Few in Riverbank had any real affection for Lucille, but affection was not what she sought. She wanted prominence and power, and even the men who had scorned her salon idea soon found she had become, in some mysterious way, an “influence.” The State senator, when he came to Riverbank, always “put up” at Lucille's mansion instead of at a hotel as formerly. When the men of the town wished signatures to a petition, or money subscriptions to any promotion scheme--such as the new street railway--the first thought was: “Get Lucille Hardcome to take it up; she'll put it through.” In such affairs she did not bother with the lesser names; some fifteen or twenty of the “big” men she would write on her list and for a few days her blacks and her low-hung carriage would be seen standing in front of prominent doors, and Lucille would have secured all, or nearly all, the signatures she sought. At first Lucille paid little attention to David. She treated him much as she treated the colorless Mr. Prell, _our_ Sunday school superintendent: as if he were a useful but unimportant church attachment, but otherwise not amounting to much. It was not until the affair of the church organist showed her that David was a worthy antagonist that Lucille thought of David as other than a sort of elevated hired man. Far back in the days when David came to Riverbank, Miss Hurley (Miss Jane Hurley, not Miss Mary) had volunteered to play the organ when Mrs. Dougal gave it up because of the coming of the twins. That must have been before the war; and the organ was a queer little box of a thing that could be carried about with little trouble. It was hardly better than a pitch pipe. It served to set the congregation on (or off) the key, and was immediately lost in the rough bass and shrill treble of the congregational vocal efforts. Later, when the Hardcomes came to Riverbank and Ellen Hardcome's really excellent soprano suggested a quartet choir, the “new” organ had been bought. It was thought to be a splendid instrument. In appearance it was a sublimated parlor organ, a black walnut affair that had Gothic aspirations and arose in unaccountable spires and points. We Presbyterians were properly proud of it. With our choir of four, our new organ and Miss Hurley learning a new voluntary or offertory every month or so, we felt we had reached the acme in music. We used to gather around Miss Hurley after one of her new “pieces” and congratulate her, quite as we gathered around David and congratulated him when he gave us a sermon we liked especially well.