Mrs. Townsend was busy setting out pies on a trestle table in one corner for the pie-eating contest, and before she was through Johnny Dole and Ed Taggart’s son had got the three-legged race started, and over on the far side of the green the smallest Lovelands and all the other little children were hunting pennies in the sawdust. It was an odd thing, Ellen thought, how suddenly what had appeared to be a casual chaos of activities was pulled together. She wandered up to the church, and from there saw Pete surrounded like an old king by cronies and children … but where was Flicker? On her way home she called out to John. And John promised to fetch him as soon as he could.

“We didn’t know Old Pete was coming,” he explained. “Nobody told us.”

Then Ellen went in. There must be a hundred people milling around now, she thought, and half of them I don’t even know by name—all those people from the cottages. She felt suddenly tired and depressed, and on an impulse went up to the attic.