d Bob Standish tried to laugh it off for him,
but Henry hadn't a smile in his system.

"All right, then," said Bob Standish. "Go see the judge. He'll tell
you the same thing. Mix's nothing but a bag of wind. He's an old
blowhard."

"Maybe he is," conceded Henry, soberly. "But I'd be just as satisfied
about it if he blew in some other direction."

Henry took the paper to Judge Barklay, who had already seen it, and
made his own deductions. "Oh, no," he said, "I'm not astonished. When
a man's in hot enough water, he'll cut up almost any kind of caper to
get out. There's only two kinds of people who ever go into these
radical movements--great successes and great failures. Never any
_average_ folks. I'd say it's a pretty good refuge for him, and you
drove him to it."

"Well--does he mean what he says there?"

"Not too much of it. How could he? If he does half he says he will,
he'll lose his job. The town would be as pure as Utopia, and there
wouldn't be any League."

"How about the ordinance he quotes, though?"

"Oh, _that_ ... it's Ordinance 147. It's so old it's toothless. The
City Council doesn't quite dare to repeal it--nobody's sure enough,
these days, to get up and take a chance--but they don't want it
enforced, and they haven't for ages."

Henry frowned. "That's all right. But suppose they did arrest somebody
under that Ordinance? What would you do?"

"Fine 'em, of course. I'd have to. But I've never had such a case that
I can remember. There haven't been any arrests. It's an understood
thing."

"Yes, that's fine--as long as everybody understands it the same way.
But maybe Mix doesn't--or Aunt Mirabelle either."

"Oh, I shouldn't worry much."

Henry continued serious. "Oh, I guess I can sleep nights all right
without any paregoric, but what right have _they_ got to butt into the
only day of recreation the working people have? If their immortal
souls hurt 'em as much as all that, why don't they go off and suffer
where they can do it in peace and not bother _us_?"

The Judge laughed quietly. "Whence all this sudden affection for the
working man, Henry?"

Henry reddened. "Strictly between the two of us, I don't like the idea
of Sunday business, anyway. But unfortunately, that's the big day....
But, if _you_ had to work indoors, eight hours a day, six days a week,
maybe you'd be satisfied to spend Sundays picking sweet violets out by
the barge canal, but what would you do when it rained?"

"Of course,