In the grounds preparations were making for the band which was to play between the dances. Chinese lanterns were being suspended in fanciful lines from the trees and from the house to the entrance of the grounds, and everywhere were the hurry and bustle attending preparations for a large entertainment, both outdoors and in. Not accustomed to giving companies, Mrs. White was threatened with a nervous headache, and was in a state of wild excitement, giving the most contradictory orders and bewildering her assistants generally. Taken as a whole, the house was topsy-turvy, with sixteen people at work, and none of them seemingly level-headed except Fred Lansing, who, if allowed to do it, would have brought order out of confusion, so quiet and systematic were all his plans and movements. But the judge insisted upon taking him for a drive, saying they would go to the bank first, as he wanted to see his cashier, who had sent him a note early that morning, telling him that Godfrey Sheldon, a farmer, who lived in the country and was his heaviest depositor, had told him the night before that he was coming the next day to draw out his five thousand dollars. “Of course, we can stand a great deal more than that,” the cashier wrote, “but wouldn’t it be safe to ask Sheldon to leave a part for a day or two, until we receive that loan due to-morrow?” “No, sir!” the judge said, as he read the note. “I’ll never ask any man to wait for a dollar. My bank asking time! I’d laugh. Let Sheldon have his money. He is an old curmudgeon, anyway, and has to be handled with gloves. I wonder if he was invited to our party. It is like him to take a miff if he isn’t; he feels himself of so much importance because he was sent to the Legislature one winter and had Hon. before his name. Susan, where are you?” Susan came with a big white apron on, her mouth full of pins and a ball of twine in her hands. “Susan, were the Godfrey Sheldons invited?” “Godfrey Sheldons—who are they?” Mrs. White replied, spitting the pins from her mouth. “Why, that red-headed chap in the country who went to the Legislature and thinks he knows all creation; biggest depositor in my bank, with two red-headed girls like himself. You must know ’em. They sit three pews from us in church, across the aisle, and wear infernal big hats, while he reads the loudest of anybody, as if the Lord was deaf, and looks round to see who is listening to him. You must know him.” Mrs. White did remember the big hats and the pompous man, who read scarcely louder than her husband. “But I have no acquaintance with them,” she said. “I believe Herbert did suggest that they be invited, with a lot of others, who went into the waste basket. I asked the Gibsons from the Corners. Their son was in Yale with Fred, and their daughter has been to Vassar, but I didn’t suppose you wanted all the country people invited who deposit with you, or I would have taken your bank list.”