made for charity, but Harvey pleaded that the glory of the day would be lost, so far as he was concerned, if the We’re Here s absented themselves. Then Disko made conditions. He had heard—it was astonishing how all the world knew all the world’s business along the waterfront—he had heard that a “Philadelphia actress-woman” was going to take part in the exercises; and he mistrusted that she would deliver “Skipper Ireson’s Ride.” Personally, he had as little use for actresses as for summer boarders; but justice was justice, and though he himself (here Dan giggled) had once slipped up on a matter of judgment, this thing must not be. So Harvey came back to East Gloucester, and spent half a day explaining to an amused actress with a royal reputation on two seaboards the inwardness of the mistake she contemplated; and she admitted that it was justice, even as Disko had said.
Cheyne knew by old experience what would happen; but anything of the nature of a public palaver was meat and drink to the man’s soul. He saw the trolleys hurrying west, in the hot, hazy morning, full of women in light summer dresses, and white-faced straw-hatted men fresh from Boston desks; the stack of bicycles outside the post office; the come-and-go of busy officials, greeting one another; the slow flick and swash of bunting in the heavy air; and the important man with a hose sluicing the brick sidewalk.
“Mother,” he said suddenly, “don’t you remember—after Seattle was burned out—and they got her going again?”
Mrs. Cheyne nodded, and looked critically down the crooked street. Like