I was awful nervous about going up to meet Nick Nordman. It had been
near thirty years since I'd seen him, and he'd got so rich that one
house and one automobile weren't anything. He had about three of each,
and he frisked the world in between occupying them. Still, when he wrote
to me that he was coming back to visit the village, I made up my mind
that I'd be there to welcome him, being as we were boys and girls in
school together.
It was a nice October evening when I started out. When I came down
through town, I saw the council chamber all lit up, being it was the
regular meeting night. And sitting in there I saw Silas Sykes and
Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb and some more, smoking to heaven and
talking to each other while the mayor addressed them. I wondered, as I
went along, which of the thirteen hundred things we needed in the
village they were talking about. I concluded they were talking about how
to raise the money to do any one of them--some years away.
In the middle of town I came on Lucy Hackett. She was down buying her
vegetables; she always bought them at night, because then they give her
a good deal for her money and some cheaper. Lucy was forty-odd, with
long brown hair, braided round and round her head, crown after crown.
She was tall and thin, with long arms, but a slow, graceful way of
walking and of picking her way, holding up her old work skirt, that made
you think of a grand lady moving around. And she had lovely dark eyes
that made you like her anyway.
"Oh, Lucy," I says, "guess who I'm up here to meet--Nick Nordman."