uffeur, when it was the duty of Montgomery people to employ worthy
college boys to run their machines whenever possible. The sight of Phil
at the wheel, receiving instructions in the management of the big car on
the day after its arrival, did not greatly add to their joy in life. The
exposure of Phil to the malign influences of a French chauffeur was
another of Lois's sins that did not pass unremarked. Still the stars
would not always fight against righteousness; Phil would be killed, or
she would elope with the Frenchman, and Amzi would be sorry he had
brought Lois home and set her up brazenly in the house of her fathers.

Amzi, rolling home to luncheon in the new car and rolling off again with
his cigar at a provoking angle, was not unobserved from behind the
shutters of his sisters' houses. In the bank merger he had acquired
various slips of paper that bore the names of his sisters and their
husbands, aggregating something like seven thousand dollars, which the
drawers and indorsers thereof were severally unable to pay. The payment
of the April interest and the general bright outlook in Sycamore affairs
had induced a local sentiment friendly to the company that had already
lost Waterman one damage suit. Fosdick thought he saw a way of making
his abandoned brickyard pay if he could only command a little ready
cash. Hastings had not forgotten Phil's suggestion that he transform his
theater into a moving-picture house: there were indications that the
highbrows were about to make the "reel" respectable in New York, and a
few thousand dollars would hitch Montgomery to the new "movement" for
dramatic uplift. And here was Amzi soaring high in the financial
heavens, with a sister who gave a thousand dollars to a hospital without
even taking credit for her munificence!

Amzi and Lois enjoyed themselves without let or hindrance from their
neighboring sisters. Packages arrived by express; decorators from
Indianapolis came and went; furniture was unpacked in the front yard;
and a long stone bench and a sundial appeared in Amzi's lawn, together
with a pool, in the center of which an impudent little god piped
joyfully in a cloud of spray. Such trifles as these testified to the
prevailing cheer of Amzi's establishment.

The fact that Fred Holton had turned his farm over to Kirkwood was
public property now; and people were saying that it was fine of Amzi to
give Fred employment. The way in which the Holtons crossed and recrossed
t