"What's the odds," says I, "if a lot of them old-timers are willin' to pay to hear her try?" Vee shakes her head and suggests that we go up and talk it over with Mr. and Mrs. Robert. Which we does. "But if she has been off the stage for twenty years," suggests Mrs. Robert, "perhaps she wouldn't attempt it." "I'll bet she would for Vee," says I. "Any way, she wouldn't feel sore at being asked And if you could sting a bunch of twenty or thirty for a hundred apiece----" "Just fancy!" says Mrs. Robert, drawin' in a long breath and doin' rapid-fire mental arithmetic. "Verona, let's drive right over and see her at once." They're some hustlers, that pair. All I have to do is map out the scheme, and they goes after it with a rush. And say, I want to tell you that was a perfectly good charity concert, judged by the box-office receipts or any way you want to size it up. Bein' the official press-agent, who's got a better right to admit it? True, Elman didn't show up, but his alibi was sound. And not until the last minute was we sure whether the fair Geraldine would get there or not. But my contribution to the headliners was there from the first tap of the bell. Vee says she actually wept on her shoulder when the proposition was sprung on her. Seems she'd been livin' in Harbor Hills for nearly three years without havin' been let in on a thing--with nobody callin' on her, or even noddin' as she drove by. Most of her neighbors was a lot younger, folks who barely remembered that there had been such a party as Clara Belle Kinney, and who couldn't have told whether she'd been a singer or a bareback rider. They only knew her as a dumpy freakish dressed old girl whose drugged hair was turnin' gray. "Of course," she says, sort of timid and trembly, "I have kept up my singing as well as I could. Mr. Tupper likes to have me. But I know my voice isn't what it was once. It's dear of you to ask me, though, and--and I'll do my best." I don't take any credit for fillin' that double row of wicker chairs we put down front and had the nerve to ask that hold-up price for. When the word was passed around that Clara Belle Kinney was to be among the performers, they almost mobbed me for tickets. Why, I collected from two-thirds of the Corrugated directors without turnin' a hand, and for two days there about all I did was answer 'phone calls from Broad Street and the clubs--brokers, bank presidents, and so on, who wanted to know if there was any left. A fine bunch of silver-tops they was, too, when we got 'em all lined up. You wouldn't have suspected it of some of them dignified old scouts, either. Back of 'em, fillin' every corner of the long room and spillin' out into the big hall, was the top crust of our local smart set, come to hear Farrar at close range.