s amount may be assumed to have been spent
by the lot of us for Christmas. Of course there was those," continued
Mr. Buck, looking intelligently about him, "who bought most of their
Christmas stuff in the City. But these--these economic traitors only
make the point of what I say the more so. Without them, the town spent
this truly amazing sum in keeping the holidays. Now, I ask you, frank,
could the town afford that, or anything like that?"

Buff Miles spoke out of the extremity of his reflections.

"That's a funny crack," he said, "for a merchant to make. Why not leave
'em spend and leave 'em pay?"

"Oh, I'll leave 'em _pay_ all right," rejoined Simeon, significantly,
and stood silent and smiling until there were those in the room who
uncomfortably shifted.

Then he told them the word he bore from Ebenezer Rule that as they had
feared and half expected, the factory was not to open that Winter at
all. Hardly a family represented in the rooms was not also
representative of a factory employee, now idle these seven months, as
they were periodically idle at the times of "enforced" suspension of the
work.

"What I'm getting at is this," Simeon summed it up, "and Abel Ames,
here, backs me up--don't you, Abel?--that hadn't we all ought to come to
some joint conclusion about our Christmas this year, and roust the town
up to it, like a town, and not go it blind and either get in up to our
necks in debt, same as City folks, or else quit off Christmas,
individual, and mebbe hurt folks's feelings? Why not move intelligent,
like a town, and all agree out-and-out to leave Christmas go by this
year? And have it understood, thorough?"

It was very still in the little rooms when he had finished. There seems
to be no established etiquette of revolutions. But something of the
unconsciousness of the enthusiast was upon Mis' Mortimer Bates, and she
spoke before she knew:--

"So's we can be sure everybody else'll know it and not give something
either and be disappointed too," she assented. "Well, I bet everybody'd
be real relieved."

"The churches has sanctioned us doing away with Christmas this year by
doing away with it themselves," observed Mis' Jane Moran. "That'd ought
to be enough to go by."

"It don't seem to me Christmas is a thing for the churches to decide
about," said Simeon, thoughtfully. "It seems to me the matter is up to
the merchants and the grocers and the family providers. We're the ones
most concerned. Us provi