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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53650 ***
+
+MOTHERS TO MEN
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
+SAN FRANCISCO
+
+MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+
+LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
+MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+
+TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+MOTHERS TO MEN
+
+BY
+
+ZONA GALE
+
+AUTHOR OF "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE," "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE
+LOVE STORIES," "THE LOVES OF PELLEAS
+AND ETARRE," ETC.
+
+New York
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+1911
+
+_All Rights Reserved_
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING COMPANY, THE RIDGEWAY
+COMPANY, THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, AND THE STANDARD
+FASHION COMPANY.
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1911,
+
+BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911.
+
+Norwood Press
+J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+MOTHERS TO MEN
+
+
+"Daddy!"
+
+The dark was so thick with hurrying rain that the child's voice was
+drowned. So he splashed forward a few steps in the mud and puddles of
+the highway and plucked at the coat of the man tramping before. The man
+took a hand from a pocket and stooped somewhat to listen, still plodding
+ahead.
+
+"Daddy! It's the hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went right
+through that hole an' it chokes my toe awful."
+
+The man suddenly squatted in the mud, presenting a broad, scarcely
+distinguishable back.
+
+"Climb up," he commanded.
+
+The boy wavered. His body ached with weariness, his feet were sore and
+cold, something in his head was numb. But in a moment he ran on, two
+steps or three, past the man.
+
+"Nope," he said, "I'm seeing if I could walk all the way. I could--yet.
+I just told you 'bout my toe, daddy, 'cause I _had_ to talk about it."
+
+The man said nothing, but he rose and groped for the child's arm and
+got it about the armpit, and, now and then as they walked, he pulled the
+shoulder awkwardly upward, trying to help.
+
+After a time of silence the rain subsided a little, so that the child's
+voice was less like a drowned butterfly.
+
+"Daddy," he said, "what's velvet?"
+
+"I dunno, sonny. Some kind of black cloth, I guess. Why?"
+
+"It came in my head," the child explained. "I was tryin' to think of
+nice things. Velvet sounds like a king's clothes--but it sounds like a
+coffin too. I didn't know if it's a nice thing."
+
+This, the man understood swiftly, was because _her_ coffin had been
+black velvet--the coffin which he had had no money to buy for her, for
+his wife and the boy's mother, the coffin which had been bought with the
+poor fund of a church which he had never entered. "What other nice thing
+you been thinkin' of?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Circus. An' angels. An' ice-cream. An' a barrel o' marbles. An' bein'
+warm an' clean stockin's an' rocked...."
+
+"My God!" said the man.
+
+The child looked up expectantly.
+
+"Did he say anything back?" he inquired eagerly.
+
+"Not a word," said the man in his throat.
+
+"Lemme try," said the child. "God--oh, God--_God dear_!" he called into
+the night.
+
+From the top of the hill on the edge of the Pump pasture which in that
+minute they had reached, they suddenly saw, cheery and yellow and alive,
+the lamps of Friendship Village, shining in the valley; and away at one
+side, less in serene contemplation than in deliberate withdrawal, shone
+the lights of a house set alone on its hill.
+
+"Oh, daddy, daddy--look at the lights!" the child cried. "God didn't say
+nothin' with words. Maybe he talks with lights instead of 'em."
+
+The man quickened his steps until, to keep pace with him, the little boy
+broke into uneven running.
+
+"Is those lights where we're goin', daddy?" he asked.
+
+"That's where," said the man. He put his hand in his pocket and felt for
+the fifteen cents that lay there, wrapped in paper. The fancied odour
+and warmth of something to drink caught at him until he could hardly
+bear the longing.
+
+But before he could get to the drink he must do something else. The man
+had been fighting away the thought of what he meant to do. But when they
+entered the village and were actually upon its main street, lonely in
+the rainy, eight o'clock summer dusk, what he meant to do had to be
+faced. So he began looking this way and that for a place to leave the
+child. There was a wagon shop. Old wagons stood under the open shed,
+their thills and tongues hanging, not expectant of journeys like those
+of new wagons, but idle, like the worn arms of beaten men. Some men, he
+thought, would leave the boy there, to sleep under a seat and be found
+in the morning; but he was no such father as that, he reflected
+complacently. He meant to leave the boy in a home, give him a fair
+start. There was a little house with a broken picket fence--someway she
+wouldn't have liked him to be there; _she_ always liked things nice. He
+had never been able to give the boy much that was nice, but now, he said
+to himself, he would take nothing second rate. There was a grocery with
+a light above stairs where very likely the family lived, and there, too,
+was a dry stairway where the child could sit and wait until somebody
+came--no, not there either.... "The best ain't none too good for the
+little fellow," thought the man.
+
+"Dad-_ee_!" cried the child suddenly.
+
+He had run a few steps on and stood with his nose against the misty pane
+of Abagail Arnold's Home Bakery. Covered with pink mosquito-netting were
+a plate of sugar rolls, a fruit cake, a platter of cream puffs, and a
+tall, covered jar of shelled nuts.
+
+"Hustle up--you!" said the man roughly, and took him by the arm again.
+
+"I was comin'," said the little boy.
+
+Why not leave the child at the bakery? No--a house. It must be a house,
+with a porch and a front stair and big upstairs rooms and a look of
+money-in-the-bank. He was giving care to the selection. It was as if he
+were exercising some natural paternal office, to be scrupulously
+discharged. Music issued from the wooden saloon building with the false
+two-story front and the coloured windows; from a protesting piano a
+dance tune was being furiously forced, and, as the door swung open, the
+tap and thud of feet, the swell of voices and laughter, the odour of the
+spirits caught at the cold and weary man. "Hurry along--hurry along!" he
+bade the boy roughly. That was where he would come back afterward, but
+first he must find the right place for the boy.
+
+Vaguely he was seeking for that section of the village which it would
+call "the residence part," with that ugly and naked appropriation of the
+term which excludes all the humbler homes from residence-hood at all.
+But when he had turned aside from the main street he came upon the First
+Church, with lights streaming from the ground-glass windows of the
+prayer-meeting room, and he stood still, staring up at it.
+
+She had cared a good deal about that sort of thing. Churches did
+good--it was a church that had buried her when he could not. Why not
+there? Why not leave the child there?
+
+He turned aside and mounted the three wooden steps and sat down, drawing
+the boy beside him. Grateful for a chance to rest, the child turned
+sidewise and dropped his head heavily on his father's arm. There was
+light enough for the father to see the thick, wet hair on the babyish
+forehead.
+
+"I did walked all the way, didn't I?" the child said triumphantly.
+
+"You bet you did," said his father absently.
+
+Since the boy's mother had died only three months had passed, but in
+that time had been crowded for the child a lifetime of physical misery.
+Before that time, too, there had been hunger and cold and the torture of
+the continual quarreling between that mother, sickly, half-fed,
+irritable, and this father, out of work and drunken. Then the mother had
+died, and the man had started out with the boy, seeking new work where
+they would not know his old vice. And in these three months, for the
+boy's sake, that old vice had been kept bound. For the boy's sake he had
+been sober and, if the chance had come, he would have been industrious.
+But, save for odd jobs, the chance never came; there seemed to be a kind
+of ineffectualness in the way he asked for work which forbade him a
+trial. Then one day, after almost three months of the struggle, he had
+waked to the old craving, to the need, the instant need, for liquor. He
+had faced the situation honestly. He knew, or thought he knew, his power
+of endurance. He knew that in a day or two he would be worsted, and that
+there would follow a period of which, afterward, he would remember
+nothing. Meanwhile, what of the boy? He had a fondness for the boy, and
+there remained to the man some shreds of decency and even of tradition.
+He would not turn him over to the "authorities." He would not cast him
+adrift in the city. He resolved to carry him to the country, to some
+near little town where, dimly it seemed to him, the people would be
+more likely to take him in. "They have more time--an' more room--an'
+more to eat," he sought to explain it to himself. So he had walked, and
+the child had walked, from the City to Friendship Village. He must find
+a place to leave him: why not leave him here on the church steps,
+"outside the meetin'?"
+
+"Don't you go to sleep, kiddie," he said, and shook him lightly.
+
+"I was jus' restin' my eye-flaps. Eye-things. _What_ are they, daddy?"
+
+"Eye-lids."
+
+"Yes. Them. They're tired, too," said the child, and smiled--the sleepy
+smile which gave his face a baby winsomeness. Then he snuggled in the
+curve of arm, like a drowsy, nosing puppy.
+
+The father sat looking down on him, and in his breast something pulled.
+In these three months he had first become really acquainted with the
+boy, had first performed for him little personal offices--sewed on a
+button or two, bought him shoes, bound up a hurt finger. In this time,
+too, he had first talked with him alone, tried to answer his questions.
+"Where _is_ my mamma, an' will she rock somebody else?" "Are you going
+to be my daddy till you die, an' _then_ who'll be?" "What is the biggest
+thing everybody knows? Can I know it too?"... Also, in these three
+months, at night he had gone to sleep, sometimes in a bed, oftener in a
+barn, now and again under the stars, with the child breathing within his
+reach, and had waked to keep him covered with his own coat. Now he was
+going to end all this.
+
+"It ain't fair to the kid not to. It ain't fair to cart him around like
+this," he said over and over, defending himself before some dim
+dissenter.
+
+The boy suddenly swung back from his father's arm and looked up in his
+face. "Will--will there be any supper till morning?" he asked.
+
+You might have thought that the man did not hear, he sat so still
+looking down the wet road-ruts shining under the infrequent lamps.
+Hunger and cold, darkness and wet and ill-luck--why should he not keep
+the boy from these? It was not deserting his child; it was giving him
+into better hands. It did not occur to him that the village might not
+accept the charge. Anything would be better than what he himself had to
+give. Hunger and cold and darkness....
+
+"You stay still here a minute, sonny," said the man.
+
+"You goin' 'way?" the child demanded.
+
+"A minute. You stay still here--right where you are," said the man, and
+went into the darkness.
+
+The little boy sat still. He was wide awake now that he was alone; the
+walls of the dark seemed suddenly to recede, and instead of merely the
+church steps there was the whole black, listening world to take account
+of. He sat alert, trying to warm each hand on the cold wrist of its
+fellow. Where had his father gone? To find them a place to stay? Suppose
+he came back and said that he had found them a home; and they should go
+to it; and it would have a coal stove and a bedstead, and a pantry with
+cookies and brown sugar in the jars. And a lady would come and cook
+molasses candy for him....
+
+All this time something was hurting him intolerably. It was the foot,
+and the biggest toe, and the hole that was "choking" _him_. He fumbled
+at his shoe laces, but they were wet and the shoes were wet and sodden,
+and he gave it up. Where had his father gone? How big the world seemed
+when he was gone, and how _different_ the night was. And when the lady
+had the molasses candy cooked, like in a story, she would cool it at the
+window and they would cut it in squares....
+
+As suddenly as he had gone, his father reappeared from the darkness.
+
+"Here," he said roughly, and thrust in the child's hands a paper bag.
+And when he had opened it eagerly there were sugar rolls and cream puffs
+and a piece of fruit cake and some shelled nuts. Fifteen cents' worth of
+food, badly enough selected, in all conscience, but--fifteen cents'
+worth. The fifteen cents which the man had been carrying in his pocket,
+wrapped in paper.
+
+"Now set there," said his father, "an' eat 'em up. An' listen, son. Set
+there till folks come out from in there. Set there till they come out.
+An' here's somethin' I'm puttin' in your coat pocket--see? It's a paper.
+Don't you look at it. But when the folks come out from in there--an' ask
+you anything--you show 'em that. Remember. Show 'em that."
+
+In the prayer-meeting room the reed organ sent out some trembling,
+throaty chords, and the little group in there sang an old melody. It was
+strange to the man, as he listened--
+
+
+     "Break thou the bread of life
+     To me, to me--"
+
+
+but, "That's it," he thought, "that's it. Break it to him--I can't. All
+I can give him is stuff in a paper bag, an' not always that. Now you
+break it to him--"
+
+"Dad-_ee_!" cried the child. "You!"
+
+Startled, the man looked down at him. It was almost like a counter
+charge. But the child was merely holding out to him half his store. The
+man shook his head and went down the steps to the sidewalk and turned to
+look back at the child munching happily from the paper sack. "Break it
+to him--break it to him--God!" the father muttered, as he might have
+used a charm.
+
+Again the child looked out expectantly.
+
+"Did he say anything back?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"Not a word--not a word," said the man again. This time he laughed,
+nervously and foolishly. "But mebbe he will," he mumbled
+superstitiously. "I dunno. Now, you set there. An' then you give 'em the
+paper--an' go with anybody out o' the church that asks you. Dad may not
+get back for--quite a while...."
+
+The man went. The child, deep in the delight of a cream puff, wondered
+and looked after him troublously, and was vaguely comforted by the
+murmur of voices beyond the doors.
