do a _dozen_ turns! I
never thought I'd see the day when a Devereux--almost the same thing
as a Starkweather--'d figure in a disgrace such as yours. You've
heaped muck on your uncle's parlour-carpet. But some day you'll see
the writing on the wall, Henry."

He was tempted to remind her of another city ordinance against
bill-posting, but he refrained, and saved it up for Anna.

"I'll watch for it," he said.

"Well, you better. All _I_'ve got to say is this: you just wait and
see what happens."

And then, to complete the record, he got identically the same
suggestion from Bob Standish.

"I suppose," said Standish, "maybe you're wishing you'd taken that
check."

"Not that, exactly--but I've thought about it."

"Strikes me that you're in the best position of anybody in town,
Henry. You've got a following that'll see you through, if it's humanly
possible."

"Sounds like passing the hat, doesn't it?"

"Oh, no. And the side that scores first doesn't always win the game,
either--I dare say you've noticed it. It'll come out all right--you
just wait and see what happens."

Henry waited, and he saw. And to Henry's dismay, and to the Mayor's
chagrin, and to Miss Mirabelle Starkweather's exceeding complacence,
nothing happened at all.

The public petition, which had been advertised as "monstrous," caught
hardly five hundred names, and two thirds of them were Mr. A. Mutt,
Mr. O. Howe Wise, Mr. O. U. Kidd, and similar patronymics, scribbled
by giggling small boys. The blue-law was universally unpopular, and no
doubt of it, but the citizenry hesitated to attack it; the recent
landslide for prohibition showed an apparent sentiment which nobody
wanted to oppose--Why, if a man admitted that he was in favour of
Sunday tolerance, his friends (who of course were going through
exactly the same mental rapids) might put him down in the same class
with those who still mourned for saloons. Each man waited for his
neighbour to sign first, and the small boys giggled, and filled up the
lists. Besides, there was a large amusement park just beyond the city
line, and the honest workingman proceeded to pay his ten-cent fare,
and double the profit of the park.

The Exhibitors Association put up its fists to the Mayor, and the
Mayor proposed a public hearing, with the Council in attendance. At
this juncture the Reform League sent a questionnaire to each
Councillor, and to each member of the Association. The phraseology was
Socratic (it w