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 in this district where one dollar often represented the profits on a whole load of market truck brought to the city.

Crash! went the potato masher. “Fifty cents I’m bid. Who'll make it seventy-five? Who'll make it seventy-five?”

“Sixty!” Johannes Ambuul, a widower, his age more than the sum of his bid.

“Seventy!” Gerrit Pon.

Adam Ooms whispered it—hissed it. “S-s-s-seventy. Ladies and gents, I wouldn’t repeat out loud sucha figger. I would be ashamed. Look at this basket, gents, and then you can say S-S-Seventy!”

“Seventy-five!” the cautious Ambuul.

Scarlet, flooding her face, belied the widow’s outward air of composure. Pervus DeJong, standing beside Selina, viewed the proceedings with an air of detachment. High Prairie was looking at him expectantly, openly. The widow bit her red lip, tossed her head. Pervus DeJong returned the auctioneer’s meaning smirk with the mild gaze of a disinterested outsider. High Prairie, Low Prairie, and New Haarlem sat tense, like an audience at a play. Here, indeed, was drama being enacted in a community whose thrills were all too rare.

“Gents!” Adam Ooms’s voice took on a tearful note—the tone of one who is more hurt than angry. “Gents!” Slowly, with infinite reverence, he lifted one corner of the damask cloth that concealed the