+
+"Why, God didn't answer back because he was to the church meeting," the
+child thought, when he heard the people moving about within.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"Inside the church that night," Calliope Marsh is wont to tell it, "the
+Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality was having one
+of our special meetings, with hot chocolate and ice lemonade and two
+kinds of wafers. There wasn't a very big attendance, account of the
+rain, and there was so much refreshments ready that us ladies was urgin'
+the men to have all they wanted.
+
+"'Drink both kinds, Timothy,' Mis Toplady says to her husband,
+persuadin'; 'it'll have to be throwed away if somebody don't drink it
+up.'
+
+"'Lord, Amandy,' says Timothy, testy, 'I do hate to be sicked on to my
+food like that. It takes away my appetite, same as poison would.'
+
+"'They always do it,' says Jimmy Sturgis, morose. 'My wife'll say to me,
+"Jimmy, eat up them cold peas. They'll spoil if you don't," and, "Jimmy,
+can't you make 'way with them cold pancakes?" Till I wish't I could
+starve.'
+
+"'Well, if you hadn't et up things,' says Mis' Sturgis, mild, 'we'd of
+been scrappin' in the poor-house by now. I dunno but I'd ruther scrap
+where I am.'
+
+"'Sure!' says Postmaster Silas Sykes, that always pours oil on troubled
+waters except when the trouble is his own; and then he churns them.
+
+"'I dunno what ailed me in business meeting to-night,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I declare, I was full as nervous as a
+witch. I couldn't keep my feet still anywheres.'
+
+"'The fidgets,' comprehends Mis' Uppers, sympathetic. 'I get 'em in my
+feet 'long toward night sometimes. Turn an' twist an' shift--I know the
+feeling. Whenever my feet begin that, I always give right up an' take
+off my shoes an' get into my rubbers.'
+
+"'Well, I wish't I had some rubbers now,' says Mis' Mayor Uppers. 'I
+wore my best shoes out to tea an' come right from tea here, like a
+maniac. An' now look at me, in my Three Dollar-and-a-half kids an' the
+streets runnin' rivers.'
+
+"'You take my rubbers,' Mis' Timothy Toplady offered. 'I've set with 'em
+on all evening because I always get 'em mixed up at Sodality, an' I
+declare the water'll feel good to my poor feet.'
+
+"'No, no, don't you trouble,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I'll just slip my shoes
+off an' track that one block in my stocking feet. Then I'll put 'em in
+good, hot water an' go to bed. I wouldn't of come out to-night at all
+if it hadn't of been for the professor.'
+
+"'For goodness' sakes,' I says, 'don't call him that. You know how he
+hates it.'
+
+"'But I do like to say it,' Mis' Uppers insists, wistful. 'He's the only
+professor I ever knew.'
+
+"'Me either,' I says--and I knew how she felt.
+
+"Just the same, we was getting to like Mr. Insley too much to call him
+that if he didn't want it, or even 'doctor' that was more common, though
+over to Indian Mound College, half way between us and the City, he is
+one or both, and I dunno but his name tapers off with capital letters,
+same as some.
+
+"'I just came over here to work,' he told us when we first see him. 'I
+don't profess anything. And "doctor" means teacher, you know, and I'm
+just learning things. Must you have a formal title for me? Won't Mr.
+do?'
+
+"Most of the College called him just 'Insley,' friendly and approving,
+and dating back to his foot-ball days, and except when we was speaking
+to him, we commonly got to calling him that too. A couple of months
+before he'd come over from the College with a letter of introduction
+from one of the faculty to Postmaster Silas Sykes, that is an alderman
+and our professional leading citizen. The letter from the College said
+that we could use Mr. Insley in any local civic work we happened to be
+doing.
+
+"'Civic work?' Silas says to him, thoughtful. 'You mean shuttin' up
+saloons an' like that?'
+
+"'Not necessarily,' he told him. 'Just work with folks, you know.'
+
+"'Well-a, settin' out bushes?' Silas asks.
+
+"'Whatever you're most interested in, Mr. Sykes,' says he. 'Isn't there
+some organization that's doing things here?'
+
+"Silas wasn't interested in so very much of anything except Silas. But
+the word 'organization' helped him out.
+
+"'There's the Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality,'
+says he. 'That must be the very kind of a thing you mean.'
+
+"Insley laughed a little, but he let Mis' Sykes, that loves new things
+and new people, bring him to our next evening meeting in the church
+parlors, and he'd been back several times, not saying much, but just
+getting acquainted. And that rainy night, when the men met with us to
+talk over some money raising for Sodality, we'd asked him to come over
+too. We all liked him. He had a kind of a used-to-things way, and you
+felt like you'd always known him or, for the time you hadn't, that
+you'd both missed something out; and he had a nice look too, a look that
+seemed to be saying 'good morning' and to be beginning a fine, new
+day--the best day yet.
+
+"He'd set there kind of broodin' the most of that evening, drinking
+whatever anybody brought him, but not putting his mind to it so very
+much; but it was a bright broodin', an' one that made you think of
+something that's going to open and not just of something that's shut up.
+You can brood both ways, but the effect is as different as a bud from a
+core.
+
+"'Speakin' of money raisin' for Sodality,' says Silas Sykes, kind of
+pretend hearty and pretend casual, like he does, 'why don't Sodality
+make some money off'n the Fourth of July? Everybody else is.'
+
+("Sodality always speaks of itself and of the Cemetery real intimate,
+without the _the_, an' everybody's got to doing it.)
+
+"Us ladies all set still and kept still. The Fourth of July, that was
+less than a week off, was a sore point with us, being we'd wanted a
+celebration that would _be_ a celebration, and not merely a money-raiser
+for the town.
+
+"'Oh, I say canvass, house to house,' says Timothy. 'Folks would give
+you a dime to get you off'n the front porch that wouldn't come out to a
+dime entertainment, never.'
+
+"'Why not ask them that's got Dead in their own families, to pay out for
+'em, an' leave them alone that's got livin' mouths to feed?' says Threat
+Hubbelthwait, querulous. Threat ain't no relations but his wife, and he
+claims to have no Dead of his own. I always say they must be either
+living or dead, or else where's Threat come in? But he won't admit it.
+
+"'What you raisin' money for anyhow?' asks Eppleby Holcomb, quiet.
+Eppleby always keeps still a long time, and then lets out something
+vital.
+
+"As a matter of fact, Sodality didn't have no real work on hand,
+Cemetery lookin' real neat and tasty for Cemetery, and no immediate dead
+coming on as far as we could know; but we didn't have much of anything
+in the treasury, either. And when we didn't have any work on hand, we
+was in the habit of raising money, and when we'd got some money earnt,
+we was in the habit of devising some nice way to spend it. And so we
+kept Sodality real alive.
+
+"'Well, there may not be any active dead just now,' Mis' Sykes explains
+it, 'but they are sure to die and need us. We had two country funerals
+to pay for last year. Or I might say, one an' a half, one corpse
+contributing half enough for his own support in Cemetery.'
+
+"With that Insley spoke up, kind of firm and nice, with muscles in his
+tone, like he does:
+
+"'What's the matter with doing something with these folks before they
+die?' he asks.
+
+"I guess we all looked kind of blank--like when you get asked _why_
+Columbus discovered America and all you know how to answer is just the
+date he done so on.
+
+"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'do what?'
+
+"'Mustn't there be something to do with them, living, if there's
+everything to be done for them, dead?' Insley asks.
+
+"'Well-a' says Mis' Sykes, 'I don't know that I understand just how you
+mean that. Perhaps the Mission Band--'
+
+"'No,' says Insley. 'You. Us.'
+
+"I never knew a man to say so little and yet to get so much said.
+
+"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'of course Sodality was formed with the idee
+of caring for Cemetery. You see that lets in the Dead only.'
+
+"'Gosh,' says Eppleby Holcomb, 'how exclusive.' But I don't know as
+anybody heard him but me.
+
+"'I know,' says Insley, slow. 'Well, at any rate, perhaps there are
+things that all of us Living might do together--for the sake, say, of
+earning some money for the Dead. There'd be no objection to that, would
+there?'
+
+"'Oh, no,' says Mis' Sykes. 'I'm sure nobody could take exception to
+_that_. Of course you always have to earn money out of the living.'
+
+"Insley looked at us all kind of shy--at one and another and another of
+us, like he thought he might find some different answer in somebody's
+eyes. I smiled at him, and so did Mis' Toplady, and so did Eppleby; and
+Mis' Eleanor Emmons, the widow-lady, lately moved in, she nodded. But
+the rest set there like their faces was on wrong side out and didn't
+show no true pattern.
+
+"'I mean,' he says, not quite knowing how to make us understand what he
+was driving at, 'I mean, let's get to know these folks while they are
+alive. Aren't we all more interested in folks, than we are in their
+graves?'
+
+"'_Folks_,' Timothy Toplady says over, meditative, like he'd heard of
+members, customers, clients, murderers and the like, but never of folks.
+
+"'I mean,' Insley says again, 'oh, any one of a dozen things. For
+instance, do something jolly that'll give your young people something to
+do evenings--get them to help earn the money for Cemetery, if you want
+to,' he adds, laughing a little.
+
+"'There's goin' to be a Vigilance Committee to see after the young folks
+of Friendship Village, nights,' says Silas Sykes, grim.
+
+"'You might have town parties, have the parties in schools and in the
+town hall,' Insley goes on, 'and talk over the Cemetery that belongs to
+you all, and talk over the other things besides the Cemetery that belong
+to you all. Maybe I could help,' he adds, 'though I own up to you now
+I'm really more fond of folks--speaking by and large--than I am of
+tombstones.'
+
+"He said a little more to us, about how folks was doing in the world
+outside the village, and he was so humorous about it that they never
+knew how something inside him was hopping with hope, like I betted it
+was, with his young, divine enthusiasm. And when he'd got done he
+waited, all grave and eager, for somebody to peep up. And it was, as it
+would be, Silas Sykes who spoke first.
+
+"'It's all right, it's all right,' says he, 'so long as Sodality don't
+go meddling in the village affairs--petitionin' the council and
+protestin' an' so on. That gets any community all upset.'
+
+"'That's so,' says Timothy, nodding. 'Meetin', singin' songs, servin'
+lemonade an' plantin' things in the ground is all right enough. It helps
+on the fellow feelin' amazin'. But pitchin' in for reforms and things--'
+Timothy shook his head.
+
+"'As to reforms,' says Insley, 'give me the fellowship, and the reforms
+will take care of themselves.'
+
+"'Things is quite handy about takin' their course, though,' says Silas,
+'so be we don't yank open the cocoons an' buds an' others.'
+
+"'Well,' says Mis' Uppers, 'I can't do much more, Professor. I'm drove
+to death, as it is. I don't even get time to do my own improvin' round
+the place.' Mis' Uppers always makes that her final argument. 'Sew for
+the poor?' I've heard her say. 'Why, I can't even get my own fall sewing
+done.'
+
+"'Me, too,' and, 'Me, either,' went round the circle. And, 'I can't do a
+great deal myself,' says Mis' Sykes, 'not till after my niece goes
+away.'
+
+"I thought, 'I shouldn't think you could tend to much of anything else,
+not with Miss Beryl Sessions in the house.' That was the Sykes's niece,
+till then unknown to them, that we'd all of us heard nothing but, since
+long before she come. But of course I kept still, part because I was
+expecting an unknown niece of my own in a week or so, and your unknown
+relatives is quite likely to be glass houses.
+
+"'Another thing,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'don't let's us hold any
+doin's in this church, kicking up the new cork that the Ladies' Aid has
+just put down on the floor. It'll all be tracked up in no time, letting
+in Tom, Dick, and Harry.'
+
+"'Don't let's get the church mixed up in anything outside, for pity's
+sakes,' says Silas. 'The trustees'll object to our meeting here, if we
+quit working for a dignified object and go to making things mutual,
+promiscuous. Churches has got to be church-like.'
+
+"'Well, Silas,' says Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying anything,
+'I donno as some of us could bring ourselves to think of Christ as real
+Christ-like, if he come back the way he use' to be.'
+
+"Insley sat looking round on them all, still with his way of saying good
+morning on a good day. I wondered if he wasn't wishing that they'd hang
+on that way to something worth hanging to. For I've always thought, and
+I think now, that they's a-plenty of stick-to-itiveness in the world;
+but the trouble is, it's stuck to the wrong thing.
+
+"The talk broke up after that, like somebody had said something in bad
+taste; and we conversed around in groups, and done our best to make
+'way with the refreshments. And Insley set talking to Mis' Eleanor
+Emmons, the new widow, lately moved in.
+
+"About Mis' Emmons the social judgment of Friendship Village was for the
+present hanging loose. This was partly because we didn't understand her
+name.
