other members a quarter of a dollar. He's fined one dollar for ev'ry
time he's ketched without his hat, buckets, bag, and bed-wrench hung
in his front hall where they belong, other members ten cents. And
he's taxed a quarter of the whole expenses of gittin' to firemen's
muster and back. Talk about lettin' blood with a gimlet! Why, they're
after me with a pod-auger!"

All the afternoon he read the little book, cuffed it, and cursed.
He snapped up Louada Murilla with scant courtesy when she tried to
give him the history of Smyrna's most famous organization, and
timorously represented to him the social eminence he had attained.

"It isn't as though you didn't have money, and plenty of it," she
pleaded. "You can't get any more good out of it than by spending it
that way. I tell you, Aaron, it isn't to be sneezed at, leading all
the grand marches at the Ancients' dances and being boss of 'em all
at the muster, with the band a-playin' and you leading 'em right up
the middle of the street. It's worth it, Aaron--and I shall be so
proud of you!"

He grumbled less angrily the next morning. But he still insisted that
he didn't propose to let the consolidated Todds and Wards of Smyrna
bunco him into taking the position, and said that he should attend
the next meeting of the Ancients and resign.

But when, on the third evening after his election, the enthusiastic
members of the Smyrna A. & H.F.A. came marching up from the village,
the brass band tearing the air into ribbons with cornets and
trombones, his stiff resolve wilted suddenly. He began to grin
shamefacedly under his grizzled beard, and hobbled out onto the porch