d silence.

Before them lay a dressmaker's dummy, the wire and padded model on
which dresses are fitted and shown. With its armless and headless bust,
abruptly ending in a hooped wire skirt, it completely filled the sides
of the box.

"Shut the door," said the president promptly.

The order was obeyed. The single hysteric shriek of laughter had been
followed by a deadly, ironical silence. The president, with supernatural
gravity, lifted it out and set it up on its small, round, disk-like
pedestal.

"It's some cussed fool blunder of that confounded express company,"
burst out the unlucky purchaser. But there was no echo to his outburst.
He looked around with a timid, tentative smile. But no other smile
followed his.

"It looks," said the president, with portentous gravity, "like the
beginnings of a fine woman, that MIGHT show up, if you gave her time,
into a first-class goddess. Of course she ain't all here; other boxes
with sections of her, I reckon, are under way from her factory, and will
meander along in the course of the year. Considerin' this as a sample--I
think, gentlemen," he added, with gloomy precision, "we are prepared to
accept it, and signify we'll take more."

"It ain't, perhaps, exactly the idee that we've been led to expect from
previous description," said Dick Flint, with deeper seriousness; "for
instance, this yer branch of thorns we heard of ez bein' held behind her
is wantin', as is the arms that held it; but even if they had arrived,
anybody could see the thorns through them wires, and so give the hull
show away."

"Jam it into its box again, and we'll send it back to the confounded
express company with a cussin' letter," again thundered the wretched
purchaser.

"No, sonny," said the president with gentle but gloomy determination,
"we'll fasten on to this little show jest as it is, and see what
follows. It ain't every day that a first-class sell like this is worked
off on us ACCIDENTALLY."

It was quite true! The settlement had long since exhausted every
possible form of practical joking, and languished for a new sensation.
And here it was! It was not a thing to be treated angrily, nor lightly,
nor dismissed with that single hysteric laugh. It was capable of the
greatest possibilities! Indeed, as Washington Trigg looked around on the
imperturbably ironical faces of his companions, he knew that they felt
more true joy over the blunder than they would in the possession of the
real statue.