+
+"'My land, was her husband a felon or a thief or what that she don't use
+his name?' everybody asked everybody. 'What's she stick her own name in
+front of his last name like that for? Sneaked out of usin' his Christian
+name as soon as his back was turned, _I_ call it,' said some. 'My land,
+I'd use my dead husband's forename if it was Nebuchadnezzar. _My_
+opinion, we'd best go slow till she explains herself.'
+
+"But I guess Insley had more confidence.
+
+"'You'll help, I know?' I heard him say to Mis' Emmons.
+
+"'My friend,' she says back, 'whatever I can do I'll do. It's a big job
+you're talking about, you know.'
+
+"'It's _the_ big job,' says Insley, quiet.
+
+"Pretty soon Mis' Toplady got up on her feet, drawing her shawl up her
+back.
+
+"'Well,' she says, 'whatever you decide, count on me--I'll always do for
+chinkin' in. I've got to get home now and set my bread or it won't be
+up till day _after_ to-morrow. Ready, Timothy? Good night all.'
+
+"She went towards the door, Timothy following. But before they got to
+it, it opened, and somebody come in, at the sight of who Mis' Toplady
+stopped short and the talk of the rest of us fell away. No stranger,
+much, comes to Friendship Village without our knowing it, and to have a
+stranger walk unbeknownst into the very lecture-room of the First Church
+was a thing we never heard of, without he was a book agent or a
+travelling man.
+
+"Here, though, was a stranger--and such a stranger. She was so
+unexpected and so dazzling that it shot through my head she was like a
+star, taking refuge from all the roughness and the rain outside--a star,
+so it come in my head, using up its leisure on a cloudy night with
+peepin' in here and there to give out brightness anyway. The rough, dark
+cheviot that the girl wore was sort of like a piece of storm-cloud
+clinging about that brightness--a brightness of wind-rosy face and blowy
+hair, all uncovered. She stood on the threshold, holding her wet
+umbrella at arm's length out in the entry.
+
+"'I beg your pardon. Are you ready, Aunt Eleanor?' she asked.
+
+"Mis' Eleanor Emmons turned and looked at her.
+
+"'Robin!' she says. 'Why, you must be wet through.'
+
+"'I'm pretty wet,' says the girl, serene, 'I'm so messy I won't come in.
+I'll just stop out here on the steps. Don't hurry.'
+
+"'Wait a minute,' Mis' Emmons says. 'Stay where you are then, please,
+Robin, and meet these people.'
+
+"The girl threw the door wide, and she stepped back into the vestibule,
+where her umbrella had been trailing little puddles; and she stood there
+against the big, black background of the night and the village, while
+Mis' Emmons presented her.
+
+"'This is my niece, Miss Sidney,' she told us. 'She has just come to me
+to-day--for as long as I can keep her. Will you all come to see her?'
+
+"It wasn't much the way Mis' Sykes had done, singing praises of Miss
+Beryl Sessions for weeks on end before she'd got there; nor the way I
+was doing, wondering secret about my unknown niece, and what she'd be
+like. Mis' Emmons introduced her niece like she'd always been one of us.
+She said our names over, and we went towards her; and Miss Sidney leaned
+a little inside the frame of the doorway and put out her hand to us
+all, a hand that didn't have any glove on and that in spite of the rain,
+was warm.
+
+"'I'm so sorry,' she says, 'I'm afraid I'm disgracing Aunt Eleanor. But
+I couldn't help it. I love to walk in the rain.'
+
+"'That's what rain is for,' Insley says to her; and I see the two change
+smiles before Mis' Hubbelthwait's 'Well, I do hope you've got some good
+high rubbers on your feet' made the girl grave again--a sweet grave, not
+a stiff grave. You can be grave both ways, and they're as different from
+each other as soup from hot water.
+
+"'I have, thank you,' she says, 'big storm boots. Did you know,' she
+adds, 'that somebody else is waiting out here? Somebody's little bit of
+a beau? And I'm afraid he's gone to sleep.'
+
+"We looked at one another, wondering. Who was waiting for any of us?
+'Not me,' one after another says, positive. 'We've all raced home alone
+from this church since we was born,' Mis' Uppers adds, true enough.
+
+"We was curious, with that curiosity that it's kind of fun to have, and
+we all crowded forward into the entry. And a little to one side of the
+shining lamp path was setting a child--a little boy, with a paper bag in
+his arms.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"Who on earth was he, we wondered to ourselves, and we all jostled
+forward, trying to see down to him, us women lifting up our skirts from
+the entry wet. He was like a little wad of clothes, bunched up on the
+top step, but inside them the little fellow was all curled up, sleeping.
+And we knew he hadn't come for any of us, and he didn't look like he was
+waiting for anybody in particular.
+
+"Silas fixed up an explanation, ready-done:--
+
+"'He must belong down on the flats,' says Silas. 'The idear of his
+sleepin' here. I said we'd oughter hev a gate acrost the vestibule.'
+
+"'Roust him up an' start him home,' says Timothy Toplady, adviceful.
+
+"'I will,' says Silas, that always thinks it's his share to do any
+unclaimed managing; and he brought down his hand towards the child's
+shoulder. But his hand didn't get that far.
+
+"'Let me wake him up,' says Robin Sidney.
+
+"She laid her umbrella in the wet of the steps and, Silas being
+surprised into giving way, she stooped over the child. She woke him up
+neither by speaking to him nor grasping his arm, but she just slipped
+her hands along his cheeks till her hands met under his chin, and she
+lifted up his chin, gentle.
+
+"'Wake up and look at me,' she says.
+
+"The child opened his eyes, with no starting or bewildering, and looked
+straight up into her face. There was light enough for us all to see that
+he smiled bright, like one that's real glad some waiting is done. And
+she spoke to him, not making a point of it and bringing it out like
+she'd aimed it at him, but just matter-of-fact gentle and commonplace
+tender.
+
+"'Whose little boy are you?' she ask' him.
+
+"'I'm goin' with whoever wants me to go with 'em,' says the child.
+
+"'But who are you--where do you live?' she says to him. 'You live, don't
+you--in this town?'
+
+"The child shook his head positive.
+
+"'I lived far,' he told her, 'in that other place. I come up here with
+my daddy. He says he might not come back to-night.'
+
+"Robin Sidney knelt right down before him on the wet steps.
+
+"'Truly,' she said, 'haven't you any place to go to-night?'
+
+"'Oh, yes,' says the child, 'he says I must go with whoever wants me to
+go with 'em. Do--do you?'
+
+"At that Miss Sidney looked up at us, swift, and down again. The wind
+had took hold of a strand of her hair and blew it across her eyes, and
+she was pushing it away as she got up. And by then Insley was standing
+before her, back of the little boy, that he suddenly stooped down and
+picked up in his arms.
+
+"'Let's get inside, shall we?' he says, commanding. 'Let's all go back
+in and see about him.'
+
+"We went back into the church, even Silas taking orders, though of
+course that was part curiosity; and Insley sat down with the child on
+his knee, and held out the child's feet in his hand.
+
+"'He's wet as a rat,' he says. 'Look at his shoes.'
+
+"'Well-a, make him tell his name, why don't you?' says Mis' Sykes,
+sharp. '_I_ think we'd ought to find out who he is. What's your name,
+Boy?' she adds, brisk.
+
+"Insley dropped the boy's feet and took a-hold of one of his hands.
+'Yes,' he says, hasty, 'we must try to do that.' But he looked right
+straight over Mis' Sykes's shoulder to where, beyond the others, Robin
+Sidney was standing. 'He was your friend first,' he said to her. 'You
+found him.'
+
+"She come and knelt down beside the child where, on Insley's knee, he
+sat staring round, all wondering and questioning, to the rest of us. But
+she seemed to forget all about the rest of us, and I loved the way she
+was with that little strange boy. She kind of put her hands on him,
+wiping the raindrops off his face, unbuttoning his wet coat, doing a
+little something to his collar; and every touch was a kind of a little
+stroke that some women's hands give almost without their knowing it. I
+loved to watch her, because I'm always as stiff as a board with a
+child--unless I'm alone with them. Then I ain't.
+
+"'My name's Robin,' she says to the little fellow. 'What's yours, dear?'
+
+"'Christopher,' he says right off. 'First, Christopher. An' then John.
+An' then Bartlett. Have you only got one name?' he asked her.
+
+"'Yes, I've got two,' she says. 'The rest of mine is Sidney. Where--'
+
+"'Only two?' says the child. 'Why, I've got three.'
+
+"'Only two,' she answers. 'Where did your father go--don't you know
+that, Christopher?'
+
+"That seemed to make him think of something, and he looked down at his
+paper bag.
+
+"'First he bringed me these,' he says, and his face lighted up and he
+held out his bag to her. 'You can have one my cream-puffs,' he offers
+her, magnificent. I held my breath for fear she wouldn't take it, but
+she did. 'What fat ones!' she says admiring, and held it in her hand
+while she asked him more. It was real strange how we stood around, us
+older women and all, waiting for her to see what she could get out of
+him. But there wasn't any use. He was to go with whoever asked him to
+go--that was all he knew.
+
+"Silas Sykes snaps his watch. 'It's gettin' late,' he gives out, with a
+backward look at nothing in particular. 'Hadn't we best just leave him
+at the police station? Threat Hubbelthwait and me go right past there.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady, she sweeps round on him, pulling her shawl over her
+shoulders--one of them gestures of some women that makes it seem like
+even them that works hard and don't get out much of anywhere has motions
+left in them that used to be motioned in courts and castles and like
+that. 'Police station! Silas Sykes,' says she, queenly, 'you put me in
+mind of a stone wall, you're that sympathizin'.'
+
+"'Well, _we_ can't take him, Amandy,' Timothy Toplady reminds her,
+hurried. 'We live too far. 'Twouldn't do to walk him 'way there.'
+Timothy will give, but he wants to give to his own selected poor that he
+knows about; an' he won't never allow himself no luxuries in givin' here
+an' there, when something just happens to come up.
+
+"'Land, he may of come from where there's disease--you can't tell,' says
+Mis' Uppers. 'I think we'd ought to go slow.'
+
+"'Yes,' says two-three others, 'we'd best go slow. Why, his father may
+be looking for him.'
+
+"Mis' Eleanor Emmons spoke up serene.
+
+"'While we're going slow,' she says, 'I think I'll just take him home
+and get his feet dry. I live the nearest. Mr. Sykes, you might report
+him at the police station as you go by, in case someone is looking for
+him. And if nobody inquires, he can sleep on my couch beside my grate
+fire to-night. Can't he, Robin?'
+
+"'I'd love it,' says the girl.
+
+"'Excellent,' says Insley, and set the little boy on his feet.
+
+"But when he done that, the child suddenly swung round and caught Miss
+Sidney's arm and looked up in her face; and his little nose was screwed
+up alarming.
+
+"'What _is_ it--what's the matter, Christopher?' she ask' him. And the
+rest of us that had begun moving to go, stopped to listen. And in that
+little stillness Christopher told us:--
+
+"'Oh,' he says, 'it's that hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went
+right through that hole. And it's _chokin'_ me.'
+
+"Just exactly as if a hand had kind of touched us all, a nice little
+stir went round among us women. And with that, Insley, who had been
+standing there so big and strong and able and willing, and waiting for a
+chance to take hold, he just simply put his hands on his knees and
+stooped over and made his back right for the little fellow to climb up
+on. The child knew what it was for, soon enough--we see somebody
+somewheres must of been doing it for him before, for he scrambled right
+up, laughing, and Miss Sidney helping him. And a kind of a little
+ripple, that wan't no true words, run round among us all. Most women and
+some men is strong on ripples of this sort, but when it comes right down
+to doing something in consequence, we ain't so handy.
+
+"'Leave me come along and help take care of him a little while,' I says;
+and I thought it was because I was ashamed of myself and trying to make
+up for not offering before. But I think really what was the matter with
+me was that I just plain wanted to go along with that little boy.
+
+"'I'm your automobile,' says Insley to the little fellow, and he laughed
+out, delighted, hanging onto his paper sack.
+
+"'If you'll give me the big umbrella, Aunt Eleanor,' says Miss Sidney on
+the church steps, 'I'll try to keep the rain off the automobile and the
+passenger.'
+
+"The rain had just about stopped when we four started down Daphne
+Street. The elms and maples along the sidewalk was dripping soft, and
+everybody's gardens was laying still, like something new had happened to
+them. It smelled good, and like everything outdoors was going to start
+all over again and be something else, sweeter.
+
+"When we got most to Mis' Emmon's gate, I stopped stock still, looking
+at something shining on the hill. It was Proudfit House, lit up from top
+to bottom--the big house on the hill that had stood there, blind and
+dark, for months on end.
+
+"'Why, some of the Proudfits must of come home,' I says out loud.
