A whole street of houses, all alike,
universally ugly, had been added to the vast number of new houses already
built by that energetic carpenter and his partner Gordon Hart.
To the people who lived in these houses, the excitement of Tom Butterworth
and Jim Priest meant nothing. Half sullenly they worked, striving to make
money enough to take them back to their native lands. In the new place they
had not, as they had hoped, been received as brothers. A marriage or a
death there meant nothing to them.
To the old townsmen however, those who remembered Tom when he was a simple
farmer and when Steve Hunter was looked upon with contempt as a boasting
young squirt, the night rocked with excitement. Men ran through the
streets. Drivers lashed their horses along roads. Tom was everywhere. He
was like a general in charge of the defenses of a besieged town. The cooks
at all three of the town's hotels were sent back into their kitchens,
waiters were found and hurried out to the Butterworth house, and Henry
Heller's orchestra was instructed to get out there at once and to start
playing the liveliest possible music.
Tom asked every man and woman he saw to the wedding party. The hotel keeper
was invited with his wife and daughter and two or three keepers of stores
who came to the hotel to bring supplies were asked, commanded to come. Then
there were the men of the factories, the office men and superintendents,
new men who had never seen Clara.
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