The room would hold
perhaps two hundred people, if they were closely seated, and, by her own
showing, Mrs. Makely had sold above two hundred and fifty tickets and
chances. All Saturday forenoon she consoled herself with the belief that a
great many people at the other hotels and cottages had bought seats
merely to aid the cause, and would not really come; she estimated that at
least fifty would stay away; but, if Reuben Camp had sold his tickets
among the natives, we might expect every one of them to come and get his
money's worth; she did not dare to ask the head-waiter how he had got rid
of his twenty-five tickets.
The hour set for the Talk to begin was three o'clock, so that people could
have their naps comfortably over, after the one o'clock dinner, and be
just in the right frame of mind for listening. But long before the
appointed time the people who dine at twelve, and never take an afternoon
nap, began to arrive, on foot, in farm-wagons, smart buggies, mud-crusted
carryalls, and all manner of ramshackle vehicles. They arrived as if
coming to a circus, old husbands and wives, young couples and their
children, pretty girls and their fellows, and hitched their horses to the
tails of their wagons, and began to make a picnic lunch in the shadow of
the grove lying between the hotel and the station.
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