+
+"Mis' Emmons answered up, all unexpected to me, for I never knew she
+knew the Proudfits. 'Mr. Alex Proudfit is coming on to-morrow,' she
+says. And I sort of resented her that was so near a stranger in the
+village hearing this about Alex Proudfit before I did, that had known
+him since he was in knickerbockers.
+
+"'Am I keeping the rain off you two people?' Miss Sidney asks as, at the
+corner, we all turned our backs on Proudfit House.
+
+"'Nobody,' Insley says--and his voice was always as smooth and round as
+wheels running along under his words, 'nobody ever kept the rain off as
+you are keeping it off, Miss Sidney.'
+
+"And, 'I did walked all that way--in that rain,' says Christopher,
+sleepy, in his automobile's collar.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+"If it was anyways damp or chilly, Mis' Emmons always had a little blaze
+in the grate--not a heat blaze, but just a Come-here blaze. And going
+into her little what-she-called living-room at night, I always thought
+was like pushing open some door of the dark to find a sort of
+cubby-corner hollowed out from the bigger dark for tending the homey
+fire. That rainy night we went in from the street almost right onto the
+hearth. And it was as pleasant as taking the first mouthful of
+something.
+
+"Insley, with Christopher still on his back, stood on the rug in front
+of the door and looked round him.
+
+"'How jolly it always looks here, Mrs. Emmons,' he says. 'I never saw
+such a hearty place.'
+
+"I donno whether you've ever noticed the difference in the way women
+bustle around? Most nice women do bustle when something comes up that
+needs it. Some does it light and lifty, like fairies going around on
+missions; and some does it kind of crackling and nervous, like goblins
+on business. Mis' Emmons was the first kind, and it was real
+contagious. You caught it yourself and begun pulling chairs around and
+seeing to windows and sort of settling away down deep into the minute.
+She begun doing that way now, seeing to the fire and the lamp-shade and
+the sofa, and wanting everybody to be dry and comfortable, instant.
+
+"'You are so good-natured to like my room,' she says. 'I furnished it
+for ten cents--yes, not much more. The whole effect is just colour,' she
+says. 'What I have to do without in quality I go and wheedle out of the
+spectrum. What _should_ we do without the rainbow? And what in the world
+am I going to put on that child?'
+
+"Insley let Christopher down on the rug by the door, and there he stood,
+dripping, patient, holding his paper bag, and not looking up and around
+him, same as a child will in a strange room, but just looking hard at
+the nice, red, warm blaze. Miss Sidney come and stooped over him, with
+that same little way of touching him, like loving.
+
+"'Let's go and be dry now,' she says, 'and then let's see what we can
+find in the pantry.'
+
+"The little fellow, he just laughed out, soft and delicious, with his
+head turned away and without saying anything.
+
+"'I never said such a successful thing,' says Miss Sidney, and led him
+upstairs where we could hear Mis' Emmons bustling around cosey.
+
+"Mr. Insley and I sat down by the fire. I remember I looked over towards
+him and felt sort of nervous, he was so good looking and so silent. A
+good-looking _talking_ man I ain't afraid of, because I can either
+admire or despise him immediate, and either way it gives me something to
+do answering back. But one that's still, it takes longer to make out,
+and it don't give you no occupation for your impressions. And Insley,
+besides being still, was so good looking that it surprised me every new
+time I see him. I always wanted to say: Have you been looking like that
+all the time since I last saw you, and how _do_ you keep it up?
+
+"He had a face and a body that showed a good many men looking out of 'em
+at you, and all of 'em was men you'd like to of known. There was
+scholars that understood a lot, and gentlemen that acted easy, and
+outdoor men that had pioneered through hard things and had took their
+joy of the open. All of them had worked hard at him--and had give him
+his strength and his merriness and his big, broad shoulders and his
+nice, friendly boyishness, and his eyes that could see considerably
+more than was set before them. By his own care he had knit his body
+close to life, and I know he had knit his spirit close to it, too. As I
+looked over at him that night, my being nervous sort of swelled up into
+a lump in my throat and I wanted to say inside me: O God, ain't it nice,
+ain't it nice that you've got some folks like him?
+
+"He glanced over to me, kind of whimsical.
+
+"'Are you in favour of folks or tombstones?' he asks, with his eyebrows
+flickering up.
+
+"'Me?' I says. 'Well, I don't want to be clannish, but I do lean a good
+deal towards folks.'
+
+"'You knew what I meant to-night?' he says.
+
+"'Yes,' I answered, 'I knew.'
+
+"'I thought you did,' he says grave.
+
+"Then he lapsed into keeping still again and so did I, me through not
+quite knowing what to say, and him--well, I wasn't sure, but I thought
+he acted a good deal as if he had something nice to think about. I've
+seen that look on people's faces sometimes, and it always makes me feel
+a little surer that I'm a human being. I wondered if it was his new work
+he was turning over, or his liking the child's being cared for, or the
+mere nice minute, there by the grate fire. Then a door upstairs shut,
+and somebody come down and into the room, and when he got up, his look
+sort of centred in that new minute.
+
+"It was Miss Sidney that come in, and she set down by the fire like
+something pleased her.
+
+"'Aunt Eleanor is going to decorate Christopher herself,' she says. 'She
+believes that she alone can do whatever comes up in this life to be
+done, and usually she's right.'
+
+"Insley stood looking at her for a minute before he set down again. She
+had her big black cloak off by then, and she was wearing a
+dress-for-in-the-house that was all rosy. She wasn't anything of the
+star any longer. She was something more than a star. I always think one
+of the nicest commonplace minutes in a woman's everyday is when she
+comes back from somewheres outside the house where she's been, and sets
+down by the fire, or by a window, or just plain in the middle of the
+room. They always talk about pigeons 'homing'; I wish't they kept that
+word for women. It seems like it's so exactly what they _do_ do.
+
+"'I love the people,' Miss Sidney went on, 'that always feel that
+way--that if something they're interested in is going to be really well
+done, then they must do it themselves.'
+
+"Insley always knew just what anybody meant--I'd noticed that about
+him. His mind never left what you'd said floating round, loose ends in
+the room, without your knowing whether it was going to be caught and
+tied; but he just nipped right onto your remark and _tied it in the
+right place_.
+
+"'I love them, too,' he says now. 'I love anybody who can really feel
+responsibility, from a collie with her pups up. But then I'm nothing to
+go by. I find I'm rather strong for a good many people that can't feel
+it, too--that are just folks, going along.'
+
+"I suppose he expected from her the nice, ladylike agreeing, same as
+most women give to this sort of thing, just like they'd admit they're
+fond of verbenas or thin soles. But instead of that, she caught fire.
+Her look jumped up the way a look will and went acrost to his. I always
+think I'd rather have folks say 'I know' to me, understanding, than to
+just pour me out information, and that was what she said to him.
+
+"'I know,' she says, 'on the train to-day--if you could have seen them.
+Such dreadful-looking people, and underneath--the _giving-up-ness_. I
+believe in them,' she added simple.
+
+"When a thing you believe gets spoke by somebody that believes it, too,
+it's like the earth moved round a little faster, and I donno but it
+does. Insley looked for a minute like he thought so.
+
+"'I believe in them,' he says; 'not the way I used to, and just because
+I thought they must be, somehow, fundamentally decent, but because it's
+true.'
+
+"'I know just when I first knew that,' Miss Sidney says. 'It come to me,
+of all places, in a subway train, when I was looking at a row of faces
+across the car. Nobody, _nobody_ can look interesting in that row along
+the side of a subway car. And then I saw....'
+
+"She thought for a minute and shook her head.
+
+"'I can't tell you,' she says, 'it sounds so little and--no account. It
+was a little thing, just something that happened to a homely woman with
+a homely man, in a hat like a pirate's. But it almost--let me in. I can
+do it ever since--look into people, into, or through, or with ...' she
+tries to explain it. Then her eyes hurried up to his face, like she was
+afraid he might not be understanding. He just nodded, without looking at
+her, but she knew that he knew what she meant, and that he meant it,
+too.
+
+" ... I thought it was wonderful to hear them. I felt like an old
+mountain, or anything natural and real ancient, listening to the Song of
+Believing, sung by two that's young and just beginning. We all sing it
+sometime in our lives--or Lord grieve for them that never do--and I
+might as well own up that I catch myself humming that same song a good
+deal of the time, to keep myself a-going. But I love to hear it when
+it's just begun.
+
+"They was still talking when Mis' Emmons come downstairs with
+Christopher. Land, land but the little chap looked dear, dragging along,
+holding up a long-skirted lounging dress of Mis' Emmons's. I never had
+one of them lounging dresses. There's a lot of common things that it
+never seems to me I can buy for myself: a nice dressing-gown, a block of
+black pins, a fancy-headed hat pin, and a lemon-squeezer. I always use a
+loose print, and common pins, and penny black-headed hat pins, and go
+around squeezing my lemons by hand. I donno why it is, I'm sure.
+
+"'I'm--I'm--I'm--a little boy king!' Christopher stutters, all excited
+and satisfied, while Insley was a-packing him in the Morris chair.
+
+"'Rained on!' says Mis' Emmons, in that kind of dismay that's as pure
+feminine as if it had on skirts. 'Water isn't a circumstance to what
+that dear child was. He was saturated--bless him. He must have been out
+for perfect hours.'
+
+"Christopher, thinking back into the rain, mebbe, from the pleasantness
+of that minute, smiled and took a long breath.
+
+"'I walked from that other place,' he explains, important.
+
+"Mis' Emmons knew he was hungry, and she took Miss Sidney and Insley off
+to the kitchen to find something to eat, and left me with the little
+fellow, me spreading out his clothes in front of the fire to dry. He set
+real still, like being dry and being with somebody was all he wanted.
+And of course that is a good deal.
+
+"I don't always quite know how to start talking to a child. I'm always
+crazy to talk with them, but I'm so afraid of that shy, grave,
+criticizin' look they have. I feel right off like apologizing for the
+silly question I've just asked them. I felt that way now when
+Christopher looked at me, real dignified and wondering. 'What you going
+to be when you grow up to be a man?' was what I had just asked him. And
+yet I don't know what better question I could of asked him, either.
+
+"'I'm goin' to have a cream-puff store, an' make it all light in the
+window,' he answers ready.
+
+"'All light in the window?' I says puzzled.
+
+"'And I'm going to keep a church,' he goes on, 'and I'm going to make
+nice, black velvet for their coffings.'
+
+"I didn't know quite what to make of that, not being able to think back
+very far into his mind. So I kept still a few minutes.
+
+"'What was you doin' in the church?' he says to me, all at once.
+
+"'I don't really know. Waiting for you to come, I guess, Christopher,' I
+says.
+
+"'_Was_ you?' he cried, delighted. 'Pretty soon I came!' He looked in
+the fire, sort of troubled. 'Is God outdoors nights?' he says.
+
+"I said a little something.
+
+"'Well,' he says, 'I thought he was in the house by the bed when you say
+your prayer. An' I thought he was in church. But I don't think he stays
+in the dark, much.'
+
+"'Mebbe you don't,' I says, 'but you wait for him in the dark, and mebbe
+all of a sudden some night you can tell that something is there. And
+just you wait for that night to come.'
+
+"'That's a nice game,' says Christopher, bright. 'What game is that?'
+
+"'I donno,' I says. 'Game of Life, I guess.'
+
+"He liked the sound; and he set there--little waif, full of no supper,
+saying it over like a chant:--
+
+"'Game o' life--game o' life--game o' l-i-f-e--'
+
+"Just at that minute I was turning his little pockets wrong side out to
+dry them, and in one of them I see a piece of paper, all crumpled up and
+wrinkled. I spread it out, and I see it had writing on. And I held it up
+to the light and read it, read it through twice.
+
+"'Christopher,' I says then, 'where did you get this piece of paper? It
+was in your pocket.'
+
+"He looked at it, blank, and then he remembered.
+
+"'My daddy,' he says. 'My daddy told me to give it to folks. I forgot.'
+
+"'To folks?' I says. 'To what folks?'
+
+"'To whoever ask' me anything,' he answers. 'Is it a letter?' he ask'.
+
+"'Yes,' I says, thoughtful, 'it's a letter.'
+
+"'To tell me what to do?' he ask' me.
+
+"'Yes,' I says, 'but more, I guess, to tell us what to do.'
+
+"I talked with him a little longer, so's to get his mind off the paper;
+and then I told him to set still a minute, and I slipped out to where
+the rest was.
+
+"The pantry had a close, spicey, foody smell of a pantry at night, when
+every tin chest and glass jar may be full up with nice things to eat
+that you'd forgot about--cocoanut and citron and cinnamon bark. In
+grown-up folks one of the things that is the last to grow up is the
+things a pantry in the evening promises. You may get over really liking
+raisins and sweet chocolate; you may get to wanting to eat in the
+evening things that you didn't use' to even know the names of and don't
+know them now, and yet it never gets over being nice and eventive to go
+out in somebody's pantry at night, especially a pantry that ain't your
+own.
