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36
MOSQUITOES

percent church attendance by keeping them afraid they'd miss something good by staying away?”

Mr. Talliaferro turned his stricken face to the others, one by one. After a while his interrogator said in a tone of cold displeasure: “You don’t mean to say you do not recall me?”

Mr. Talliaferro cringed. “Really, sir—I am distressed—” The other interrupted heavily.

“You were not at lunch to-day?”

“No,” Mr. Talliaferro replied with effusive gratitude, “I take only a glass of buttermilk at noon. I breakfast late, you see.” The other man stared at him with chill displeasure, and Mr. Talliaferro added with inspiration: “You have mistaken me for some one else, I fear.”

The stranger regarded Mr. Talliaferro for a cold moment. The waiter placed a dish before Mr. Talliaferro and he fell upon it in a flurry of acute discomfort.

“Do you mean—” began the stranger. Then he put his fork down and turned his disapproval coldly upon Fairchild. “Didn’t I understand you to say that this—gentleman was a member of Rotary?”

Mr. Talliaferro suspended his fork and he too looked at Fairchild in shocked unbelief. “I a member of Rotary?” he repeated.

“Why, I kind of got the impression he was,” Fairchild admitted. “Hadn’t you heard that Talliaferro was a Rotarian?” he appealed to the others. They were noncommittal and he continued: “I seem to recall somebody telling me you were a Rotarian. But then, you know how rumors get around. Maybe it is because of your prominence in the business life of our city. Talliaferro is a member of one of our largest ladies’ clothing houses,” he explained. “He is just the man to help you figure out some way to get God into the mercan-