“Gents!” Adam Ooms’s voice took on a tearful note—the tone of one who is more hurt than angry. “Gents!” Slowly, with infinite reverence, he lifted one corner of the damask cloth that concealed the hamper’s contents—lifted it and peered within as at a treasure. At what he saw there he started back dramatically, at once rapturous, despairing, amazed. He rolled his eyes. He smacked his lips. He rubbed his stomach. The sort of dumb show that, since the days of the Greek drama, has been used to denote gastronomic delight. “Eighty!” was wrenched suddenly from Goris Von Vuuren, the nineteen-year-old fat and gluttonous son of a prosperous New Haarlem farmer. Adam Ooms rubbed brisk palms together. “Now then! A dollar! A dollar! It’s an insult to this basket to make it less than a dollar.” He lifted the cover again, sniffed, appeared overcome. “Gents, if it wasn’t for Mrs. Ooms sitting there I’d make it a dollar myself and a bargain. A dollar! Am I bid a dollar!” He leaned far forward over his improvised pulpit. “Did I hear you say a dollar, Pervus DeJong?” DeJong stared, immovable, unabashed. His very indifference was contagious. The widow’s bountiful basket seemed to shrink before one’s eyes. “Eighty-eighty-eighty-eighty—gents! I’m going to tell you something. I’m going to whisper a secret.” His lean face was veined with craftiness. “Gents. Listen. It isn’t chicken in this beautiful basket. It isn’t chicken. It’s”—a dramatic pause—“it’s _roast duck!_” He swayed back, mopped his brow with his red handkerchief, held one hand high in the air. His last card. “Eighty-five!” groaned the fat Goris Von Vuuren. “Eighty-five! Eighty-five! Eightyfiveeightyfiveeightyfive eighty-five! Gents! Gen-tle-men! Eighty-five once! Eighty-five—twice!” [Crash!] “Gone to Goris Von Vuuren for eighty-five.” A sigh went up from the assemblage; a sigh that was the wind before the storm. There followed a tornado of talk. It crackled and thundered. The rich Widow Paarlenberg would have to eat her supper with Von Vuuren’s boy, the great thick Goris. And there in the doorway, talking to teacher as if they had known each other for years, was Pervus DeJong with his money in his pocket. It was as good as a play.