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[Pg 76] 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."

She just stared at me. "Nick Nordman?" she says. "Coming here?"

"First time in twenty years," I says, and went off, with her face a-following me, and me a-chiding myself energetic: What was the matter with me to spring that onto her all of a sudden that way, and clean forget that her and Nick used to keep company for a year or more before he went off to town?

"Paper? Paper, Miss Marsh? As soon's we get 'em off the train?" says somebody. And there I saw from four to six little boys, getting orders for the city paper before the train had come in. But it was just whistling down by the gas works, and I was so excited I dunno if I answered them.

My gracious, what do you s'pose? On the back of the Dick Dasher accommodation train—we called it that because Dick Dasher was the conductor—came rolling in a special car, and a black porter[Pg 77] bounced off and set down a step, and out of the car got one lonely, solitary man.

"Is that a show car hitched on there, or what?" I says to Mis' Sturgis, that got off the train.

"That's what we was wondering," says she.

Dick Dasher, he was lifting off bundles of laundry and stuff that's intrusted to him to bring home all along the line, and he heard me. "If you're to meet somebody, that's the man-you're-looking-for's private car," says he. "He's the only other one off here."

Land, there he was! As soon as I faced the man the porter had bowed off the step, I knew him. Stockier, redder in the face, with blunt gray hair and blunt gray mustache, and clothes that fit him like a label round a bottle—sure as could be, it was him!

"Well, Nick!" I'd been going to say; but instead of it what I did say was, "Is this Mr. Nordman?"

He lifted his hat in the hand with his glove on. "It's Calliope Marsh, isn't it?" says he. "I am glad to see you. Mighty good of you to meet me, you know."

I don't know how it was, but the way he was and the way he spoke shut me up tighter than a clamshell. It had never entered my head to feel embarrassed or stiff with him until I saw him, and heard him being so formal. My land, he looked rich and acted rich! The other women stood there, so I managed to introduce them. "You meet Mis' Arnet. You meet[Pg 78] Mis' Sturgis. You meet Mis' Hubbelthwait," I says. "Them that was Hetty Parker and Mamie Bain and Cassie White—I guess you remember them, don't you?"

"Perfectly! Perfectly!" says he; and he done his heartiest, it seemed to me. But to bow quite low, and lift his hat higher and higher to each one—well, I dunno. It wasn't the way I thought it'd be.

"I thought we'd walk down," I says. "I thought mebbe you'd like to see the town—" But I kind of wavered off. All of a sudden the town didn't seem so much to me as it had.

"By all means," says he.

But just then there was above six-seven of them little boys found him. They'd got their papers now and they were bound to make a sale. "Paper? Buy a paper? Buy a newspaper, mister?" they says, most of them running backward in their bare feet right in front of him.

"Sure," he says, "I'll buy a paper. Give me one of all your papers.

"Now let's see," he says then. "Where's the pop-corn wagon?"

There wasn't any. None of the boys had ever heard of one.

"No pop-corn wagon? Bless me," he says, "you don't mean to say you don't have a circus every year—with pop-corn wagons and—"

A groan broke out from every boy. "No!" they[Pg 79] says in chorus. "Aw, it ain't comin'. Pitcairn's wanted to show here. But the town struck 'em for high license."

Mr. Nordman looked at the boys a minute. Then he rapped his cane down hard on the platform. "It's a burning shame!" he says out, indignant and human. "Ain't they even any ice-cream cones in this town?" he cries.

Oh, yes, there was them. The boys set up a shout. Mr. Nordman—he give them a nickel apiece, and the next instant the platform was swept clean of every boy of them. And him and me begun walking down the street.

"Bless me," he says. "What a nice little town it's grown! What a very nice little town!" And the way he said it shut me right up again.

I dunno how it was, but this was no more the way I'd imagined showing Nick Nordman over the village than anything on earth. I'd been going to tell him about old Harvey Myers' hanging himself in the garret we were then passing, but I hadn't the heart nor the interest.

