Dabney put the plain little discourse into print and heightened its effect by an editorial couched in the plainest terms. We were none of us in the humor to hear a spade called an agricultural implement just then, and Dabney knew it; particularly when the mill dividends and the cemetery both showed a marked increase.
Something had to be done, and quickly, but we didn't exactly know how nor where to begin doing it. Laurence, insisting that this was really everybody's business, called a mass-meeting at the schoolhouse, and the Clarion requested every man who didn't intend to bring his women-folks to that meeting to please stay home himself. Wherefore Appleboro town and county came with the wife of its bosom—or maybe the wife came and fetched it along.
Laurence called the meeting to order, and his manner of addressing the feminine portion of his audience would have made his gallant grandfather challenge him. He hadn't a solitary pretty phrase to tickle the ears of the ladies—he spoke of and to them as women.
"And did you see how they fell for him?" rejoiced the Butterfly Man, afterward. "From the kid in a middy up to the great old girl with three chins and a prow like an ocean liner, they were with him. When you're in dead earnest, can the ladies; just go after women as women and they're with you every time. They know."
A Civic Leaguer followed Laurence, then Madame, and after her a girl from the mills, whose two small brothers went in one night. There were no set speeches. Everybody who spoke had something to say; and everybody who had something to say spoke. Then Westmoreland, who like Saul the king was taller by the head and shoulders than all Israel, bulked up big and good and begged us to remember that we couldn't do anything of permanent value until we first learned how to reach those folks we had been ignoring and neglecting. He said gruffly that Appleboro had dumped its whole duty in this respect upon the frail shoulders of one old priest, and that the Guest Rooms were overworked. Didn't the town want to do its share now? The town voted, unanimously, that it did.
There was a pause. Laurence asked if anybody else had anything to say? Apparently, anybody else hadn't.
"Well, then," said Laurence, smiling, "before we adjourn, is there anybody in particular that Appleboro County here assembled wants to hear?"
And at that came a sort of stir, a murmur, as of an immense multitude of bees:
"The Butterfly Man!" And louder: "The Butterfly Man!"
Followed a great hand-clapping, shrill whistles, the stamping of feet. And there he was, with Westmoreland and Laurence behind him as if to keep him from bolting. His face expressed a horrified astonishment. Twice, thrice, he opened his lips, and no words came. Then: