little stable where farmers were allowed to bring their own provender.
The charges were of the smallest and the place neat and weather-tight,
but it had been a long time before Nelson could be induced to use it,
because there was a higher-priced stable kept by an ex-farmer and member
of the Farmers' Alliance. Only the fact that the keeper of the low-priced
stable was a poor orphan girl, struggling to earn an honest livelihood,
had moved him.

They had supper at a restaurant of Tim's discovery, small,
specklessly tidy, and as unexacting of the pocket as the stable.
It was an excellent supper. But Nelson had no appetite;
in spite of an almost childish capacity for being diverted,
he could attend to nothing but the question always in his ears:
"Richards or me--which?"

Until it should be time for the spectacle they walked down the hill,
and watched the crowds gradually blacken every inch of the river-banks.
Already the swarms of lanterns were beginning to bloom out in the dusk.
Strains of music throbbed through the air, adding a poignant touch
to the excitement vibrating in all the faces and voices about them.
Even the stolid Tim felt the contagion. He walked with a jaunty
step and assaulted a tune himself. "I tell you, Uncle," says Tim,
"it's nice of these folks to be getting up all this show, and giving
it for nothing!"

"Do you think so?" says Nelson. "You don't love your book as I
wish you did; but I guess you remember about the ancient Romans,
and how the great, rich Romans used to spend enormous sums in games
and shows that they let the people in free to--well, what for?
Was it to learn them anything or to make them happy?