“Gosh, I forgot. Why—well, you see, the boss at that joint has just put in the grandest big new oven ever—iron and cement and a steam-chamber and everything. One day last week he had to go to Boston, and I asked him to let me fire it for him. It was the most interesting thing, to watch that steam-gauge hop up, only she hopped too fast. So I shut off the drafts, but I wasn’t quick enough. There were forty-eight pounds of beans in the roaster, and they burnt up, crocks and all, and—well, between us, we hadn’t put enough water in the boiler. So she sort of—er—well, she blew up. I wired dad for the money, and he came across by return mail. Dad’s a pretty good sport. But I’ll bet he doesn’t loosen up again before Labor Day.” Well, I was sorry for the baker. But Buster, penniless, was far less formidable than Buster with money in his purse. The green and golden days flowed on. The North Shore was its loveliest. But the newspapers persisted in being unpleasant. Serbian complications, amazing pronunciamentos, rumors that were absurd past credence; then, appalling, half-believed, the winged horror-tale of Belgium. Then, in a trice, our bridge-tables were pushed back, our yacht dinners forgotten. Frowning, angrily bewildered, we were all making hurried trips to the village and heckling the scared young telegraph-operator with messages and money that must be cabled to marooned kinsfolk at Liverpool or Hamburg or Ostend. “This moment! Can’t you _see_ how important it is?” A day or so more and we were all buying shoes and clothes for little children and rushing our first boggled first-aid parcels to the wharf. And, in the midst of all that dazed hurly, up rose Mrs. John B. Connable. Aglow with panicky triumph, she flung wide the gates of Dawn Towers, her spandy-new futurist palace, to the first bazaar of the Belgian relief! As one impious damsel put it, Belgium’s extremity was Mrs. Connable’s opportunity. Seven weary years, with the grim patience of stalwart middle age and seventeen millions, has Mrs. John B. labored to mount the long, ice-coated stair that leads from a Montana cow-camp to the thresholds of Beacon Hill. Six cruel seasons have beheld her falter and slip back. But on this, the seventh, by this one soaring scramble, she gained the topmost gliddery round. A bazaar for the Belgians? For once, something new. And Dawn Towers, despite its two-fisted châtelaine, was said to be a poet’s dream.