+
+"'Put everything on a tray,' Mis' Emmons was directing them, 'and find
+the chafing-dish and let's make it in there by Christopher. Mr. Insley,
+can you make toast? Don't equivocate,' she says; '_can_ you make toast?
+People fib no end over what they can make. I'm always bragging about my
+omelettes, and yet one out of every three I make goes flat, and I know
+it. And yet I brag on. Beans, buckwheat, rice--what do you want to
+cream, Robin? Well, look in the store-room. There may be something
+there. We must tell Miss Sidney about Grandma Sellers' store-room, Mr.
+Insley,' she says, and then tells it herself, laughing like a girl, how
+Grandma Sellers, down at the other end of Daphne Street, has got a
+store-room she keeps full of staples and won't let her son's wife use a
+thing out. 'I've been hungry,' Grandma Sellers says, 'and I ain't
+ashamed of that. But if you knew how good it feels to have a still-room
+stocked full, you wouldn't ask me to disturb a can of nothing. I want
+them all there, so if I should want them.' 'She's like me,' Mis' Emmons
+ends, 'I always want to keep my living-room table tidy, to have a place
+in case I should want to lay anything down. And if I put anything on it,
+I snatch it up, so as to have a place in case I want to lay anything
+down.'
+
+"They was all laughing when I went out into the kitchen, and I went up
+to Mis' Emmons with the paper.
+
+"'Read that,' I says.
+
+"She done so, out loud--the scrawlin', downhill message:--
+
+
+     "'Keep him will you,' the paper said, 'I don't chuck him to get rid
+     of but hes only got me since my wifes dead and the drinks got me
+     again. Ive stood it quite awhile but its got me again so keep him
+     and oblidge. will send money to him to the P O here what I can
+     spare I aint chuckin him but the drinks got me again.
+
+     "'resp, his father.
+
+     "'P S his name is Christopher Bartlett he is a good boy his throat
+     gets sore awful easy.'
+
+
+"When Mis' Emmons had got through reading, I remember Miss Sidney's face
+best. It was so full of a sort of a leaping-up pity and wistfulness that
+it went to your heart, like words. I knew that with her the minute
+wasn't no mere thrill nor twitter nor pucker, the way sad things is to
+some, but it was just a straight sounding of a voice from a place of
+pain. And so it was to Insley. But Mis' Emmons, she never give herself
+time to be swamped by anything without trying to climb out right while
+the swamping was going on.
+
+"'What'll we do?' she says, rapid. 'What in this world shall we do? Did
+you ever hear of anything--well, I wish somebody would tell me what
+we're going to do.'
+
+"'Let's be glad for one thing,' says Allen Insley, 'that he's here with
+you people to-night. Let's be glad of that first--that he's here with
+you.'
+
+"Miss Sidney looked away to the dark window.
+
+"'That poor man,' she says. 'That poor father....'
+
+"We talked about it a little, kind of loose ends and nothing to fasten
+to, like you will. Mis' Emmons was the first to get back inside the
+minute.
+
+"'Well,' she says, brisk, 'do let's go in and feed the child while we
+have him. Nobody knows when he's had anything to eat but those unholy
+cream-puffs. Let's heat him some broth and let's carry in the things.'
+
+"Back by the fire Christopher set doing nothing, but just looking in the
+blaze like his very eyesight had been chilly and damp and needed seeing
+to. He cried out jolly when he see all the pretty harness of the
+chafing-dish and the tray full of promises.
+
+"'Oh,' he cries, '_Robin!_'
+
+"She went over to him, and she nestled him now like she couldn't think
+of enough to do for him nor enough things to say to keep him company. I
+see Insley watching her, and I wondered if it didn't come to him like it
+come to me, that for the pure art of doing nothing so that it seems like
+it couldn't be got along without, a woman--some women--can be commended
+by heaven to a world that always needs that kind of doing nothing.
+
+"'Children have a genius for getting rid of the things that don't
+count,' Miss Sidney says. 'I love his calling me "Robin." Mustn't there
+be some place where we don't build walls around our names?'
+
+"Insley thought for a minute. 'You oughtn't to be called "Miss," and
+you oughtn't to wear a hat,' he concluded, sober. 'Both of them make
+you--too much _there_. They draw a line around you.'
+
+"'I don't feel like Miss to myself,' she says, grave. 'I feel like
+Robin. I believe I _am_ Robin!'
+
+"And I made up my mind right then and there that, to myself anyway, I
+was always going to call her Robin. It's funny about first names. Some
+of them fit right down and snuggle up close to their person so that you
+can't think of them apart. And some of them slip loose and dangle along
+after their person, quite a ways back, so that you're always surprised
+when now and then they catch up and get themselves spoke by someone. But
+the name Robin just seemed to wrap Miss Sidney up in itself so that, as
+she said, she _was_ Robin. I like to call her so.
+
+"It was her that engineered the chafing-dish. A chafing-dish is a thing
+I've always looked on a little askant. I couldn't cook with folks
+looking at me no more than I could wash my face in company. I remember
+one hot July day when there was a breeze in my front door, I took my
+ironing-board in the parlor and tried to iron there. But land, I felt
+all left-handed; and I know it would be that way if I ever tried to
+cook in there, on my good rug. Robin though, she done it wonderful. And
+pretty soon she put the hot cream gravy on some crumbled-up bread and
+took it to Christopher, with a cup of broth that smelled like when they
+used to say, 'Dinner's ready,' when you was twelve years old.
+
+"He looked up at her eager. 'Can you cut it in squares?' he asked.
+
+"'In what?' she asks him over.
+
+"'Squares. And play it's molasses candy--white molasses candy?' he says.
+
+"'Oh,' says Robin, 'no, not in squares. But let's play it's hot
+ice-cream.'
+
+"'_Hot ice-cream_,' he says, real slow, his eyes getting wide. To play
+Little Boy King and have hot ice-cream was about as much as he could
+take care of, in joy. Sometimes I get to wondering how we ever do
+anything else except collect children together and give them nice little
+simple fairylands. But while, on the sly, we was all watching to see
+Christopher sink deep in the delight of that hot toothsome supper, he
+suddenly lays down his spoon and stares over to us with wide eyes, eyes
+that there wasn't no tears gathering in, though his little mouth was
+quivering.
+
+"'What is it--what, dear?' Robin asks, from her stool near his feet.
+
+"'My daddy,' says the little boy. 'I was thinking if he could have some
+this.'
+
+"Robin touched her cheek down on his arm.
+
+"'Blessed,' she says, 'think how glad he'd be to have you have some.
+He'd want you to eat it--wouldn't he?'
+
+"The child nodded and took up his spoon, but he sighed some. 'I wish't
+he'd hurry,' he says, and ate, obedient.
+
+"Robin looked up at us--I don't think a woman is ever so lovely as when
+she's sympathizing, and it don't make much difference what it's over, a
+sore finger or a sore heart, it's equally becoming.
+
+"'I know,' she says to us, 'I know just the _place_ where that hurts. I
+remember, when I was little, being in a house that a band passed, and
+because mother wasn't there, I ran inside and wouldn't listen. It's such
+a special kind of hurt....'
+
+"From the end of the settle that was some in the shadow, Insley set
+watching her, and he looked as if he was thinking just what I was
+thinking: that she was the kind that would most always know just the
+place things hurt. And I bet she'd know what to do--and a thousand kinds
+of things that she'd go and do it.
+
+"'O ...' Christopher says. 'I like this most next better than molasses
+candy, cutted in squares. I do, Robin!' He looked down at her, his spoon
+waiting. 'Is you that Robin Redbreast?' he inquired.
+
+"'I'm any Robin you want me to be,' she told him. 'To-morrow we'll play
+that, shall we?'
+
+"'Am I here to-morrow? Don't I have to walk to-morrow?' he ask' her.
+
+"'No, you won't have to walk to-morrow,' she told him.
+
+"Christopher leaned back, altogether nearer to luxury than I guess he'd
+ever been.
+
+"'I'm a little boy king, and it's hot ice-cream, and I love _you_,' he
+tops it off to Robin.
+
+"She smiled at him, leaning on his chair.
+
+"'Isn't it a miracle,' she says to us, 'the way we can call out--being
+liked? We don't do something, and people don't pay any attention and
+don't know the difference. Then some little thing happens, and there
+they are--liking us, doing a real thing.'
+
+"'I know it,' I says, fervent. 'Sometimes,' I says, 'it seems to me
+wonderful cosey to be alive! I'm glad I'm it.'
+
+"'So am I,' says Insley, and leaned forward. 'There's never been such a
+time to be alive,' he says. 'Mrs. Emmons, why don't we ask Miss Sidney
+for some plans for our plan?'
+
+"Do you know how sometimes you'll have a number of floating ideas in
+your mind--wanting to do this, thinking that would be nice, dreaming of
+something else--and yet afraid to say much about it, because it seems
+like the ideas or the dreams is much too wild for anybody else to have,
+too? And then mebbe after a while, you'll find that somebody had the
+same idea and dreamed it out, and died with it? Or somebody else tried
+to make it go a little? Well, that was what begun to happen to me that
+night while I heard Insley talk, only I see that my floating ideas, that
+wan't properly attached to the sides of my head, was actually being
+worked out here and there, and that Insley knew about them.
+
+"I donno how to tell what my ideas was. I'd had them from time to time,
+and a good many of us ladies had, only we didn't know what to do with
+them. And an idea that you don't know what to do with is like a wild
+animal out of its cage: there ain't no performance till it's adjusted.
+For instance, when we'd wanted to pave Daphne Street and the whole town
+council had got up and swung its arms over its head and said that having
+an economical administration was better than paving--why, then us ladies
+had all had the same idee about that.
+
+"'Is the town run for the sake of being the town, with money in its
+treasury, or is the town run for the folks in it?' I remember Mis'
+Toplady asking, puzzled. 'Ain't the folks the town really?' she ask'.
+'And if they are, why can't they pave themselves with their own money?
+Don't that make sense?' she ask' us, and we thought it did.
+
+"Us ladies had got Daphne Street paved, or at least it was through us
+they made the beginning, but there was things we hadn't done. We was all
+taking milk of Rob Henney that we knew his cow barns wasn't at all
+eatable, but he was the only milk wagon, nobody else in town delivering,
+so we kept on taking, but squeamish, squeamish. Then there was the
+grocery stores, leaving their food all over the sidewalk, dust-peppered
+and dirt-salted. But nobody liked to say anything to Silas Sykes that
+keeps the post-office store, nor to Joe Betts, that his father before
+him kept the meat market, being we all felt delicate, like at asking a
+church member to come out to church. Then us ladies had bought a zinc
+wagon and started it around to pick up the garbage to folks' doors, but
+the second summer the council wouldn't help pay for the team, because it
+was a saving council, and so the wagon was setting in a shed, with its
+hands folded. Then there was Black Hollow, that we'd wanted filled up
+with dirt instead of scummy water, arranging for typhoid fever and other
+things, but the council having got started paving, was engaged in paving
+the swamp out for miles, Silas Sykes's cousin being in the wooden block
+business. And, too, us ladies was just then hopping mad over the doings
+they was planning for the Fourth of July, that wasn't no more than
+making a cash register of the day to earn money into. All these things
+had been disturbing us, and more; but though we talked it over
+considerable, none of us knew what to do, or whether anything could be.
+It seemed as though every way we moved a hand, it hit out at the council
+or else went into some business man's pocket. And not having anybody to
+tell us what other towns were doing, we just set still and wished,
+passive.
+
+"Well, and that night, while I heard Insley talking, was the first I
+knew that other towns had thought about these things, too, and was
+beginning to stir and to stir things. Insley talked about it light
+enough, laughing, taking it all casual on the outside, but underneath
+with a splendid earnestness that was like the warp to his words. He
+talked like we could pick Friendship Village up, same as a strand if we
+wanted, and make it fine and right for weaving in a big pattern that
+his eyes seemed to see. He talked like our village, and everybody's
+village and everybody's city wasn't just a lot of streets laid down and
+walls set up, and little families and little clubs and little separate
+groups of folks organized by themselves. But he spoke like the whole
+town was just one street and _no_ walls, and like every town was a piece
+of the Big Family that lives on the same street, all around the world
+and back again. And he seemed to feel that the chief thing all of us was
+up to was thinking about this family and doing for it and being it, and
+getting it to be the way it can be when we all know how. And he seemed
+to think the things us ladies had wanted to do was some of the things
+that would help it to be the way it can.
+
+"When he stopped, Robin looked up at him from the hearth-rug: '"The
+world is beginning,"' she quotes to him from somewheres; "'I must go and
+help the king."'
+
+"He nodded, looking down at her and seeing, as he must have seen, that
+her face was all kindled into the same kind of a glory that was in his.
