“Well, what made us get up the fair?” asked Mrs. Dodge.

“I suppose we all thought somebody might have some money,” ventured Abby Daggett.

“I’d like to know who?  Not one of us four has, and I don’t believe Mrs. Solomon Black has, unless she turns in her egg-money, and if she does I don’t see how she is going to feed the minister.  Where is Phoebe Black?”

“She is awfully late,” said Lois.  She looked at the door, and, so doing, got a chance to observe the minister, who was standing beside the flower-table talking to Ellen Dix.  Fanny Dodge was busily arranging some flowers, with her face averted.  Ellen Dix was very pretty, with an odd prettiness for a New England girl.  Her pale olive skin was flawless and fine of texture.  Her mouth was intensely red, and her eyes very dark and heavily shaded by long lashes.  She wore at the throat of her white dress a beautiful coral brooch.  It had been one of her mother’s girlhood treasures.  The Dix family had been really almost opulent once, before the Andrew Bolton cataclysm had involved the village, and there were still left in the family little reminiscences of former splendor.  Mrs. Dix wore a superb old lace scarf over her ancient black silk, and a diamond sparkled at her throat.  The other women considered the lace much too old and yellow to be worn, but Mrs. Dix was proud both of the lace and her own superior sense of values.  If the lace had been admired she would not have cared so much for it.

Suddenly a little woman came hurrying up, her face sharp with news.  “What do you think?” she said to the others.  “What do you think?”

They stared at her.  “What do you mean, Mrs. Fulsom?” asked Mrs. Whittle acidly.

The little woman tossed her head importantly.  “Oh, nothing much,” said she, “only I thought the rest of you might not know.  Mrs. Solomon Black has got another boarder.  That’s what’s making her late.  She had to get something for her to eat.”

“Another boarder!” said Mrs. Whittle.

“Yes,” said the little woman, “a young lady, and Mrs. Solomon Black is on her way here now.”

“With her?” gasped the others.

“Yes, she’s coming, and she looks to me as if she might have money.”

“Who is she?” asked Mrs. Whittle.

“How do I know?  Mrs. Mixter’s Tommy told my Sam, and he told me, and I saw Mrs. Black and the boarder coming out of her yard, when I went out of mine, and I hurried so’s to get here first.  Hush!  Here they come now.”

While the women were conferring many people had entered the room, although none had purchased the wares.  Now there was stark silence and a concentrated fire of attention as Mrs. Black entered with a strange young woman.  Mrs. Black looked doubtfully important.  She, as a matter of fact, was far from sure of her wisdom in the course she was taking.  She was even a little pale, and her lips moved nervously as she introduced the girl to one and another.  “Miss Orr,” she said; sometimes “Miss Lydia Orr.”