Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/302

 the very excellent reason that there never was any capital with which to give the projects a try-out. While the mem- bers subscribed with glad and openhanded generosity, to collect the subscriptions was another matter.

. Heretofore suggestions had come sporadically; now it was believed that as the concentrated wills of powerful minds are alleged to have moved inanimate objects, some- what in the same fashion concerted effort on the part of the Boosters Club might result in something tangible.

The meeting was called for Monday night, and with only twenty-four hours in which to think of something for Prouty's salvation, the heads of households taxed their brains diligently for an original idea to offer.

No such perturbation obtained in the Toomey family, however, where Mr. and Mrs. Toomey chattered in gay excitement, the like of which they had not experienced since their memorable trip to Chicago. With his hands thrust deep in his trousers pockets, Toomey swaggered, resembling nothing so much as a pheasant strutting and drumming on a log for his mate's edification, and, not un- like the female bird of sober coloring, Mrs. Toomey looked and listened with a return of much of her old-time admiration, though the cause for Toomey's present state of exultation was, in its inception, due to her own suggest tion.

" I'll show these pin-heads something," Toomey boasted. " The day'll come," he levelled at his wife an impressive finger, " when they'll nudge each other and say, ' There goes Toomey's Dogl ' "

Mrs. Toomey sighed happily, " It's like a story ! "

" Nothing comes to you unless you go after it," Toomey declared, in the voice of a man who has succeeded and is giving the benefit of his experience to the less fprtu- nate.