Before them lay a dressmaker’s dummy, the wire and padded model on which dresses are fitted and shown.  With its armless and headless bust, abruptly ending in a hooped wire skirt, it completely filled the sides of the box.

“Shut the door,” said the president promptly.

The order was obeyed.  The single hysteric shriek of laughter had been followed by a deadly, ironical silence.  The president, with supernatural gravity, lifted it out and set it up on its small, round, disk-like pedestal.

“It’s some cussed fool blunder of that confounded express company,” burst out the unlucky purchaser.  But there was no echo to his outburst.  He looked around with a timid, tentative smile.  But no other smile followed his.

“It looks,” said the president, with portentous gravity, “like the beginnings of a fine woman, that might show up, if you gave her time, into a first-class goddess.  Of course she ain’t all here; other boxes with sections of her, I reckon, are under way from her factory, and will meander along in the course of the year.  Considerin’ this as a sample—­I think, gentlemen,” he added, with gloomy precision, “we are prepared to accept it, and signify we’ll take more.”

“It ain’t, perhaps, exactly the idee that we’ve been led to expect from previous description,” said Dick Flint, with deeper seriousness; “for instance, this yer branch of thorns we heard of ez bein’ held behind her is wantin’, as is the arms that held it; but even if they had arrived, anybody could see the thorns through them wires, and so give the hull show away.”

“Jam it into its box again, and we’ll send it back to the confounded express company with a cussin’ letter,” again thundered the wretched purchaser.

“No, sonny,” said the president with gentle but gloomy determination, “we’ll fasten on to this little show jest as it is, and see what follows.  It ain’t every day that a first-class sell like this is worked off on us accidentally.”

It was quite true!  The settlement had long since exhausted every possible form of practical joking, and languished for a new sensation.  And here it was!  It was not a thing to be treated angrily, nor lightly, nor dismissed with that single hysteric laugh.  It was capable of the greatest possibilities!  Indeed, as Washington Trigg looked around on the imperturbably ironical faces of his companions, he knew that they felt more true joy over the blunder than they would in the possession of the real statue.  But an exclamation from the fifth member, who was examining the box, arrested their attention.

“There’s suthin’ else here!”

He had found under the heavier wrapping a layer of tissue-paper, and under that a further envelope of linen, lightly stitched together.  A knife blade quickly separated the stitches, and the linen was carefully unfolded.  It displayed a beautifully trimmed evening dress of pale blue satin, with a dressing-gown of some exquisite white fabric armed with lace.  The men gazed at it in silence, and then the one single expression broke from their lips,—­