ood
that the overture had begun. Other people who were waiting like Laura
and her sister had been joined by their friends and had gone inside.
Laura, for whom this opera night had been an event, a thing desired and
anticipated with all the eagerness of a girl who had lived for
twenty-two years in a second-class town of central Massachusetts, was
in great distress. She had never seen Grand Opera, she would not have
missed a note, and now she was in a fair way to lose the whole overture.

"Oh, dear," she cried. "Isn't it too bad. I can't imagine why they
don't come."

Page, more metropolitan, her keenness of appreciation a little lost by
two years of city life and fashionable schooling, tried to reassure her.

"You won't lose much," she said. "The air of the overture is repeated
in the first act--I've heard it once before."

"If we even see the first act," mourned Laura. She scanned the faces of
the late comers anxiously. Nobody seemed to mind being late. Even some
of the other people who were waiting, chatted calmly among themselves.
Directly behind them two men, their faces close together, elaborated an
interminable conversation, of which from time to time they could
overhear a phrase or two.

"--and I guess he'll do well if he settles for thirty cents on the
dollar. I tell you, dear boy, it was a _smash!"_

"Never should have tried to swing a corner. The short interest was too
small and the visible supply was too great."

Page nudged her sister and whispered: "That's the Helmick failure
they're talking about, those men. Landry Court told me all about it.
Mr. Helmick had a corner in corn, and he failed to-day, or will fail
soon, or something."

But Laura, preoccupied with looking for the Cresslers, hardly listened.
Aunt Wess', whose count was confused by all these figures murmured just
behind her, began over again, her lips silently forming the words,
"sixty-one, sixty-two, and two is sixty-four." Behind them the voice
continued:

"They say Porteous will peg the market at twenty-six."

"Well he ought to. Corn is worth that."

"Never saw such a call for margins in my life. Some of the houses
called eight cents."

Page turned to Mrs. Wessels: "By the way, Aunt Wess'; look at that man
there by the box office window, the one with his back towards us, the
one with his hands in his overcoat pockets. Isn't that Mr. Jadwin? The
gentleman we are going to meet to-night. See who I mean?"

"Who? Mr. Jadwin? I don't