He told her. Her eyes sparkled.
"Wonderful," she cried. "This year it will be two hundred years old. We'll give an historic pageant—the Growth of Civilization in Granville."
"It sounds expensive," objected Mr. Pottle.
"Don't be sordid, Ambrose," said his wife.
"I'm not sordid, Blossom," he returned. "I'm a practical man. I know these kermesses and feats. My cousin Julia Onderdonk got up a pageant in Peoria once and now she hasn't a friend in the place. Besides it only netted fourteen dollars for the Bide-a-wee Home. Now, honey, why not give a good, old-fashioned chicken supper in the church hall, with perhaps a minstrel show afterward? That would get my money——"
"Chicken supper! Minstrel show! Oh, Ambrose." His wife's snort was the acme of refinement. "Have you no soul? This pageant will be an inspiring thing. It will make for, I might almost say militate for, a community spirit. Other communities give pageant after pageant. Shall Granville lag behind? Here is a chance for a real community get-together. Here is a chance to give our young people the wonderful history of their native town——"
"And also a chance for all the Gulick tribe to parade around in colonial clothes with spinning wheels under their arms," put in Mr. Pottle.
"I'm afraid we can't avoid that," admitted his wife, ruefully. "After all, they are our oldest family."
She meditated.
"I suppose," she mused, "that Mrs. P. Bradley Gulick would have to be the Spirit of Progress——"