not stop with planning to spend, they
really spent–on credit. They bought land, mortgages, farms,
speculative stocks, fine clothes, horses, and various other things,
paid down the bonus, and made themselves liable for the rest–at ten
days. Presently the sober second thought came, and Halliday noticed
that a ghastly anxiety was beginning to show up in a good many
faces. Again he was puzzled, and didn’t know what to make of it.
“The Wilcox kittens aren’t dead, for they weren’t born; nobody’s
broken a leg; there’s no shrinkage in mother-in-laws; NOTHING has
happened–it is an insolvable mystery.”
There was another puzzled man, too–the Rev. Mr. Burgess. For days,
wherever he went, people seemed to follow him or to be watching out
for him; and if he ever found himself in a retired spot, a member of
the nineteen would be sure to appear, thrust an envelope privately
into his hand, whisper “To be opened at the town-hall Friday
evening,” then vanish away like a guilty thing. He was expecting
that there might be one claimant for the sack–doubtful, however,
Goodson being dead–but it never occurred to him that all this crowd
might be claimants. When the great Friday came at last, he found
that he had nineteen envelopes.
III
The town-hall had never looked finer. The platform at the end of it
was backed by a showy draping of flags; at intervals along the walls
were festoons of flags; the gallery fronts were clothed in flags;
the supporting columns were swathed in flags; all this was to
impress the stranger, for he would be there in considerable force,
and in a large degree he would be connected with the press. The
house was full. The 412 fixed seats were occupied; also the 68
extra chairs which had been packed into the aisles; the steps of the
platform were occupied; some distinguished strangers were given
seats on the platform; at the horseshoe of tables which fenced the
front and sides of the platform sat a strong force of special
correspondents who had come from everywhere. It was the best-
dressed house the town had ever produced. There were some tolerably
expensive toilets there, and in several cases the ladies who wore
them had the look of being unfamiliar with that kind of clothes. At
least the town thought they had that look, but the notion could have
arisen from the town’s knowledge of the fact that these ladies had