Just as we got along down to the main block of Daphne Street, the council meeting was out and Silas and Eppleby and Timothy Toplady and the rest came streaming out of the engine house. Mis' Toplady and Mame Holcomb were sitting outside, waiting for their husbands, and so of course I marched Mr. Nicholas Nordman right up to the lot of them and[Pg 80] named them to him. Every one of them had known him over twenty years before.

Off came the gray hat, and to each one of the ladies he bowed low, and he says: "Delighted—delighted to see you again. Indeed we remember, don't we? And Timothy! Eppleby! Silas! I am delighted."

Then there was a long pause. We all just stood there.

Then Silas, as the chief leading citizen, he clears his throat and he says: "Do you—ah—remain long?" I don't know a better sample of what Mr. Nicholas Nordman's manner done to us all. "Remain!" Silas never said "remain" in his life before. Always, always he would, under any real other circumstances, have said "stay."

The whole few minutes was like that, while we just stood there. And perhaps it was like that most of all in the minute when it ought to have been like that the least. This was when Mr. Nordman told a plan he had. "I want you all," he said, "and a few more whom I well remember, to do me the honor to lunch with me to-morrow in my car. We can have a fine time to talk over the—ah—old days."

There was a dead pause. I guess everybody was figgering on the same thing; finally Eppleby asked about it. "Much obliged," says he. "What car?"

"My private car," says Mr. Nordman, [Pg 81]"somewhere on the siding. You'll recognize her. She's gray."

"Much obliged," "Pleased, I'm sure," "Pleased to come," says everybody.

And we broke up and he walked along with me. Halfway down the block, who should I see ahead of me but Lucy Hackett. I never said anything till we overtook her. When I spoke she wheeled and flushed up like a girl, and put out her hand so nice and eager, and with her pretty way that was a glad way and was a grand lady way too.

I says: "Mr. Nordman, you meet Miss Lucy Hackett, that I guess you can remember each other."

He took off his hat and bowed. "Ah, Miss Lucy," says he, "this is a pleasure. How good to see you again!"

"I'm glad to see you, too, Nick," she says, and walked along on the inside of the walk with us, just drooping!

Yes, you might as well have tried to greet a fountain in full play as to greet him. He invited her to come to his luncheon next day. She said she would, with a nice little catch of pleasure in her tone; and he left her at her gate, him bowing tremendous. And it was the same gate he used to take her to when they were boy and girl....

He said the same kind of a formal good night to me at my gate; and I was just going to go into my house, feeling sick and lonesome all rolled into one,[Pg 82] because there wasn't a mite of Nick Nordman about him at all; but all of a sudden, like an explosion out of a clear sky and all points of the earth, there came down onto us the most tremendous, outrageous racket that ever blasted a body's ears. It seemed to come from sky, earth, air and sea, at one and the same instants. And it went like this:
S——s——s!
Yow! Yow! Yow!
Who's——all——right?
Mr. N——o——rdm——a——n!

And then there was a great burst of yelling, and the whole seven boys came dropping out of trees and scrambling up from under the fence, and they ran off down the street, still yelling about him. Seems the ice-cream cones had made a hit.

Then—just for one little minute—I saw the real Nick Nordman that I remembered. His face broke into a broad, pleased grin, and he shoved his hat onto the back of his head, and he slapped his leg so that you could hear it. "Why," says he, "the durn little kids!"

We all dressed up in the best we had for the luncheon. Lucy Hackett come for me. She had on a clean, pretty print dress, and she looked awful nice.

"Oh, Lucy," I says to her right off, "ain't it too[Pg 83] bad about Nick? He ain't no more like he use' to be than a motor is like a mule."

Lucy, she flushed up instant. "I thought," says she, "he was real improved."

"Land, yes, improved!" I says. "Improved out of all recognizing him."

She staggered me some by giving a superior smile. "Of course," she says, "he's all city ways now. Of course he is."