+It was a nice minute for them, but I was so excited I piped right up in
+the middle of it:--
+
+"'Oh,' I says, '_them_ things! Was it them kind of things you meant
+about in Sodality to-night that we'd ought to do? Why, us ladies has
+wanted to do things like that, but we felt sort of sneaking about it and
+like we was working against the council and putting our interests before
+the town treasury--'
+
+"'And of the cemetery,' he says.
+
+"'Is _that_,' I ask' him, 'what you're professor of, over to Indian
+Mound college?'
+
+"'Something like that,' he says.
+
+"'Nothing in a book, with long words and italics?' I ask' him.
+
+"'Well,' he says, 'it's getting in books now, a little. But it doesn't
+need any long words.'
+
+"'Why,' I says, 'it's just being professor of human beings, then?'
+
+"'Trying to be, perhaps,' he says, grave.
+
+"'Professor of Human Beings,' I said over to myself; 'professor of being
+human....'
+
+"On this nice minute, the front door, without no bell or knock, opened
+to let in Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, with a shawl over her head
+and a tin can in her hand.
+
+"'No, I won't set any, thanks,' she says. 'I just got to
+thinking--mercy, no. Don't give me any kind of anything to eat any such
+time of night as this. I should be up till midnight taking soda. That's
+what ails folks' stomachs, my notion--these late lunches on nobody
+knows what. No, I got to bed and I was just dropping off when I happened
+to sense how wringing wet that child was, and that I betted he'd take
+cold and have the croup in the night, and you wouldn't have no
+remedy--not having any children, so. It rousted me right up wide awake,
+and I dressed me and run over here with this. Here. Put some on a rag
+and clap it on his chest if he coughs croupy. I donno's it would hurt
+him to clap it on him, anyway, so's to be sure. No, I can't stop. It's
+'way past my bed-time....'
+
+"'There's lots of professors of being human, Miss Marsh,' Insley says to
+me, low.
+
+"Mis' Holcomb stood thinking a minute, brushing her lips with the fringe
+of her shawl.
+
+"'Mebbe somebody up to the Proudfits' would do something for him,' she
+says. 'I see they're lit up. Who's coming?'
+
+"'Mr. Alex Proudfit will be here to-morrow,' Mis' Emmons told her. 'He
+has some people coming to him in a day or two, for a house party over
+the Fourth.'
+
+"'Will he be here so soon?' says Insley. 'I've been looking forward to
+meeting him--I've a letter to him from Indian Mound.'
+
+"'Whatever happens,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'I'll get up attic first thing
+in the morning and find some old clothes for this dear child. I may be
+weak in the pocket-book, but I'm strong on old duds.'
+
+"Insley and I both said good night, so's to walk home with Mis' Holcomb,
+and Christopher kissed us both, simple as belonging to us.
+
+"'We had that hot ice-cream,' he announced to Mis' Holcomb.
+
+"'The lamb!' says she, and turns her back, hasty.
+
+"I wondered a little at Mis' Emmons not saying anything to her about the
+letter we'd found, that made us know somebody would have to do
+something. But just as we was starting out, Mis' Emmons says to me low,
+'Don't let's say anything about his father yet. I have a plan--I want to
+think it over first.' And I liked knowing that already she had a plan,
+and I betted it was a plan that would be born four-square to its own
+future.
+
+"Insley stood holding the door open. The rain had stopped altogether
+now, and the night was full of little things sticking their heads up in
+deep grasses and beginning to sing about it. I donno about what, but
+about something nice. And Insley was looking toward Robin, and I see
+that all the ancestors he'd ever had was lingering around in his face,
+like they knew about something he was just beginning to know about.
+Something nice--nicer than the little outdoor voices.
+
+"'Good night, Miss Sidney,' he says. 'And what a good night for
+Christopher!' And he looked as if he wanted to add: 'And for me.'
+
+"'Good night, Mis' Emmons,' I says. 'It's been an evening like a full
+meal.'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+"By messenger the next day noon come a letter for me that made me laugh
+a little and that made me a little bit mad, too. This was it:--
+
+
+     "'Dear Calliope:
+
+     "'Come up and help straighten things out, do. This place breathes
+     desolation. Everything is everywhere except everything which
+     everyone wants, which is lost. Come at once, Calliope, pray, and
+     dine with me to-night and give me as much time as you can for a
+     fortnight. I'm having some people here next week--twenty or so for
+     over the Fourth--and a party. A company, you know! I need you.
+
+     "'ALEX PROUDFIT.'
+
+
+"It was so exactly like Alex to send for me just plain because he wanted
+me. Never a word about if I was able or if I wasn't putting up berries
+or didn't have company or wasn't dead. I hadn't heard a sound from him
+in the two years or more that he'd been gone, and yet now it was just
+'Come,' like a lord. And for that matter like he used to do when he was
+in knickerbockers and coming to my house for fresh cookies, whether I
+had any baked or not. But I remember actually baking a batch for him one
+day while he galloped his pony up and down the Plank Road waiting for
+them. And I done the same way now. I got my work out of the way and went
+right up there, like I'd always done for that family in the forty years
+I could think back to knowing them, when I was a girl. I guessed that
+Alex had lit down sudden, a day or so behind his telegram to the
+servants; and I found that was what he had done.
+
+"Proudfit House stands on a hill, and it looks like the hill had
+billowed up gentle from underneath and had let some of the house flow
+down the sides. It was built ambitious, of the good cream brick that
+gives to a lot of our Middle West towns their colour of natural flax in
+among the green; it had been big in the beginning, and to it had been
+added a good many afterthoughts and postscripts of conservatory and
+entrance porch and sun room and screened veranda, till the hill couldn't
+hold them all. The house was one of them that was built fifty years ago
+and that has since been pecked and patted to suit modern uses, pinched
+off here and pulled off there to fit notions refining themselves
+gradual. And all the time the house was let to keep some nice, ugly
+things that after a while, by mere age and use-to-ness, were finally
+accepted wholesale as dignified and desirable. The great brown mansard
+roof, niched and glassed in two places for statues--and having them,
+too, inside my memory and until Mr. Alex pulled them down; the scalloped
+tower on a wing; the round red glass window on a stairway--these we all
+sort of come to agree to as qualities of the place that couldn't be
+changed no more'n the railroad track. Tapestries and water-colours and
+Persian carpets went on inside the house, but outside was all the little
+twists of a taste that had started in naked and was getting dressed up
+by degrees.
+
+"Since the marriage of her daughter Clementina, Madame Proudfit had
+spent a good deal of time abroad, and the house had been shut up. This
+shutting up of people's houses always surprises me. When I shut up my
+house to go away for a couple of months or so, I just make sure the
+kitchen fire is out, and I carry the bird down to Mis' Holcomb's, and I
+turn the key in the front door and start off. But land, land when
+Proudfit House is going to be shut, the servants work days on end. Rugs
+up, curtains down, furniture covered and setting around out of place,
+pictures and ornaments wrapped up in blue paper--I always wonder _why_.
+Closing my house is like putting it to sleep for a little while, but
+closing Proudfit House is some like seeing it through a spasm and into a
+trance. They done that to the house most every summer, and I used to
+think they acted like spring was a sort of contagion, or a
+seventeen-year locust, or something to be fumigated for. I supposed that
+was the way the house looked when Alex got home to it, and of course a
+man must hate it worse than a woman does, because he doesn't know which
+end to tell them to take hold of to unravel. So I went right up there
+when he sent for me--and then it was a little fun, too, to be on the
+inside of what was happening there, that all the village was so curious
+about.
+
+"He'd gone off when I got there, gone off on horseback on some business,
+but he'd left word that he'd be back in a little while, and would I help
+him out in the library. I knew what that meant. The books was all out of
+the shelves and packed in paper, and he wanted me to see that they got
+back into their right places, like I'd done many and many a time for his
+mother. So I worked there the whole afternoon, with a couple of men to
+help me, and the portrait of Linda Proudfit on the wall watching me like
+it wanted to tell me something, maybe about the way she went off and
+died, away from home; and a little after four o'clock a servant let
+somebody into the room.
+
+"I looked up expecting to see Alex, and it surprised me some to see
+Insley instead. But I guessed how it was: that Alex Proudfit being a
+logical one to talk over Friendship Village with, Insley couldn't lose a
+day in bringing him his letter.
+
+"'Well, Miss Marsh,' says he, 'and do you live everywhere, like a good
+fairy?'
+
+"I thought afterwards that I might have said to him: 'No, Mr. Insley.
+And do you appear everywhere, like a god?' But at the time I didn't
+think of anything to say, and I just smiled. I'm like that,--if I like
+anybody, I can't think of a thing to say back; but to Silas Sykes I
+could talk back all day.
+
+"We'd got the room part in order by then, and Insley sat down and looked
+around him, enjoyable. It was a beautiful room. I always think that that
+library ain't no amateur at its regular business of being a vital part
+of the home. Some rooms are awful amateurs at it, and some ain't no more
+than apprentices, and some are downright enemies to the house they're
+in. But that library I always like to look around. It seems to me, if I
+really knew about such things, and how they ought to be, I couldn't
+like that room any better. Colour, proportion, window, shadow--they was
+all lined up in a kind of an enjoyable professionalism of doing their
+best. The room was awake now, too--I had the windows open and I'd
+started the clock. Insley set looking around as if there was sighs
+inside him. I knew how, down in New England, his father's home sort of
+behaved itself like this home. But after college, he had had to choose
+his way, and he had faced about to the new west, the new world, where
+big ways of living seemed to him to be sweeping as a wind sweeps. He had
+chose as he had chose, and I suppose he was glad of that; but I knew the
+room he had when he was in town, at Threat Hubbelthwait's hotel, must be
+a good deal like being homesick, and that this library was like coming
+home.
+
+"'Mr. Proudfit had just returned and would be down at once,' the man
+come back and told him. And while he waited Insley says to me:
+
+"'Have you seen anything of the little boy to-day, Miss Marsh?'
+
+"I was dying to answer back: 'Yes, I see Miss Sidney early this
+morning,' but you can't answer back all you die to. So I told him yes,
+I'd seen all three of them and they was to be up in the city all day to
+buy some things for Christopher. Mis' Emmons and Robin was both to come
+up to Proudfit House to Alex's house party--seems they'd met abroad
+somewheres a year or more back; and they was going to bring Christopher,
+who Mis' Emmons didn't show any sign of giving up while her plan,
+whatever it was, was getting itself thought over. So they'd whisked the
+child off to the city that day to get him the things he needed. And
+there wasn't time to say anything more, for in come Alex Proudfit.
+
+"He was in his riding clothes--horseback dress we always call it in the
+village, which I s'pose isn't city talk, proper. He was long and thin
+and brown, and sort of slow-moving in his motions, but quick and nervous
+in his talk; and I don't know what there was about him--his clothes, or
+his odd, old-country looking ring, or the high white thing wound twice
+around his neck, or his way of pronouncing his words--but he seemed a
+good deal like a picture of a title or a noted man. The minute you
+looked at him, you turned proud of being with him, and you pretty near
+felt distinguished yourself, in a nice way, because you was in his
+company. Alex was like that.
+
+"'I don't like having kept you waiting,' he says to Insley. 'I'm just
+in. By Jove, I've left Topping's letter somewhere--Insley, is it? thank
+you. Of course. Well, Calliope, blessings! I knew I could count on you.
+How are you--you look it. No, don't run away. Keep straight on--Mr.
+Insley will pardon us getting settled under his nose. Now what can I get
+you, Mr. Insley? If you've walked up, you're warm. No? As you will. It's
+mighty jolly getting back--for a minute, you know. I couldn't stop here.
+How the devil do you stop here all the time--or do you stop here all the
+time?...' All this he poured out in a breath. He always had talked fast,
+but now I see that he talked more than fast--he talked foreign.
+
+"'I'm here some of the time,' says Insley; 'I hoped that you were going
+to be, too.'
+
+"'I?' Alex said. 'Oh, no--no. I feel like this: while I'm in the world,
+I want it at its best. I want it at its latest moment. I want to be
+living _now_. Friendship Village--why, man, it's living half a century
+ago--anyway, a quarter. It doesn't know about A.D. nineteen-anything. I
+love the town, you know, for what it is. But confound it, I'm living
+_now_.'
+
+"Insley leaned forward. I was dusting away on an encyclopædia, but I see
+his face and I knew what it meant. This was just what he'd been hoping
+for. Alex Proudfit was a man who understood that the village hadn't
+caught up. So he would want to help it--naturally he would.
+
+"'I'm amazed at the point of view,' Alex went on. 'I never saw such
+self-sufficiency as the little towns have. In England, on the continent,
+the villages know their place and keep it, look up to the towns and all
+that--play the peasant, as they are. Know their betters. Here? Bless
+you. Not a man down town here but will tell you that the village has got
+everything that is admirable. They believe it, too. Electric light,
+water, main street paved, cemetery kept up, "nice residences,"
+telephones, library open two nights a week, fresh lettuce all
+winter--fine, up-to-date little place! And, Lord, but it's a back-water.
