Jack Hodge she obeyed. She returned to them about five minutes later.
"Mr. Church tells me we are still five thousand dollars short of our quota and the business of the evening is about over." She looked around among them for a likely victim. "Well, who's going to save the honor of the dear old committee by, what do you Americans call it, 'coming across'?"
"Well," drawled Jack for one, "the evening, as you say, is drawing late and personally I'm broke."
The others indicated that they were in a similar state. Carmelita cajoled a while but she soon saw it was no use. They had really spent all that they intended to. There was a limit.
"All right," she cried, "if you haven't money, perhaps some one can offer a suggestion how we're-going to get this five thousand within the next and last half hour. Because it will be Sunday in half an hour and the good folks of Hedgewood will disperse to their homes." Silence. "Who'll raffle off his Rolls-Royce, for instance?"
"Why don't you do something brilliant yourself, Carmelita? It's your funeral," drawled Lucy Hodge.
"For example?" Lucy was stumped for an instant.
