The offer was accepted.  Mrs. Peters acquiesced.  Peters and his co-workers asked favors and got them from friends in the publishing world.  The day came.  The books arrived, and the net results to the Roofing Fund of Saint George’s were gratifying.  The vestry had asked for seventy-five dollars, and the sale actually cleared eighty-three!  To be sure, Mr. Wiggins spent fifty dollars at the sale.  And Mrs. Thompson spent forty-nine.  And the cake-table took in thirty-eight.  And the ice-cream was sold, thanks to the voracity of the children, for nineteen dollars.  And some pictures which had been donated by Mrs. Bumpkin sold for thirty-one dollars, and the gambling cakes, with rings and gold dollars in them, cleared fifteen.  Still, when it was all reckoned up, eighty-three dollars stood to the credit of the roof!  In affairs of this kind, results, not expenses, are considered.

Surely the venture was a success.  Although from the point of view of bringing the ladies of the congregation together—­well, the less said about that the better.  In any event, parts of Dumfries Corners were cooler the following summer than they had ever been before.

And then, in the natural sequence of events, the next year came.  The hospital, and the inn, and the various other institutions of the city indorsed by prominent names, but void of resources, as usual, left the church so poor that something had to be done to repair the cellar of Saint George’s by outside effort, water leaking in from the street.  The matter was discussed, and the amount needed was settled upon.  This time Saint George’s needed ninety dollars.  It didn’t really need so much, but it was thought well to ask for more than was needed, “because then, you know, you’re more likely to get it.”

The book-cake-and-cream sale of the year before had been so successful that everybody said:  “By all means let us have another literary afternoon at Mr. Peters’s.”

“All right!” said Peters, calmly, when the project was suggested.  “Certainly!  Of course!  Have anything you please at my house.  Not that I am running a casino, but that I really enjoy turning my house inside out in a good cause once in a while,” he added, with a smile which those about him believed to be sincere.  “Only,” said he, “kindly make me master of ceremonies on this occasion.”

“Certainly!” replied the vestry.  “If this thing is to be in your house you ought to have everything to say about it.”

“I ask for control,” said Peters, “not because I am fond of power, but because experience has taught me that somebody should control affairs of this sort.”

“Certainly,” was the reply again, and Peters was made a committee of one, with power to run the sale in his own way, and the vestry settled down in that calm and contented frame of mind which goes with the consciousness of solvency.