"Ladies and gentlemen," he says, and looked at us once round. "I have summoned you here for a purpose. On this, the occasion of my first visit back to my boyhood's home, I feel that I should--and, indeed, I most earnestly desire to--mark the time by some small token. Therefore, after some conversation about the matter during the forenoon, and much thought before my coming, I have decided to set aside ten thousand dollars from to-day to be used for your town in a way which a committee--of which I hope that you, my guests of the day, will be appointed members--may decide. For park purposes, playgrounds, pavements--what you will; I desire to make this little acknowledgment to my native town, to this the home of my boyhood. I thank you." He set down and, after a minute, everybody burst out and spatted their hands. And then Silas Sykes, that is our professional leading citizen, got to his feet and accepted in the name of the town. Some of the other men said a little about the needs of the town; and Eppleby Holcomb, he got up and proposed a toast to the host. And by that time, the sun had got around considerable and it was blazing hot there on the side track, and us ladies in our black silks begun to think, longing, of our side piazzas and our palm-leaf fans. We filed down the aisle and shook the hand of Mr. Nicholas Nordman and thanked him, individual and formal, both for the lunch and the big gift, and got out. But Lucy Hackett burst out talking, with the tears in her eyes. "Nick!" she says. "Oh, Nick, it was wonderful! Oh, it was the most wonderful time I ever had in my life--the luncheon with everything so pretty--prettier'n I ever saw things before; and then the present to the town. Ten thousand dollars! Oh, none of us can be happy and grateful enough. And to think it's you that's done it, Nick--to think it's you!" "Thank you, Miss Lucy," says he, "thank you; you are very good, I'm sure." But I noticed that he wasn't so much formal now as he was lifeless; and I was wondering if he hadn't had a good time to his own luncheon party or what, when I heard something out on the platform, and then there come a-walking in a regular procession. It was all seven of the small boys again, and from seven to fourteen more besides, done up clean, with shoes on and here and there a collar. "Is it time?" they says. Nick Nordman stood with his hands in his pockets and grinned down on them. And it came to me to be kind of jealous of the boys, because he was with them just the way he ought to have been with us--and wasn't. But he was going off that night, with his car to be hitched onto the Through; and there wasn't any time for anybody to say any more, or be any different. So Lucy and I said good-by to him and left him there with the boys, dragging out together an ice-cream freezer into the middle of the gray private car.