those who were still awake when they
discovered what she had done. And it did.

It was the afternoon of the same day. The doors of all the business
houses were open. Jordantown had taken off its coat and was busy in its
shirt sleeves trying to make up for the trade lost during the morning.
Customers came and went, merchants frowned, clerks smiled. Teams passed.
Children returning from school added, by their joyous indifference,
irritation to the general situation. All the sparrows were back in the
dust of the street discussing its merits. And everywhere men were
gathered in groups talking about something--_the_ Something. The
business of the town was like a house toppling upon sand as long as no
one knew what was to be the disposition of the Mosely Estate. This was
what every one was talking about.

Jordantown is one of those old Southern communities large enough to have
"corporations," a mayor and council, but small enough for members of
"the best families" not to speak to members of other "best families."
Everybody had "feelings" and they showed them, especially if they were
not agreeable. It was not a progressive place, due, partly, to its
ante-bellum sense of dignity, but more particularly to the fact that
when a business firm was about to fail, it did not fail. It borrowed
enough to "tide over" from the agent of the William J. Mosely Estate.
This interfered with that natural law in the business world as
everywhere else, the survival of the fittest. Everybody survived, the
fit and the unfit, which is death to competition and that arterial
excitation without which trade becomes stagnation.

Three men sat in the private office of the National Bank, the windows of
which overlooked the town square. They were the tutelary deities of all
public occasions in the town. They always sat on the platform behind the
speaker on Decoration Days. They were supposed to control municipal
elections, but not one of them had ever "run" for an office. Deities
don't. They are the powers behind the throne. These men represented
Providence in Jordantown. And Providence is always behind the scenes.
The trouble now was that by an ordinary and inevitable process of nature
they had lost control of the situation. A little old woman had died who
had no sense, and who for that very reason might have done something
foolish with the William J. Mosely Estate, which was the very foundation
upon which all deities and providences rested in that place.