“I thought,” said Mrs. Bulkham, “that you understood I wanted one for my daughter and myself, if she came.”
“I certainly didn’t,” said Mrs. Makely, with a wink of concentrated wickedness at me. “But, if you do, you will have to say so now, without any ifs or ands about it; and if any of the tickets come back—I let friends have a few on sale—I will give you two.”
“Well, I do,” said Mrs. Bulkham, after a moment.
“Very well; it will be five dollars for the two. I feel bound to get all I can for the cause. Shall I put your name down?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Bulkham, rather crossly; but Mrs. Makely inscribed her name on her tablets with a radiant amiability, which suffered no eclipse when, within the next fifteen minutes, a dozen other ladies hurried up and bought in at the same rate.
I could not stand it, and I got up to go away, feeling extremely particeps criminis. Mrs. Makely seemed to have a conscience as light as air.
“If Reuben Camp or the head-waiter don’t bring back some of those tickets, I don’t know what I shall do. I shall have to put chairs into the aisles and charge five dollars apiece for as many people as I can crowd in there. I never knew anything so perfectly providential.”
“I envy you the ability to see it in that light, Mrs. Makely,” I said, faint at heart. “Suppose Camp crowds the place full of his trainmen, how will the ladies that you’ve sold tickets to at five dollars apiece like it?”
“Pooh! What do I care how they like it! Horrid things! And for repairs on the house of Gawd, it’s the same as being in church, where everybody is equal.”
The time passed. Mrs. Makely sold chances to all the ladies in the house; on Friday night Reuben Camp brought her a hundred dollars; the head-waiter had already paid in twenty-five. “I didn’t dare to ask them if they speculated on them,” she confided to me. “Do you suppose they would have the conscience?”