Yes, of course he was. I thought of her words over and over again during that lunch. His private car had a little table fitted in most every seat and laid, all white, with pretty dishes and silver and flowers. Electric fans were going here and there. The lights were lighted, though it was broad day and broader. The porter, in a white coat, was frisking round with ice and glasses. But, most magnificent of all, was Mr. Nicholas Nordman, standing in the middle of the aisle in pure white serge.

"So pleased," says he. "So very pleased. Now this is good of you all to come."

I s'pose what we done was to chat; that, I figger, would be the name of it. But when he set us all down to the little tables, four and four, a deathlike silence fell on the whole car. It was hard enough to talk anyhow. Add to that the interestingness of all this novelty, and not one of us could work up a thing to say.

Mr. Nordman took the minister and Lucy Hackett[Pg 84] and me to his table, being we were all odd ones, and begun to talk benevolent about the improvements that a little town of this size ought to have.

"I s'pose they have grand parks and buildings in the cities, Nick?" says Lucy.

"Haven't you ever been to see them?" says he—oh, so kind!

"Never," says she. "But I've heard about them."

He sat staring out the car window across the Pump pasture, where the shadows were all laying nice. "City life is intensely interesting," says he. "Intensely so."

"As interesting as the time you stole Grandpa Toplady's grapes?" I says. I couldn't help it.

He tapped on the table. "Let us be in order for a few minutes," he says. He needn't of. We were in order already; we hadn't been anything else. Nobody was speaking a word hardly. But everybody twisted round and looked at him as he got onto his feet.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he says, and looked at us once round. "I have summoned you here for a purpose. On this, the occasion of my first visit back to my boyhood's home, I feel that I should—and, indeed, I most earnestly desire to—mark the time by some small token. Therefore, after some conversation about the matter during the forenoon, and much thought before my coming, I have decided to[Pg 85] set aside ten thousand dollars from to-day to be used for your town in a way which a committee—of which I hope that you, my guests of the day, will be appointed members—may decide. For park purposes, playgrounds, pavements—what you will; I desire to make this little acknowledgment to my native town, to this the home of my boyhood. I thank you."

He set down and, after a minute, everybody burst out and spatted their hands.

And then Silas Sykes, that is our professional leading citizen, got to his feet and accepted in the name of the town. Some of the other men said a little about the needs of the town; and Eppleby Holcomb, he got up and proposed a toast to the host. And by that time, the sun had got around considerable and it was blazing hot there on the side track, and us ladies in our black silks begun to think, longing, of our side piazzas and our palm-leaf fans.

We filed down the aisle and shook the hand of Mr. Nicholas Nordman and thanked him, individual and formal, both for the lunch and the big gift, and got out. But Lucy Hackett burst out talking, with the tears in her eyes. "Nick!" she says. "Oh, Nick, it was wonderful! Oh, it was the most wonderful time I ever had in my life—the luncheon with everything so pretty—prettier'n I ever saw things before; and then the present to the town. Ten thousand dollars! Oh, none of us can be happy[Pg 86] and grateful enough. And to think it's you that's done it, Nick—to think it's you!"

"Thank you, Miss Lucy," says he, "thank you; you are very good, I'm sure."

But I noticed that he wasn't so much formal now as he was lifeless; and I was wondering if he hadn't had a good time to his own luncheon party or what, when I heard something out on the platform, and then there come a-walking in a regular procession. It was all seven of the small boys again, and from seven to fourteen more besides, done up clean, with shoes on and here and there a collar.

"Is it time?" they says.

Nick Nordman stood with his hands in his pockets and grinned down on them. And it came to me to be kind of jealous of the boys, because he was with them just the way he ought to have been with us—and wasn't. But he was going off that night, with his car to be hitched onto the Through; and there wasn't any time for anybody to say any more, or be any different. So Lucy and I said good-by to him and left him there with the boys, dragging out together an ice-cream freezer into the middle of the gray private car.

I'd just got the door locked up that night about nine o'clock, and was seeing to the window catches before I went upstairs, when there come a rap to my front door.

"Who's there?" says I, with my hand on the bolt.

[Pg 87]

"It's Nick Nordman, Calliope."