+With all its improvements the whole _idea_ of modern life somehow
+escapes it--music and art, drama, letters, manners, as integral parts of
+everyday living--what does it know of them? It thinks these things are
+luxuries, outside the scheme of real life, like monoplanes. Jove, it's
+delicious!'
+
+"He leaned back, laughing. Insley must have felt his charm. Alex always
+was fascinating. His eyes were gray and sort of hobnobbed with your
+own; his square chin just kind of threatened a dimple without breaking
+into one; his dark hair done clusters like a statue; and then there was
+a lot of just plain charm pouring off him. But of course more than with
+this, Insley was filled with his own hope: if Alex Proudfit understood
+some things about the village that ought to be made right, it looked to
+him as though they might do everything together.
+
+"'Why,' Insley says, 'you don't know--you don't know how glad I am to
+hear you say this. It's exactly the thing my head has been full of....'
+
+"'Of course your head is full of it,' says Alex. 'How can it help but be
+when you're fast here some of the time? If you don't mind--what is it
+that keeps you here at all? I don't think I read Topping's letter
+properly....'
+
+"Insley looked out from all over his face.
+
+"'I stay,' he says, 'just because all this _is_ so. It needs somebody to
+stay, don't you think?'
+
+"'Ah, yes, I see,' says Alex, rapid and foreign. 'How do you mean,
+though? Surely you don't mean renouncing--and that sort of thing?'
+
+"'Renouncing--no!' says Insley. 'Getting into the game.'
+
+"He got his enthusiasm down into still places and outlined what he
+meant. It was all at the ends of his fingers--what there was to do if
+the town was to live up to itself, to find ways to express the everyday
+human fellowship that Insley see underneath everything. And Alex
+Proudfit listened, giving that nice, careful, pacifying attention of
+his. He was always so polite that his listening was like answering. When
+Insley got through, Alex's very disagreeing with him was sympathizing.
+
+"'My dear man,' says he--I remember every word because it was something
+I'd wondered sometimes too, only I'd done my wondering vague, like you
+do--'My dear man, but are you not, after all, anticipating? This is just
+the way Nature works--beating these things into the heads and hearts of
+generations. Aren't you trying to do it all at once?'
+
+"'I'm trying to help nature, to be a part of nature--exactly,' says
+Insley, 'and to do it here in Friendship Village.'
+
+"'Why,' says Alex, 'you'll be talking about facilitating God's plan
+next--helping him along, by Jove.'
+
+"Insley looks at him level. 'I mean that now,' he says, 'if you want to
+put it that way.'
+
+"'Good Lord,' says Alex, 'but how do you know what--what he wants?'
+
+"'Don't you?' says Insley, even.
+
+"Alex Proudfit turned and touched a bell. 'Look here,' he says, 'you
+stay and dine, won't you? I'm alone to-night--Calliope and I are. Stay.
+I always enjoy threshing this out.'
+
+"To the man-servant who just about breathed with a well-trained stoop of
+being deferential, his master give the order about the table. 'And,
+Bayless, have them hunt out some of those tea-roses they had in bloom
+the other day--you should see them, Calliope. Oh, and, Bayless, hurry
+dinner a bit. I'm as hungry as lions,' he added to us, and he made me
+think of the little boy in knickerbockers, asking me for fresh cookies.
+
+"He slipped back to their topic, ranking it right in with tea-roses. In
+the hour before dinner they went on 'threshing it out' there in that
+nice luxurious room, and through the dinner, too--a simple, perfect
+dinner where I didn't know which to eat, the plates or the food, they
+was both so complete. Up to Proudfit House I can hardly ever make out
+whether I'm chewing flavours or colours or shapes, but I donno as I
+care. Flavours, thank my stars, aren't the only things in life I know
+how to digest.
+
+"First eager, then patient, Insley went over his ground, setting forth
+by line and by line, by vision and by vision, the faith that was in
+him--faith in human nature to come into its own, faith in the life of a
+town to work into human life at its best. And always down the same road
+they went, they come a-canterin' back with Alex Proudfit's 'Precisely.
+It is precisely what is happening. You can't force it. You mustn't force
+it. To do the best we can with ourselves and to help up an under dog or
+two--if he deserves it--that's the most Nature lets us in for. Otherwise
+she says: "Don't meddle. I'm doing this." And she's right. We'd bungle
+everything. Believe me, my dear fellow, our spurts of civic
+righteousness and national reform never get us anywhere in the long run.
+In the long run, things go along and go along. You can't stop them. If
+you're wise, you won't rush them.'
+
+"At this I couldn't keep still no longer. We was at the table then, and
+I looked over to Alex between the candlesticks and felt as if he was
+back in knickerbockers again, telling me God had made enough ponies so
+he could gallop his all day on the Plank Road if he wanted to.
+
+"'You and Silas Sykes, Alex,' I says, 'have come to the same motto.
+Silas says Nature is real handy about taking her course so be you don't
+yank open cocoons and buds and like that.'
+
+"'Old Silas,' says Alex. 'Lord, is he still going on about everything?
+Old Silas....'
+
+"'Yes,' I says, 'he is. And so am I. Out by my woodshed I've got a
+Greening apple tree. When it was about a year old a cow I used to keep
+browst it down. It laid over on the ground, broke clean off all but one
+little side of bark that kept right on doing business with sap, like it
+didn't know its universe was sat on. I didn't get time for a week or two
+to grub it up, and when I did go to it, I see it was still living,
+through that little pinch of bark. I liked the pluck, and I straightened
+it up and tied it to the shed. I used to fuss with it some. Once in a
+storm I went out and propped a dry-goods box over it. I kept the earth
+rich and drove the bugs off. I kind of got interested in seeing what it
+would do next. What it done was to grow like all possessed. It was
+twenty years ago and more that the cow come by it, and this year I've
+had seven bushels of Greenings off that one tree. Suppose I hadn't tied
+it up?'
+
+"'You'd have saved yourself no end of trouble, dear Calliope,' says
+Alex, 'to say nothing of sparing the feelings of the cow.'
+
+"'I ain't so anxious any more,' says I, 'about sparing folks' feelings
+as I am about sparing folks. Nor I ain't so crazy as I used to be about
+saving myself trouble, either.'
+
+"'Dear Calliope,' says Alex, 'what an advocate you are. Won't you be my
+advocate?'
+
+"He wouldn't argue serious with me now no more than he would when he was
+in knickerbockers. But yet he was adorable. When we got back to the
+library, I went on finishing up the books and I could hear him being
+adorable. He dipped down into the past and brought up rich things--off
+down old ways of life in the village that he'd had a part in and then
+off on the new ways where his life had led him. Java--had Insley ever
+been in Java? He must show him the moonstone he got there and tell him
+the story they told him about it. But the queerest moonstone story was
+one he'd got in Lucknow--so he goes on, and sends Bayless for a cabinet,
+and from one precious stone and another he just naturally drew out
+romances and adventures, as if he was ravelling the stones out into
+them. And then he begun taking down some of his old books. And when it
+come to books, the appeal to Insley was like an appeal of friends, and
+he burrowed into them musty parchments abundant.
+
+"'By George,' Insley says once, 'I didn't dream there were such things
+in Friendship Village.'
+
+"'Next thing you'll forget they're in the world,' says Alex,
+significant. 'Believe me, a man like you ought not to be down here, or
+over to Indian Mound, either. It's an economic waste. Nature has fitted
+you for her glorious present and you're living along about four decades
+ago. Don't you think of that?...'
+
+"Then the telephone on the library table rang and he answered a call
+from the city. 'Oh, buy it in, buy it in, by all means,' he directs.
+'Yes, cable to-night and buy it in. That,' he says, as he hung up, 'just
+reminds me. There's a first night in London to-night that I've been
+promising myself to see.... What a dog's life a business man leads. By
+the way,' he goes on, 'I've about decided to put in one of our plants
+around here somewhere--a tannery, you know. I've been off to-day looking
+over sites. I wonder if you can't give me some information I'm after
+about land around Indian Mound. I'm not saying anything yet,
+naturally--they'll give other people a bonus to establish in their
+midst, but the smell of leather is too much for them. We always have to
+surprise them into it. But talk about the ultimate good of a town ... if
+a tannery isn't that, what is it?'
+
+"It was after nine o'clock when I got the books set right--I loved to
+handle them, and there was some I always looked in before I put them up
+because some of the pictures give me feelings I remembered, same as
+tasting some things will--spearmint and caraway and coriander. Insley,
+of course, walked down with me. Alex wanted to send us in the
+automobile, but I'm kind of afraid of them in the dark. I can't get it
+out of my head that every bump we go over may be bones. And then I guess
+we both sort of wanted the walk.
+
+"Insley was like another man from the one that had come into the library
+that afternoon, or had been talking to us at Mis' Emmons's the night
+before. Down in the village, on Mis' Emmons's hearth, with Robin sitting
+opposite, it had seemed so easy to know ways to do, and to do them.
+Everything seemed possible, as if the whole stiff-muscled universe could
+be done things to if only everybody would once say to it: _Our_
+universe. But now, after his time with Alex, I knew how everything had
+kind of _tightened_, closed in around him, shot up into high walls.
+Money, tanneries, big deals by cable, moonstones from Java, they almost
+made me slimpse too, and think, What's the use of believing Alex
+Proudfit and me belong to the same universe? So I guessed how Insley was
+feeling, ready to believe that he had got showed up to himself in his
+true light, as a young, emotioning creature who dreams of getting
+everybody to belong together, and yet can't find no good way. And Alex
+Proudfit's parting words must of followed him down the drive and out on
+to the Plank Road:--
+
+"'Take my advice. Don't spend yourself on this blessed little hole. It's
+dear to me, but it _is_ a hole ... eh? You won't get any thanks for it.
+Ten to one they'll turn on you if you try to be one of them. Get out of
+here as soon as possible, and be in the real world! This is just
+make-believing--and really, you know, you're too fine a sort to throw
+yourself away like this. Old Nature will take care of the town in good
+time without you. Trust her!'
+
+"Sometimes something happens to make the world seem different from what
+we thought it was. Them times catch all of us--when we feel like we'd
+been let down gentle from some high foot-path where we'd been going
+along, and instead had been set to walk a hard road in a silence that
+pointed its finger at us. If we get really knocked down sudden from a
+high foot-path, we can most generally pick ourselves up and rally. But
+when we've been let down gentle by arguments that seem convincing, and
+by folks that seem to know the world better than we do, then's the time
+when there ain't much of any rally to us. If we're any good, I s'pose we
+can climb back without rallying. Rallying gives some spring to the
+climb, but just straight dog-climbing will get us there, too.
+
+"It was a lovely July night, with June not quite out of the world yet.
+There was that after-dark light in the sky that makes you feel that the
+sky is going to stay lit up behind and shining through all night, as if
+the time was so beautiful that celestial beings must be staying awake to
+watch it, and to keep the sky lit and turned down low.... We walked
+along the Plank Road pretty still, because I guessed how Insley's own
+thoughts was conversation enough for him; but when we got a ways down,
+he kind of reached out with his mind for something and me being near by,
+his mind clutched at me.
+
+"'What if it _is_ so, Miss Marsh?' he says. 'What if the only thing for
+us to do is to tend to personal morality and an occasional lift to an
+under dog or two--"if he deserves it." What if that's all--they meant us
+to do?'
+
+"It's awful hard giving a reason for your chief notions. It's like
+describing a rose by the tape-measure.
+
+"'Shucks!' I says only. 'Look up at the stars. I don't believe it.'
+
+"He laughed a little, and he did look up at them, but still I knew how
+he felt. And even the stars that night looked awful detached and able to
+take care of themselves. And they were a-shining down on the Plank Road
+that would get to be Daphne Street and go about its business of leading
+to private homes--_private_ homes. The village, that little cluster of
+lights ahead there, seemed just shutting anybody else out, going its own
+way, kind of mocking anybody for any idea of getting really inside it.
+It was plain enough that Insley had nothing to hope for from Alex
+Proudfit. And Alex's serene sureness that Nature needed nobody to help,
+his real self-satisfied looking on at processes which no man could
+really hurry up--my, but they made you feel cheap, and too many of
+yourself, and like none of you had a license to take a-hold. For a
+second I caught myself wondering. Maybe Nature--stars and streets and
+processes--_could_ work it out without us.
+
+"Something come against my foot. I pushed at it, and then bent over and
+touched it. It was warm and yieldy, and I lifted it up. And it was a
+puppy that wriggled its body unbelievable and flopped on to my arm its
+inch and a quarter of tail.
+
+"'Look at,' I says to Insley, which, of course, he couldn't do; but I
+put the little thing over into his hands.
+
+"'Well, little brother,' says he. 'Running away?'
