The daughter on the train, the youngest--named Kedzie after an aunt who was the least poor of the relatives--was just growing up into a similar career. Her highest prayer was that her path might lead her to a clerkship in a candy-shop. Then this miracle! Her father announced that he was going to New York. Adna was always traveling on the railroad, but he had never traveled far. To undertake New York was hardly less remarkable than to run over to the moon for a few days. When he brought the news home he could hardly get up the front steps with it. When he announced it at the table, and tried to be careless, his hand trembled till the saucerful of coffee at his quivering lips splashed over on the clean red-plaid table-cloth. The occasion of Thropp's call to New York was this: he had joined a “benevolent order” of the Knights of Something-or-other in his early years and had risen high in the chapter in his home town. When one of the members died, the others attended his funeral in full regalia, consisting of each individual's Sunday clothes, enhanced with a fringed sash and lappets. Also there was a sword to carry. The advantage of belonging to the order was that the member got the funeral for nothing and his wife got the further consolation of a sum of money. Mrs. Thropp bore her neighbors no more ill-will than they deserved, but she did enjoy their funerals. They gave her husband an excuse for his venerable silk hat and his gilded glave. Sometimes as she took her hands out of the dough and dried them on her apron to fasten his sash about him, she felt all the glory of a medieval countess buckling the armor on her doughty earl. She had never heard of such persons, but she knew their epic uplift. Now, Mr. Thropp had paid his dues and his insurance premiums for years and years. They were his one extravagance. Also he had persuaded Mrs. Thropp's brother Sol to do the same. Sol had died recently and left his insurance money to Mrs. Thropp. Sol's own wife, after cherishing long-deferred hopes of spending that money herself, had been hauled away first. She never got that insurance money. Neither did any one else; the central office in New York failed to pay up. The annual convention was about to be held in the metropolis, and there was to be a tremendous investigation of the insurance scandal. Adna was elected the delegate of the Nimrim chapter, for he was known to be a demon in a money-fight. And this was the glittering news that Adna brought home. Small wonder it spilled his coffee. And that wife of his not only had to go and yell at him about a little coffee-stain, but she had to announce that she hardly saw how she could get ready to go right away--and who was to look after those children?