"Land!" says I, letting him in. "I thought you'd gone off hitched to the Through."

"I was," he says, "but I ain't. I'm going to wait till five in the morning. And I'm going to talk over something with you."

Sheer through being flabbergasted, I led him past the parlor and out into the dining room and lit the lamp there. I'd been sewing there and things were spread on every chair. Think of receiving a millionaire in a place like that! But he never seemed to notice. He dropped right down on the machine cover that was standing up on end. And he put his elbow on the machine, and his head on his hand.

"Calliope," he says, "it ain't the way I thought it'd be. I wanted to come back here," he says. "I been thinking about it and planning on it for years. But it ain't like what I thought."

"Well," I says, soothing, "of course that's always the way when anybody comes back. They's changes. Things ain't the same. Folks has gone away—"

He cut me short off. "Oh," he says, "it ain't that. I expected that. There were enough folks here. It's something else. When I went away from here twenty years ago, I had just thirty-six dollars to go on. Now I've come back, and I don't mind telling you that I've got not far from six hundred thousand invested. Well, from the time I went[Pg 88] off, I used to plan how I'd come back some day, just about like I have come back, and see folks, and give something to the town, and give a lunch like I did to-day. I've laid awake nights planning it. And I liked to think about it."

"Well," I says, "and you've done it."

He didn't pay attention. "You remember," he says, "how I used to live over on the Slew with my uncle in the house that wasn't painted? He'd got together a cow somehow, and I use' to carry the milk. I never owned a pair of shoes till I was fifteen and earned them, and I never went to school after I was twelve. And when I went to the city I begun at the bottom and lived on nothing and went to night school and got through the whole works up to pardner for them I used to sweep out for. When I got my first ten thousand I thought: 'That's what I'm going to give that little old town—when I get enough more.' Well, I've done it, and I ain't got no more satisfaction out of it than if I'd thrown it in the gutter. And that"—he looked at me solemn—"was," says he, "the durndest, stiffest luncheon I ever et at."

"Well," I says, "of course—"

"When I think," he says, "of the way I planned it—with the men all coming around me, and slapping me on the back, and being glad to see me—"

"Oh, Nick!" I says. "Nick Nordman! Was that what you wanted?"

[Pg 89]

He looked at me in perfect astonishment. "Why," says he, "ain't that what anybody wants?"

I rose right up on my feet and I went over and put out my hand to him. "Why, Nick," I says, "don't you see? We was afraid of you. I was afraid of you. I froze right up and give up telling you about folks hanging themselves and all sorts of interesting things because I thought you wouldn't care. Why, they don't know you care!"

"Don't know I care?" says he. "But ain't I showed 'em—ten thousand dollars' worth?"

"Oh," I says, "that way! Yes, they know that way. In dollars they know; but they don't know in feelings. It's them," I says, "that counts." I set down by him, right on a pile of my new sewing. "Look here," I says, "Nick Nordman, if that's the way you feel about coming back and about the village, let's you and me fix up some way to make folks know you feel that way."

His face lit up. "How?" says he, doubting.

I thought a minute. I don't know why it was, but all at once there flashed into my head the way he had been with the boys, and the way the boys had been to him; that was what he was wanting, and that was what had been lacking, and that was what he didn't know how to make come. And he was lonesome for it.

"It ought to be," says I, feeling my way in my own head, "some way that'll make folks—Oh,[Pg 90] Nick," I says, jumping up, "I know the very thing!"

Pitcairn's Circus that wintered not twenty miles from us, and that had got so big and successful that it hadn't been to Friendship Village before in twenty years! And this year, when they'd wanted to come, the council had put the license so high that they refused it. And yet, one morning, we woke up to find the town plastered up and down with the big flaming bill posters of Pitcairn's Circus itself. The town had all it could do to believe in its own good luck. But there was no room to doubt. There they were:

BALLET OF TWELVE HUNDRED

Tremendous Pageant and Spectacle Of
Esther, the Beautiful Queen
magnificent costumes, regal women,
gorgeous jewels, diverting dancers,
solos and ensembles

A HUNDRED TRAINED RIDERS,
A HUNDRED ACROBATS, A HUNDRED
ANIMALS FROM THE HEART OF THE
WILD HILLS

ANIMALS TRAINED—ANIMALS SAVAGE—
ANIMALS WONDERFUL

Gigantic Street Parade

FREE! FREE! FREE!

