She forgot the whole affair very quickly, having, for her, much more interesting matters to occupy her mind. She soon forgot her own disappointment at the postponement of the Paris trip. The summer season in Harniss was beginning and, although it was far from the gay activity of a summer season in that village nowadays, it was lively and interesting. The sojourners from the cities were filling Mrs. Cooper’s fashionable boarding house and the few cottages were opening. It was the Reverend Mr. Colton’s harvest time. His congregations were larger with each succeeding Sunday and the collections larger also. He consulted with his summer parishioners as to the means of raising additional funds for the First Church and it was decided to give an “Old Folks’ Concert.” He came to see Foster Townsend about it, of course. The great man was not too enthusiastic at first. “Foolishness,” he declared, gruffly. “If I ran my business affairs the way you church people run yours you’d be for having me shut up in an asylum, and I ought to be. You had a fair last winter--just as you have every winter. What did it amount to? All the women worked like blazes making things, or spent money buying things somewhere else, to be sold at that fair. Then every husband came and bought the things the other fellows’ wives had made or donated. That’s all there was to that.” The minister ventured to protest. “But, Captain Townsend,” he pleaded, “we made over a hundred dollars at that fair. You have forgotten that.” “I’ve forgotten nothing. You didn’t really make a cent. All you did was to swap that hundred dollars from one hand to the other.” The interview took place in the Townsend stables and Mr. Gifford was an interested listener. As a free-born citizen of a democracy he spoke his mind. “You’re dead right, Cap’n Foster,” he declared. “That’s just what I tell Nabby. Afore that fair last winter she set up night after night makin’ a crazy quilt. Spent four or five dollars for this, that and t’other to make it out of, to say nothin’ of usin’ up my best Sunday necktie and bustin’ a three-dollar pair of spectacles and gettin’ so cranky I didn’t hardly dast to come into the house mealtimes. And when the fair came off ’Rastus Doane bought that quilt for five dollars--not ’cause he needed it; they’ve got more quilts than they have beds twice over--but because he knew he’d be expected to buy somethin’. And I paid two dollars for a doll his wife had worked herself sick dressin’ and that Nabby give me the divil _for_ buyin’. ‘What do you want of a doll?’ says she. ‘You ain’t got any children. What did you waste your money like that for?’ ‘I had to waste it somehow, didn’t I?’ I told her. ‘That’s what a church fair’s for,’ says I, ‘to waste money. I laid out two dollars to waste and I wasted it quick as I could. After that I could say no to all the rest of the gang and have a pretty good time.’”