“Don’t you leave her undo ’em!” I calls out. “It’s for Stubby Mosher,” I says, “that can’t go, after all, to his mother in the Wooster Hospital, that’s going to die--count of his brother not sending him the money. She can’t get well--we know that since last week. They’s only forty-six cents in Sodality treasury. Let’s us buy Mis’ Holcomb’s presents that she’s made and is willing to auction off! Unsight-unseen let us buy ’em! I bid fifty cents.” The line had kind of wavered and broke, and was looking away from itself towards us. The man at the window had stopped weighing and had his head close up, looking out. Everybody was hushed dumb for a minute. Then it kind of got to Mis’ Wiswell--that’s had so much trouble that things ’most always get to her easy--and she says out: “Oh, land! _Is it?_ Why, I bid seventy-five then.” “Eighty!” says I, reckless, to egg her on. Then Libby Liberty kind of come to, and bid ninety, though everybody knew the most she has is egg-money--and finally it, whatever it was, went to Mis’ Wiswell for a dollar. “Is it a present would do for ladies?” she says, when she made her final bid. “I donno, though, as that matters. One dollar!” Well, then Mis’ Holcomb up with another present, and Mis’ Merriman started that one, and though dazed a little yet--some folks daze so terrible easy if you go off an inch from their stamping-ground!--the rest of us, including Abigail Arnold that hadn’t ought to have bid at all, got that one up to another dollar, and it went to Mis’ Merriman for that. But the next package stuck at fifty cents--not from lack of willingness, I know, but from sheer lack of ways--and it was just going at that when I whispered to Mis’ Holcomb: “What’s in this one?” “Towel with crochet work set in each end and no initial,” she says. “Really?” says a voice behind me. And there was the young lady in blue, with the ermine and the roses. And I see all of a sudden that she didn’t look to be laughing at us at all, but her eyes were bright, and she was kind of flushed up, and it come to me that she would have bidded before, only she was sort of watching us--mebbe because she thought we were _quaint_. But I didn’t have time to bother with that thought much, not then. “I’ll give two dollars for that,” she says. “Done!” says Mis’ Holcomb, real auctioneer-like, and with her cheeks red, and her hat on one ear, and her hand going up and down. “Now this one--who’ll bid on this one?” says she, putting up another. “How much for this? How much----” “How much is the fare to where he’s going?” says somebody else strange, and there was the youngish fellow speaking, that was with her with the roses. “Seven-ten round trip to Wooster,” says Mis’ Holcomb, instant. “Why, then, I bid three-ten for whatever you have there,” he says laughing. But Mis’ Holcomb, instead of flaming up because now the whole money for Stubby’s fare was raised, just stood there looking at that youngish man, mournful all over her face.