The whole town planned to turn out. There was to be no evening performance, and I schemed to have us all take our lunch—a whole crowd of us—and[Pg 91] go over to the Pump pasture right from the parade, and spread it under the big maple, and see the sights while we et. I broached it to Mis' Toplady and Timothy and Eppleby and Marne Holcomb and Postmaster and Mis' Sykes, and some more—Mis' Arnet and Mis' Sturgis and Mis' Hubbelthwait; and they, all of them, and Lucy and me, fell to planning on who'd take what, and running over to each other's houses about sweet pickles and things we hadn't thought of, and we had a real nice old-fashioned time.

I'll never forget the day. It was one of the regular circus days, bright and blue and hot. Lucy Hackett and I went down to see the parade together; and we watched it, as a matter of course, from the window where I'd watched circus parades when I was a little girl. The horses, the elephants, the cages closed and the cages opened, the riders, the bands, the clowns, the calliope—that I was named for, because a circus with one come to town the day I was born—had all passed when, to crown and close the whole, we saw coming a wagon of the size and like we had not often beheld before.

It was red, it had flags, pennons, streamers, festoons, balloons. Continually up from it went daylight firecrackers. From the sides of it fell colored confetti. And it was filled, not with circus folks, dressed gorgeous, but with boys. And we knew them! Laughing, jigging, frantic with joy—we[Pg 92] saw upward of a hundred Friendship Village boys. As the wagon passed us and we stared after it, suddenly the clamor of shouting inside it took a kind of form. We begun, Lucy and I, to recognize something. And what was borne back to us perfectly clamorous was:
S——s——s!
Yow! Yow! Yow!
Who's——all——right?
Mr. N——o——rdm——a——n!

"What in time are they yelling?" says a woman at the next window.

"Some stuff," says somebody else.

Lucy and I just looked at each other. Lucy was looking wild. "Calliope," says she, "how'd they come to yell that—that that they said?"

"Oh, I dunno," I says serene; "I could yell that too—on general principles. Couldn't you?" I says to her.

And Lucy blushed burning, rosy, fire red—on general principles, I suppose.

We were all to meet at the courthouse with our lunches and go right out to the Pump pasture. The tents were up already, flags were flying every which way, and folks were running all over, busy.

"Like somebody was giving a party," I says.

Lucy never said a word. She'd gone along, kind of breathless, all the way down. All us that know each other best were there. And we were dying to[Pg 93] get into each other's lunches and see what each other had brought. So Jimmy Sturgis went to building fire for the coffee, and Eppleby went off for water, and Silas Sykes, that don't like to do much work, he says:

"Timothy, supposing we go along down and buy all our tickets and avoid the rush?"

We let them go, and occupied ourselves spreading down the cloth, and cutting up cake and veal loaf, and opening up pickles and jell. The maple shade came down nice on the cloth, and appetizing little picnic smells of potato salad and other things begun getting out around, and the whole time was cozy and close up to. We were just disposing the deviled eggs in a mound in the middle, when Silas Sykes and Timothy come fair running up the slope.

"My dum!" says Silas. "They won't leave us buy no tickets. They say the show is free."

"Free!" says most everybody but me in chorus.

"They say they ain't no ticket wagon, and they ain't going to be," says Silas. "What you going to make out that?"

"Blisterin' Benson!" says Timothy Toplady. "What I think is this, they're kidding us."

Lucy stood opening up a little bag she had.

"Here's one of the slips they threw round this morning," she says; "I dunno—"

She had it out and we studied it. We'd all seen them blowing round the streets, but nobody had paid[Pg 94] any attention. She held it out and they all stared at it:

FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE
IS INVITED TO COME TO THE CIRCUS
THIS AFTERNOON
FREE
NO TICKETS ON SALE
FREE ADMISSION
FOR
FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE

"My gracious," says Mis' Sykes, "I never heard of such a thing since the world began."

