When her sister-in-law, Mrs. Daggett, appeared, she restrained her
wandering eyes. All four women conferred anxiously. They, with Mrs.
Solomon Black, had engineered the fair. Mrs. Black had not yet
appeared and they all wondered why. Abby Daggett, who had the
expression of a saint--a fleshy saint, in old purple muslin--gazed
about her with admiration.

"Don't it look perfectly lovely!" she exclaimed.

Mrs. Whittle fairly snapped at her, like an angry old dog. "Lovely!"
said she with a fine edge of sarcasm in her tone, "perfectly lovely!
Yes it does. But I think we are a set of fools, the whole of us. Here
we've got a fair all ready, and worked our fingers to the bone (I
don't know but I'll have a felon on account of that drawn-in rug
there) and we've used up all our butter and eggs, and I don't see,
for one, who is going to buy anything. I ain't got any money t'
spend. I don't believe Mrs. Slocum will come over from Grenoble, and
if she does, she can't buy everything."

"Well, what made us get up the fair?" asked Mrs. Dodge.

"I suppose we all thought somebody might have some money," ventured
Abby Daggett.

"I'd like to know who? Not one of us four has, and I don't believe
Mrs. Solomon Black has, unless she turns in her egg-money, and if she
does I don't see how she is going to feed the minister. Where is
Phoebe Black?"