It raised sin with Indian Stones. Calder was cleaned out. Davis lost most of Marilyn's money. The Pattonssold their Fifth Avenue mansion. I dropped a handsome chunk of the ancestral Plum fortune. Waite lost less, perhaps, than the rest of us. But he was the worst scared and the most bitter. He was older-by five years or more-than most of us. He's nearly seventy now. Anyway--we were very thick in those days. Entertained for each other in New York all winter. Had a whist club up here that met two nights every week--without fail. I mean to say--we'd grown up together--like this present generation here. We were in grooves together; we established habits--ruts. We knew each other as well as if we were in one family. Do you see?" Aggie nodded. "All right. Think of us. Then think of the people you knew who acted batty after the 1929 crash. People hoarded so much gold, for example, that the government had to call it in. Plenty of people, in 1932, were actually stocking their country places with supplies--as if for a siege.
