Off came the gray hat, and to each one of the ladies he bowed low, and he says: "Delighted--_delighted_ to see you again. Indeed we remember, don't we? And Timothy! Eppleby! Silas! I _am_ delighted." Then there was a long pause. We all just stood there. Then Silas, as the chief leading citizen, he clears his throat and he says: "Do you--ah--remain long?" I don't know a better sample of what Mr. Nicholas Nordman's manner done to us all. "_Remain!_" Silas never said "remain" in his life before. Always, always he would, under any real other circumstances, have said "stay." The whole few minutes was like that, while we just stood there. And perhaps it was like that most of all in the minute when it ought to have been like that the least. This was when Mr. Nordman told a plan he had. "I want you all," he said, "and a few more whom I well remember, to do me the honor to lunch with me to-morrow in my car. We can have a fine time to talk over the--ah--old days." There was a dead pause. I guess everybody was figgering on the same thing; finally Eppleby asked about it. "Much obliged," says he. "What car?" "My private car," says Mr. Nordman, "somewhere on the siding. You'll recognize her. She's gray." "Much obliged," "Pleased, I'm sure," "Pleased to come," says everybody. And we broke up and he walked along with me. Halfway down the block, who should I see ahead of me but Lucy Hackett. I never said anything till we overtook her. When I spoke she wheeled and flushed up like a girl, and put out her hand so nice and eager, and with her pretty way that was a glad way and was a grand lady way too. I says: "Mr. Nordman, you meet Miss Lucy Hackett, that I guess you can remember each other." He took off his hat and bowed. "Ah, Miss Lucy," says he, "this _is_ a pleasure. How _good_ to see you again!" "I'm glad to see you, too, Nick," she says, and walked along on the inside of the walk with us, just _drooping_! Yes, you might as well have tried to greet a fountain in full play as to greet him. He invited her to come to his luncheon next day. She said she would, with a nice little catch of pleasure in her tone; and he left her at her gate, him bowing tremendous. And it was the same gate he used to take her to when they were boy and girl.... He said the same kind of a formal good night to me at my gate; and I was just going to go into my house, feeling sick and lonesome all rolled into one, because there wasn't a mite of Nick Nordman about him at all; but all of a sudden, like an explosion out of a clear sky and all points of the earth, there came down onto us the most tremendous, outrageous racket that ever blasted a body's ears. It seemed to come from sky, earth, air and sea, at one and the same instants. And it went like this: S----s----s! Yow! Yow! Yow! Who's----all----right? Mr. N----o----rdm----a----n!