The person concerned in the event had been told the real story of Abigail Clergy, and why Joshua Maples was called “Ali Baba,” and why Miss Clergy drove at four, always alone and with the curtains drawn, and why the children were afraid of her and called her witch, trying to make their mothers admit that the Clergy house was haunted. That person was Thurley Precore—born in Arcadia, the Corners admitted, although they did not call it by that name. They said, “Wherever Thurley Precore managed to get that smile and face and voice of hers and to sing more and more like an angel when every one knew—” and so forth and so on, the deduction arrived at being that God had let Himself realize His dream of beauty when He created Thurley Precore—Thurley with the most worthless, indifferent parents about whom the Corners had ever heard tell. Thurley was twenty when the “thrilling event” happened. But her advent into the Corners ten years before is worth recording. To the older generation, in fact, it had been a happening of great interest, and, had it not taken place, the really thrilling event in 1912 could never have occurred. But younger generations never consider the law of cause and effect, so they shrugged their shoulders in impatience when their elders insisted on re-telling to out-of-town visitors how Thurley Precore first “sang for her supper.” CHAPTER II There had driven into the stableyard of the Hotel Button a queer box-car wagon on rickety yellow wheels, unwillingly pulled by tired nags. The wagon had a hope-to-die roof and a smokestack. On the driver’s seat was a ragged man and an impetuous young person in faded blue gingham. The impetuous young person was driving and singing “God Be With Us Till We Meet Again”—unconscious of the beauty of her voice. Her father nodded approval, as the song ended and the wagon halted before the stable door. As the story goes, young Dan Birge and Lorraine McDowell, the minister’s only child, were playing hop-scotch in imminent danger of the horses’ feet. They paused to stare at the newcomers. The young person had begun in businesslike fashion: “I want to speak to the pro-pry-e-tor. My name is Thurley, Thurley Precore, and this is my dad. He’s awful sick. We come all the way from Boulder, out in Colorado—I guess you don’t know where that is, but it’s miles ’n’ miles from here. My ma is sick, too,—she’s lyin’ down inside, and she’ll have to see a doctor right off. Where is the pro-pry-e-tor? Ain’t you listening to me? We sell tinware—why, say, our pots and pans can’t be beat—nor matched. Even the gypsies said so when we camped with ’em at Lisbon, Ohio. Isn’t it so, pa?” turning her flushed, lovely face to the man beside her. “I guess if you says it is—it is,” he chuckled. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he added to the astonishment of the boy and girl, “what Thurley says goes—she’s been runnin’ this family for enough years to prove that she kin,” the chuckle ended in a hollow cough.