The quilting came off on Saturday afternoon, when Sara could be home from school.  All Mrs. Eben’s particular friends were ranged around the quilt, and tongues and fingers flew.  Sara flitted about, helping her aunt with the supper preparations.  She was in the room, getting the custard dishes out of the cupboard, when Mrs. George Pye arrived.

Mrs. George had a genius for being late.  She was later than usual to-day, and she looked excited.  Every woman around the “Rising Star” felt that Mrs. George had some news worth listening to, and there was an expectant silence while she pulled out her chair and settled herself at the quilt.

She was a tall, thin woman with a long pale face and liquid green eyes.  As she looked around the circle she had the air of a cat daintily licking its chops over some titbit.

“I suppose,” she said, “that you have heard the news?”

She knew perfectly well that they had not.  Every other woman at the frame stopped quilting.  Mrs. Eben came to the door with a pan of puffy, smoking-hot soda biscuits in her hand.  Sara stopped counting the custard dishes, and turned her ripely-colored face over her shoulder.  Even the black cat, at her feet, ceased preening his fur.  Mrs. George felt that the undivided attention of her audience was hers.

“Baxter Brothers have failed,” she said, her green eyes shooting out flashes of light.  “Failed disgracefully!”

She paused for a moment; but, since her hearers were as yet speechless from surprise, she went on.

“George came home from Newbridge, just before I left, with the news.  You could have knocked me down with a feather.  I should have thought that firm was as steady as the Rock of Gibraltar!  But they’re ruined—­absolutely ruined.  Louisa, dear, can you find me a good needle?”

“Louisa, dear,” had set her biscuits down with a sharp thud, reckless of results.  A sharp, metallic tinkle sounded at the closet where Sara had struck the edge of her tray against a shelf.  The sound seemed to loosen the paralyzed tongues, and everybody began talking and exclaiming at once.  Clear and shrill above the confusion rose Mrs. George Pye’s voice.

“Yes, indeed, you may well say so.  It is disgraceful.  And to think how everybody trusted them!  George will lose considerable by the crash, and so will a good many folks.  Everything will have to go—­Peter Baxter’s farm and Lige’s grand new house.  Mrs. Peter won’t carry her head so high after this, I’ll be bound.  George saw Lige at the Bridge, and he said he looked dreadful cut up and ashamed.”

“Who, or what’s to blame for the failure?” asked Mrs. Rachel Lynde sharply.  She did not like Mrs. George Pye.

“There are a dozen different stories on the go,” was the reply.  “As far as George could make out, Peter Baxter has been speculating with other folks’ money, and this is the result.  Everybody always suspected that Peter was crooked; but you’d have thought that Lige would have kept him straight.  He had always such a reputation for saintliness.”