aking place the members of the Coral Strand
Missionary Circle were gathered at the church in solemn conclave. Mrs.
Westfall, the president, had called a special meeting to deal with
events of unusual importance that had brought out the entire membership.

The circle had lately been the object of a cowardly attack from the pen
of one Bill Busby, who devoted nearly a column of the valued editorial
space of the _Citizen_ to a whimsical commentary on foreign missions. Of
course he had mentioned no names, but his poison-tipped innuendoes were
too pointed to be overlooked.

On behalf of the Coral Strand Missionary Circle Mrs. Westfall had
demanded a retraction of the alleged libelous statements, and an apology
that should be given the same publicity as the defamatory matter.

Bill Busby had received her with extreme politeness. He had transferred
his feet from the top of the desk to the seat of a chair; he had
advanced his hat to the forward portion of his head; he had even gone so
far as to remove his cigar from his mouth and lay it on the edge of the
desk which already bore charred evidence of previous courtesies; but he
refused to retract his statements. On the contrary he insisted that they
were true. However, he had agreed to apologize, which he did in the next
week's issue.

But Bill's apology was somewhat awkward. It appeared under the caption,
_Well-meaning but Mis-informed and Misguided Philanthropists_, and
sounded very much like betting the Coral Strand Missionary Circle a new
hat that the $160 they had raised during the preceding year would have
shriveled by the time it reached its destination until it would buy no
more than $1.60 worth of shoes for the naked heathen babies.

The special meeting followed; for, regardless of the truth or falsity of
Bill's charges, the cause of foreign missions had received a body-blow.
The community--never over-enthusiastic on the subject--was now equipped
with a full-fledged excuse for refusing to make any further
contributions. A flimsy excuse, to be sure, but the flimsier an excuse
is, the better it serves its purpose.

It soon proved to be the sense of the meeting that something of a public
nature must be done to recover the lost prestige of the Coral Strand
Missionary Circle, and to counteract the insidious effects of "that
Busby man's dastardly attack on the fair name and fame of the circle."

Several plans were suggested and discussed and discarded before Mrs.
Westfal