ys, "you might of
gone to the top; lack of faith in yourself is all that's kept you back.
Too bad!"

"All right for you to kid me," he says; "but I'd be almost willing to
give you two dollars for every dollar that goes out of this hall
Saturday night."

Well, it was kind of pathetic and disgusting the way this poor old dub
was leaning on his certainty; so I let him alone and went on about my
work, thinking mebbe he really had framed up something crooked that
would bring at least a few dollars to the cause.

Every time I met him for the next three days after that he'd be so
puffed up, like a toad, with importance and low remarks about woman
that, at last, I just ignored him, pretending I hadn't the least
curiosity about his evil secret. It hurt his feelings when I quit
pestering him about it, but he'd been outraging mine right along; so we
split even.

He'd had a good-sized room just down the hall turned over to him, and a
lot of stuff of some kind carried in there in the night, and men
working, with the door locked all the time; so I and the other ladies
went calmly on about our own business, decorating the main hall with
the flags of all nations, fixing up the platform and the booths very
pretty, and giving Mr. Smarty Egbert Floud nothing but haughty glances
about his hidden novelty. Even when his men was hammering away in there
at their work he'd have something hung over the keyhole--as insulting to
us as only a man can be.

Saturday night come and we had a good crowd. Cousin Egbert was after me
the minute I got my things off to come and see his dastardly secret; but
I had my revenge. I told him I had no curiosity about it and was going
to be awful busy with my show, but I'd try as a personal favour to give
him a look over before I went home. Yes, sir; I just turned him down
with one superior look, and got my curtains slid back on Mrs. Leonard
Wales, dressed up like a superdreadnought in a naval parade and
surrounded by every little girl in town that had a white dress. They
wasn't states this time, but Columbia's Choicest Heritage, with a second
line on the program saying, "Future Buds and Debutantes From Society's
Home Galleries." It was a line we found under some babies' photos on the
society page of a great newspaper printed in New York City. Professor
Gluckstein and his son Rudolph played the "Star-Spangled Banner" on the
piano and fiddle during this feature.

Then little Magnesia Waterman, dressed to repr