Then he realized that this was saying just a trifle too much. They began to crawfish their way out. But Barstow said, with unconviction:
"There's only one thing that worries me. Why did Shelby close up his Paradise Powder factory and move away?"
Pettibone urged the reason hastily: "His brothers closed it up for him. They wouldn't stand any more of his extravagant nonsense. They shut down the factory and then shut down on him, too."
"So he gave up his house and moved away?" said Barstow.
"He gave up his house because he couldn't keep it up," said Amasa Harbury. "Taxes were pretty steep and nobody would rent it, of course. It don't belong in a town like Wakefield. Neither did Shelby."
"Moved away, nothin'," sneered Spate. "He went to a boardin'-house and died there. Left his wife a lot of stock in a broken-down street-car line, and a no-good electric-light company, and an independent telephone system that the regulars gobbled up. She's gone back to teachin' school again. We used our influence to get her old job back. We didn't think we ought to blame her for the faults of Shelby."
"And what had Shelby done?"
They told him in their own way—treading on one another's toes in their anxiety; shutting one another up; hunching their chairs together in a tangle as if their slanders were wares they were trying to sell.
But about all that Barstow could make of the matter was that Shelby had been in much such case as his own. He had been hungry for human gratitude, and had not realized that it is won rather by accepting than by bestowing gifts.