Laurence called the meeting to order, and his manner of addressing the feminine portion of his audience would have made his gallant grandfather challenge him.  He hadn’t a solitary pretty phrase to tickle the ears of the ladies—­he spoke of and to them as women.

“And did you see how they fell for him?” rejoiced the Butterfly Man, afterward.  “From the kid in a middy up to the great old girl with three chins and a prow like an ocean liner, they were with him.  When you’re in dead earnest, can the ladies; just go after women as women and they’re with you every time.  They know.”

A Civic Leaguer followed Laurence, then Madame, and after her a girl from the mills, whose two small brothers went in one night.  There were no set speeches.  Everybody who spoke had something to say; and everybody who had something to say spoke.  Then Westmoreland, who like Saul the king was taller by the head and shoulders than all Israel, bulked up big and good and begged us to remember that we couldn’t do anything of permanent value until we first learned how to reach those folks we had been ignoring and neglecting.  He said gruffly that Appleboro had dumped its whole duty in this respect upon the frail shoulders of one old priest, and that the Guest Rooms were overworked.  Didn’t the town want to do its share now?  The town voted, unanimously, that it did.

There was a pause.  Laurence asked if anybody else had anything to say?  Apparently, anybody else hadn’t.

“Well, then,” said Laurence, smiling, “before we adjourn, is there anybody in particular that Appleboro County here assembled wants to hear?”

And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense multitude of bees: 

“The Butterfly Man!” And louder:  “The Butterfly Man!”

Followed a great hand-clapping, shrill whistles, the stamping of feet.  And there he was, with Westmoreland and Laurence behind him as if to keep him from bolting.  His face expressed a horrified astonishment.  Twice, thrice, he opened his lips, and no words came.  Then: 

“I?” in a high and agonized falsetto.

“You!” Appleboro County settled back with rustles of satisfaction.  “Speech!  Speech!” From a corn-club man, joyfully.

“Oh, marmar, look!  It’s the Butterfly Man, marmar!” squealed a child.

“A-a-h!  Talk weeth us, Meester Fleent!” For the first time a “hand” felt that he might speak out openly in Appleboro.

John Flint stood there staring owlishly at all these people who ought to know very well that he hadn’t anything to say:  what should he have to say?  He was embarrassed; he was also most horribly frightened.  But then, after all, they weren’t anything but people, just folks like himself!  When he remembered that his panic subsided.  For a moment he reflected; as if satisfied, he nodded slightly and thrust his hand into his breast pocket.