ps it would be easier for me to let it snow or rain. That made me
angry. I was as cool as ice all in a moment; I felt that I had the
mastery of the situation, and, making a sweeping gesture with my left
hand, I looked over my hearers' heads, and continued:

"Hail! Fabbletown, bare village of the plain--Babbletown, fair pillage
of the vain--. Hail! friends and fellow-citizens--!"

It was evident that I had borrowed somebody else's voice--my own
mother wouldn't have recognized it--and a mighty poor show of a voice,
too. It was like a race-horse that suddenly balks, and loses the race.
I had put up heavy stakes on that voice, but I couldn't budge it. Not
an inch faster would it go. In vain I whipped and spurred in silent
desperation--it balked at "fellow-citizens," and there it stuck. The
audience, good-naturedly, waited five minutes. At the end of that
time, I sat down, amid general applause, conscious that I had made
the sensation of the evening.

Belle gave me the mitten that evening, and went home in Fred Hencoop's
sleigh.

We didn't speak, after that, until about a week before the fair. She,
with some other girls, then came in the store to beg for "scraps" of
silk, muslin, and so-forth, to dress dolls for the fair. They were
very sweet, for they knew they could make a fool of me. Father was not
in, and I guess they timed their visit so that he wouldn't be. They
got half a yard of pink silk, as much of blue, ditto of lilac and
black, a yard of every kind of narrow ribbon in the store, a remnant
of book-muslin, three yards--in all, about six dollars' worth of
"scraps," and then asked me if I wasn't going to give a box of raisins
and the coffee for the table. I said I would.

"And you'll come, Mr. Flutter, won't you? It'll be a failure unless
_you_ are there. You must _promise_ to come. We won't go out of this
store till you do. And, oh, don't forget to bring _your purse_ along.
We expect all the young gentlemen to _come prepared_, you know."

There is no doubt that I went to the fair. It made my heart ache to do
it--for I'd already been pretty extravagant, one way and another--but
I put a ten-dollar bill in my wallet, resolved to spend every cent of
it rather than appear mean.

I don't know whether I appeared mean or not; I do know that I spent
every penny of that ten dollars, and considerable more besides. If
there was anything at that fair that no one else wanted, and that was
not calculated to supply any know