Co-operative Society. And because Comrade Higgins never questioned
anybody's right to give him orders, and always did everything with a
cheerful grin, people had got into the habit of regarding him as the
proper person for tedious and disagreeable tasks.

He had all the more on his hands at present, because the members of
this usually efficient local were half-distracted, like a nest of
ants that have been dug out with a shovel. The most faithful ones
showed a tendency to forget what they were doing, and to gather in
knots to talk about the news which had come over the cables and had
been published in that morning's paper. Jimmie Higgins would have
liked to hear what the rest had to say; but somebody had to keep at
work, for the local was in the hole nearly three hundred dollars for
to-night's affair, and it must succeed, even though half the
civilized world had gone suddenly insane. So Jimmie continued to
climb step-ladders and tie bunting.

When it came to lunch-time, and the members of the Decorations
Committee were going out, it suddenly occurred to one of them that
the drayman who was to bring the literature might arrive while there
was nobody to receive it. So Comrade Higgins was allowed to wait
during the lunch hour. There was a plausible excuse--he was on the
Literature Committee; indeed, he was on every committee where hard
work was involved--the committee to distribute leaflets announcing
the meeting, the committee to interview the labour unions and urge
them to sell tickets, the committee to take up a collection at the
meeting. He was not on those committees which involved honour and
edification, such as, for example, the committee to meet the
Candidate at the depot and escort him to the Opera-house. But then
it would never have occurred to Jimmie that he had any place on such