"Land, land!" says Mis' Toplady. "But what does it mean?"

"What does it mean?" says Silas Sykes. "What are we all being a party to?"

"I guess it's who are we being a party to, Silas," I says, mild.

They all looked at me. And then they looked where I was looking, and I was looking at something hard. Coming out of the main tent was a mass of struggling, wriggling, dancing humanity—little humanity—in short, the boys that had rode in the big wagon. And walking in the midst of them was a man.

At first not even I recognized him. He had his coat off, and his collar was turned in, his hat was on the back of his head, and he was smiling throughout his whole face, which was red.

[Pg 95]

"Look-at!" says I. "I guess that's who we're the party to—all of us."

"What do you mean?" Silas says again.

"I mean," says I, "that Nick Nordman's had this whole circus come here to the village and give it to us free. And I say, let's us rush down there and drag him up here to eat with us!"

It came to them so sudden that they all moved off like one man, and, as we started together, not caring who stole the whole lunch that we left laying idle under the tree, I turned and took a look at Lucy.

Land, she looked as I haven't seen her look in twenty years! Her head was back, her eyes were bright, her face was bright, and she didn't know one of us was there. She just went down the slope, running.

We came on him as he was distributing nickels destined for the peanut man that had just got his wagon going, savory. Nick didn't see us till we were right there, and then the nicest shamefaced look come over him, and he threw the rest of the nickels among the boys and left them scrambling, and met us.

"Nick Nordman! Is this your doings?" Silas plumped it at him, accusing.

"Gosh, no!" says Nick, grinning like a schoolboy. "It's the kids' doin's."

And when a millionaire can say "Gosh" like he said it, you can't feel remote from him. Nobody[Pg 96] could. Oh, how we talked at him, all round, a good many at a time. And I think everything there was to say, we said it. Anyway, I can't think of any exclamation to speak of that we left unexclaimed.

We all streamed up the slope, Silas near walking backward most of the way to take in the full magnitude of it. We sat down round the potato salad and the deviled eggs and the veal loaf, beaming. And it made a real nice minute.

Oh, and it was no time till we got to living over the old days. And it was no time till Timothy and Eppleby were rolling over, recalling this and bringing back that. It was no time at all till every one of us was back twenty-five to thirty years, and telling about it. And Lucy, that I'd maneuvered should sit by Nick, I caught her looking across at me kind of superior, and as if she could have told me, all the while, that something or other was so!

"Let's us drink him a toast," says Timothy Toplady when we got through. "Look-at here: To Nicholas Nordman, the big man of Friendship Village."

"Yes, sir!" says Silas Sykes. "And to Nicholas Nordman, that's give us ten thousand dollars and a circus!"

"No, sir!" says Eppleby Holcomb, sudden. "None of them things. Let's us drink just to Nick Nordman, that's come back home!" He up with his hand, and it came down on Nick Nordman's[Pg 97] shoulder with a sound you could have heard all acrost the grounds.

And as he did that, just for a fraction of nothing, Nick Nordman met my eyes. And we both knew what we both knew.

Just then the band struck up, and the people were already pouring in the pasture, so we scrabbled things up and all started for the tent. Nick was walking with Lucy.

"Lucy," I heard him say, "you look near enough like you used to, for you to be you!"

She looked like a girl as she answered him. "You are you, Nick," she says, simple and neat and direct.

And me—I walked along, feeling grand. I kind of felt what all of us was feeling, and what everybody was going to feel down there in the big tent, when they knew. But far, far more, I sensed the thing that Nick Nordman, walking there with us, with about a hundred and fifty boys all waiting to sit down side of him at his circus—the thing that Nick Nordman had found out.

"God bless you, Calliope," says he, when he got a chance.

"Oh!" I says. "He has. He has! He's made folks so awful nice—when they just let it show through!"