The sensation caused by this extra and wholly unexpected bit of news was thorough and sincere. Everybody looked at everybody else.
Mrs. Dunstall pressed forward. "Haven't they paid, either?" she asked, with horror in her voice.
"Oh, yes, they've paid." Mrs. Ray was quickly reassuring on this point. "But with them, it's something else. I don't know for sure just what, but I guess that eldest one's beginning to see that it's no use as far as she's concerned; but she'll have to do something with that house she was fixing up to live in. Sarah Catt told me she never heard anything so crazy as building a house to live in while a dam that Mr. Ledge don't want built is being built. She says her husband says that dam never will be built. She says Mr. Ledge is very quiet, but he's very sensible and he says there's quicksands all under us."
This statement caused another flutter of sensation.
"Can't you dam a quicksand? I thought it run just like water." Thus Joey Beall's fiancée from the back.
"No, you can't," said Pinkie. "I know."
"I'd be sorry to see the dam go," said Mrs. Wiley. "Cousin Catterwallis Granger looked to see it raise all the property around here."
"Drown all the property around here, you mean," said Mrs. Ray. "I thank heaven it's the Dam Commission and not me who'll have to adjust all that dam's going to drown before it gets done. Josiah Bates says he heard that they'll have to take up all the cemeteries from here to Cromwell."
"Why?" asked Pinkie.
"Why? Why, because no matter what powers a commission can hold over the living, no legislature can find a law for drowning the dead, I guess. They've all got to be moved and set out in rows again in a new place. Seems like I never will see the last of Mr. Ray's two wives! But I shan't have to pay for their new start in life this time, anyway."