Precisely what emotion this knowledge left with her I have never known.  But I do know that before the meeting broke up, it had been agreed to hold the next one at the house of Miss Caroline herself.  It may be that she suggested and urged this in pure desperation, wishing to regain a favor which she had felt unaccountably withdrawn; and it may be that the ladies accepted in a similar desperation, knowing not how to inform her that she was grossly ineligible for membership in a Home Study Club.

The intervening two weeks were filled with tales and talks of Miss Caroline’s heresy.  Excitement and adverse criticism were almost universally aroused.  It was a scandal of proportions almost equal to that of her love for strong drink.  About most writers one could be permitted to have an opinion.  But it was not thought that one could properly have an opinion about Shakspere, and, so far as we knew, no one had ever before subjected him to this indignity.  One might as well have an opinion about Virtue or the law of gravitation.  An opinion of any sort was impossible.  One favorable would be puny, futile, immodestly patronizing.  An unfavorable opinion had heretofore not been within realms of the idlest speculation.

There were but two of us, I believe, who did not promptly condemn Miss Caroline’s violence of speech—­two men of varying parts.  Westley Keyts frankly said he had never been able to “get into” Shakspere, and considered it, as a book for reading purposes, inferior to “Cudjo’s Cave,” which he had read three times.  The minister, whose church Miss Caroline now patronized,—­that term being chosen after some deliberation,—­held up both his hands at the news and mildly exclaimed, “Well!” Then, after a pause, “Well, well!” And still again, after another pause, “Well, well, well!”

This was thought to be shifty and evasive—­certainly not so outspoken as the town had a right to expect.

Solon Denney, though in his heart true to Shakspere, affected to be gleeful.  A paragraph, mysterious to many, including Miss Caroline, appeared in the ensuing Argus:—­

“An encounter long supposed by scientists to be a mere metaphysical abstraction of almost playful import has at last occurred in sober physics.  The irresistible force has met up with the immovable body.  We look for results next week.”

I knew that Solon considered Miss Caroline to be an irresistible force.  I was uncertain whether Shakspere or Mrs. Potts was meant by the immovable body.  I knew that he held them in equal awe, and I knew that Mrs. Potts felt, in a way, responsible for Shakspere this far west of Boston, regarding any attack upon him as a personal affront to herself.