broke in Newcomb, before I could answer.
"There's the two cooks and the boy that waits on 'em--"

"The idea of having anybody wait on a cook!" interrupted Mullet. "That's
blame foolishness."

"I never said he waited on the cooks. I said he waited on them--on the
family. And there's a coachman--"

"Why do they call them kind of fellers coachmen?" put in Thoph. "There
ain't any coach. I see the carriages when they come--two freight cars
full of 'em. There was a open two-seater, and a buckboard, and that
high-wheeled thing they called a dog-cart."

Beriah Doane laughed uproariously. "Land of love!" he shouted. "Does the
dog have a cart all to himself? That's a good one! You and me ain't got
no dog, Sam, but we might have a couple of cat-carts, hey? Haw! haw!"

Thoph paid no attention to this pleasantry. "There was the dog-cart," he
repeated, "and another thing they called the 'trap.' But there wan't any
coach; I'll swear to it."

"Don't make no difference," declared Alvin; "there was a man along that
SAID he was the coachman, anyhow. And a big minister-lookin' feller
who was a butler, and two hired girls besides the cooks. That's nine,
anyhow. One more'n you said, Thoph."

"And that don't count the chauffeur, the chap that runs the
automobiles," said Alonzo Black. "He's the tenth. Say, Ros," turning to
me, "how many is there, altogether?"

"How many what?" I asked. It was my first opportunity to speak.

"Why, hired help--servants, you know. How many does Mr. Colton keep?"

"I don't know how many he keeps," I said. "Why should I?"

The group looked at me in amazement. Thoph Newcomb voiced the general
astonishment.

"Why should you!" he repeated. "Why shouldn't you, you mean! You're
livin' right next door to 'em, as you might say! My soul! If I was you I
cal'late I'd know afore this time."

"No doubt you would, Thoph. But I don't. I didn't know the Coltons had
arrived until I came by just now. They have arrived, I take it."

Arrived! There was no question of the arrival, nor of its being
witnessed by everyone present, myself and the South Denboro delegates
excepted. Newcomb and Baker and Mullet and Black began talking all
together. I learned that the Colton invasion of Denboro was a spectacle
only equaled by the yearly coming of the circus to Hyannis, or the
opening of the cattle show at Ostable. The carriages and horses had
arrived by freight the morning before; the servants and the family on
the afternoon