For all of a sudden, I see how he thought of these things, and for a minute it et up my breath. It had always seemed to me that men that done things like this to other folks’s little business was wicked men _in general_. That they kind of got behind being legal and grinned out at folks and said: “Do your worst. You can’t stop us.” But now I see, like a blast of light, that it was no such thing; but that most of them was probably good husbands and fathers, like Silas; industrious, frugal, members of the Common Councils and of the school boards, elders in the church, charitable, kindly, and believing simple as the day that what they was doing was for the good of business. Business. “Well,” Silas was saying, “what you going to do about it?” I looked back at Marne Holcomb standing, nervous, over by the cranberry barrel: “I’ve got this to do about it,” I says, “and I know Mame Holcomb has, and between us we can get every woman in Friendship Village to do the same--unless it is your wife that can’t help herself like lots of women can’t: Unless you get your foot off Bitty’s neck, every last one of us will quit buying of you and go down to the Flats and trade with Bitty. How about it, Mame?” She spoke up, like them little women do sometimes that you ain’t ever looked upon as particularly special when it comes to taking a stand. “Why, yes,” she says. “They ain’t a woman in the village that would stand that kind of dealing, if they only knew. And we,” she adds tranquil, “could see to that.” Silas give the date-word he was making a throw over on to the sugar barrel, and made a wild gesture with a handful of toothpicks. “Women,” he says, “dum women. If it wasn’t for you women swarming over the world like different kinds of--of--of--noxious insects, it would be a regular paradise.” “Sure it would,” I says logical, “because there wouldn’t be a man in it to mess it up.” Silas had just opened his mouth to reply, when all of a sudden, like a letter in your box, somebody come and stood in the doorway--a man, and called out something, short and sharp and ending in “Come on--all of you,” and disappeared out again, and we heard him running down the street. Then we saw two-three more go running by the door, and we heard some shouting. And Silas, that must have guessed at what they said, he started off behind them, dragging on his sear-sucker coat and holding his soft felt hat in his mouth, it not seeming to occur to him that he could set it on his head till he was ready to use it. “What’s the matter?” I says to Mis’ Holcomb. “They must be getting excited because nothing ever happens here. They ain’t nothing else to get excited over that I can think of.” Then we see more men come running, and their boots clumped down on the loose board walk with that special clump and thud that boots gets to ’em when they’re running with bad news, or hurrying for help.