+
+"We was just in front of the Cadozas', a tumble-down house halfway
+between Proudfit House and the village. It looked like the puppy might
+belong there, so we turned in there with it. I'd always sort of dreaded
+the house, setting in back among lilacs and locusts and never lit up.
+When I stopped to think of it, I never seemed to remember much about
+those lilacs and locusts blooming--I suppose they did, but nobody caught
+them at it often. Some houses you always think of with their lilacs and
+locusts and wisteria and hollyhocks going all the time; and some you
+never seem to connect up with being in bloom at all. Some houses you
+always seem to think of as being lit up to most of their windows, and
+some you can't call to mind as showing any way but dark. The Cadozas'
+was one of the unblossoming, dark kind, and awful ramshackle, besides.
+I always use' to think it looked like it was waiting for some kind of
+happening, I didn't know what. And sometimes when I come by there in the
+dark, I used to think: It ain't happened yet.
+
+"We went around to the back door to rap, and Mis' Cadoza opened it--a
+slovenly looking woman she is, with no teeth much, and looking like what
+hair she's got is a burden to her. I remember how she stood there
+against a background of mussy kitchen that made you feel as if you'd
+turned something away wrong side out to where it wasn't meant to be
+looked at.
+
+"'Is it yours, Mis' Cadoza?' I says, Insley holding out the puppy.
+
+"'Murder, it's Patsy,' says Mis' Cadoza. 'Give 'm here--he must of
+followed Spudge off. Oh, it's you, Miss Marsh.'
+
+"Over by the cook stove in the corner I see past her to something that
+made me bound to go inside a minute. It was a bed, all frowzy and
+tumbled, and in it was laying a little boy.
+
+"'Why,' I says, 'I heard Eph was in bed. What's the matter with him?'
+And I went right in, past his mother, like I was a born guest. She drew
+off, sort of grudging--she never liked any of us to go there, except
+when some of them died, which they was always doing. 'Come in and see
+Eph, Mr. Insley,' I says, and introduced him.
+
+"The little boy wasn't above eight years old and he wasn't above six
+years big.... He was laying real still, with his arms out of bed, and
+his little thin hands flat down on the dark covers. His eyes, looking up
+at us, watching, made me think of some trapped thing.
+
+"'Well, little brother,' says Insley, 'what's the trouble?'
+
+"Mis' Cadoza come and stood at the foot of the bed and jerked at the top
+covers.
+
+"'I've put him in the bed,' she says, 'because I'm wore out lifting him
+around. An' I've got the bed out here because I can't trapse back an'
+forth waitin' on him.'
+
+"'Is he a cripple?' asks Insley, low. I liked so much to hear his
+voice--it was as if it lifted and lowered itself in his throat without
+his bothering to tell it which kind it was time to do. And I never heard
+his voice make a mistake.
+
+"'Cripple?' says Mis' Cadoza, in her kind of undressed voice. 'No. He
+fell in a tub of hot water years ago, and his left leg is witherin' up.'
+
+"'Let me see it,' says Insley, and pulled the covers back without
+waiting.
+
+"There ain't nothing more wonderful than a strong, capable, quick human
+hand doing something it knows how to do. Insley's hands touched over the
+poor little leg of the child until I expected to see it get well right
+there under his fingers. He felt the cords of the knee and then looked
+up at the mother.
+
+"'Haven't they told you,' he says, 'that if he has an operation on his
+knee, you can have a chance at saving the leg? I knew a case very like
+this where the leg was saved.'
+
+"'I ain't been to see nobody about it,' says Mis' Cadoza, leaving her
+mouth open afterwards, like she does. 'What's the good? I can't pay for
+no operation on him. I got all I can do to keep 'm alive.'
+
+"Eph moved a little, and something fell down on the floor. Mis' Cadoza
+pounced on it.
+
+"'Ain't I forbid you?' she says, angry, and held out to us what she'd
+picked up--a little dab of wet earth. 'He digs up all my house plants,'
+she scolds, like some sort of machinery grating down on one place
+continual, 'an' he hauls the dirt out and lays there an' makes
+_figgers_. The idear! Gettin' the sheets a sight....'
+
+"The child looked over at us, defiant. He spoke for the first time, and
+I was surprised to hear how kind of grown-up his voice was.
+
+"'I can get 'em to look like faces,' he says. 'I don't care what _she_
+says.'
+
+"'Show us,' commands Insley.
+
+"He got back the bit of earth from Mis' Cadoza, and found a paper for
+the crumbs, and pillowed the boy up and sat beside him. The thin, dirty
+little hands went to work as eager as birds pecking, and on the earth
+that he packed in his palm he made, with his thumb nail and a pen handle
+from under his pillow, a face--a boy's face, that had in it something
+that looked at you. 'But I can never get 'em to look the same way two
+times,' he says to us, shy.
+
+"'He's most killed my Lady Washington geranium draggin' the clay out
+from under the roots,' Mis' Cadoza put in, resentful.
+
+"Insley sort of sweeps around and looks acrost at her, deep and gentle,
+and like he understood about her boy and her geranium considerable
+better than she did.
+
+"'He won't do it any more,' he says. 'He'll have something better.'
+
+"The boy looked up at him. 'What?' he asks.
+
+"'Clay,' says Insley, 'in a box. With things for you to make the clay
+like. Do you want that?'
+
+"The boy kind of curled down in his pillow and come as near to shuffling
+as he could in the bed, and he hadn't an idea what to say. But I tell
+you, his eyes, they wasn't like any trapped thing any more; they was
+regular _boy's_ eyes, lit up about something.
+
+"'Mrs. Cadoza,' Insley says, 'will you do something for me? We're trying
+to get together a little shrubbery, over at the college. May I come in
+and get some lilac roots from you some day?'
+
+"Mis' Cadoza looked at him--and looked. I don't s'pose it had ever come
+to her before that anybody would want anything she had or anything she
+could do.
+
+"'Why, sure,' she says, only. 'Sure, you can, Mr. What's-name.'
+
+"And then Insley put out his hand, and she took it, I noted special. I
+donno as I ever see anybody shake hands with her before, excep' when
+somebody was gettin' buried out of her house.
+
+"When we got out on the road again, I noticed that Insley went swinging
+along so's I could hardly keep up with him; and he done it sort of
+automatic, and like it was natural to him. I didn't say anything. If
+I've learned one thing living out and in among human beings, it's that
+if you don't do your own keeping still at the right time, nobody else is
+going to do it for you. He spoke up after a minute like I thought he
+would; and he spoke up buoyant--kind of a reverent buoyant:--
+
+"'I don't believe we're discharged from the universe, after all,' he
+says, and laughed a little. 'I believe we've still got our job.'
+
+"I looked 'way down the Plank Road, on its way to its business of being
+Daphne Street, and it come to me that neither the one nor the other
+stopped in Friendship Village. But they led on out, down past the wood
+lots and the Pump pasture and across the tracks and up the hill, and
+right off into that sky that somebody was keeping lit up and turned down
+low. And I said something that I'd thought before:
+
+"'Ain't it,' I says, 'like sometimes everybody in the world come and
+stood right close up beside of you, and spoke through the walls of you
+for something inside of you to come out and be there with them?'
+
+"'That's it,' he says, only. 'That's it.' But I see his mind nipped onto
+what mine meant, and tied it in the right place.
+
+"When we got to Mis' Emmons's corner, I turned off from Daphne Street
+to go that way, because I'd told her I'd look in that night and see what
+they'd bought in town. It was late, for the village, but Mis' Emmons
+never minded that. The living-room light was showing through the
+curtains, and Insley, saying good night to me, looked towards the
+windows awful wistful. I guessed why. It was part because he felt as if
+he must see Robin Sidney and they must talk over together what Alex
+Proudfit had said to him. And part it was just plain because he wanted
+to see her again.
+
+"'Why don't you come in a minute,' I says, 'and ask after Christopher?
+Then you can see me home.'
+
+"'Wouldn't they mind it being late?' he asks.
+
+"I couldn't help smiling at that. Once Mis' Emmons had called us all up
+by telephone at ten o'clock at night to invite us to her house two days
+later. She explained afterwards that she hadn't looked at the clock for
+a week, but if she had, she might have called us just the same. 'For my
+life,' she says, 'I _can't_ be afraid of ten o'clock. Indeed, I rather
+like it.' I told him this, while we was walking in from her gate.
+
+"'Mrs. Emmons,' he says, when she come to the door, 'I've come because I
+hear that you like ten o'clock, and so do I. I wanted to ask if you've
+ever been able to make it last?'
+
+"'No,' she says. 'I prefer a new one every night--and this one to-night
+is an exceptionally good one.'
+
+"She always answered back so pretty. I feel glad when folks can. It's
+like they had an extra brain to 'em.
+
+"Insley went in, and he sort of filled up the whole room, the way some
+men do. He wasn't so awful big, either. But he was pervading.
+Christopher had gone to bed, and Robin Sidney was sitting there near a
+big crock of hollyhocks--she could make the centre and life of a room a
+crock full of flowers just as you can make it a fireplace.
+
+"'Come in,' she says, 'and see what we bought Christopher. I wanted to
+put him in black velvet knickerbockers or silver armour, but Aunt
+Eleanor has bought chiefly khaki middies. She's such a sensible
+relative.'
+
+"'What are we going to do with him?' Insley asks. I loved the way he
+always said 'we' about everything. Not 'they' or 'you,' but always,
+'What are _we_ going to do.'
+
+"'I'll keep him awhile,' Mis' Emmons says, 'and see what develops. If I
+weren't going to Europe this fall--but something may happen. Things do.
+Calliope,' she says to me, 'did I buy what I ought to have bought?'
+
+"I went over to see the things spread out on the table, and Insley
+turned round to where Robin was. I don't really believe he had been very
+far away from where she was since the night before, when Christopher
+come. And he got right into what he had to say, like he was impatient
+for the sympathy in her eyes and in her voice.
+
+"'I must tell you,' he says. 'I could hardly wait to tell you. Isn't it
+great to be knocked down and picked up again, without having to get back
+on your own feet. I--wanted to tell you.'
+
+"'Tell me,' she says. And she looked at him in her nice, girl way that
+lent him her eyes in good faith for just a minute and then took them
+back again.
+
+"'I've been to see Alex Proudfit,' he said. 'I've dined with him.'
+
+"I don't think she said anything at all, but Insley went on, absorbed in
+what he was saying.
+
+"'I talked with him,' he says, 'about what we talked of last night--the
+things to do, here in the village. I thought he might care--I was
+foolish enough for that. Have you ever tried to open a door in a solid
+wall? When I left there, I felt as if I'd tried just that. Seriously,
+have you ever tried to talk about the way things are going to be and to
+talk about it to a perfectly satisfied man?'
+
+"Robin leaned forward, but I guess he thought that was because of her
+sympathy. He went right on:--
+
+"'I want never to speak of this to anyone else, but I can't help telling
+you. You--understand. You know what I'm driving at. Alex Proudfit is a
+good man--as men are counted good. And he's a perfect host, a
+fascinating companion. But he's a type of the most dangerous selfishness
+that walks the world--'
+
+"Robin suddenly laid her hand, just for a flash, on Insley's arm.
+
+"'You mustn't tell me,' she says. 'I ought to have told you before. Alex
+Proudfit--I'm going to be Alex Proudfit's wife.'
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+"In the next days things happened that none of us Friendship Village
+ladies is likely ever to forget. Some of the things was nice and some
+was exciting, and some was the kind that's nice after you've got the
+introduction wore off; but all of them was memorable. And most all of
+them was the kind that when you're on the train looking out the car
+window, or when you're home sitting in the dusk before it's time to
+light the lamp, you fall to thinking about and smiling over, and you
+have them always around with you, same as heirlooms you've got ready for
+yourself.
+
+"One of these was the Fourth of July that year. It fell a few days after
+Alex Proudfit come, and the last of the days was full of his guests
+arriving to the house party. The two Proudfit cars was racking back and
+forth to the station all day long, and Jimmy Sturgis, he went near crazy
+with getting the baggage up. I never see such a lot of baggage. 'Land,
+land,' says Mis' Toplady, peeking out her window at it, 'you'd think
+they was all trees and they'd come bringing extra sets of branches,
+regular forest size.' Mis' Emmons and Robin and Christopher went up the
+night before the Fourth--Mis' Emmons was going to do the chaperoning,
+and Alex had asked me to be up there all I could to help him. He knows
+how I love to have a hand in things. However, I couldn't be there right
+at first, because getting ready for the Fourth of July was just then in
+full swing.
+
+"Do you know what it is to want to do over again something that you
+ain't done for years and years? I don't care what it is--whether it's
+wanting to be back sitting around the dinner table of your home when you
+was twelve, and them that was there aren't there now; or whether it's
+rocking in the cool of the day on the front porch of some old house that
+got tore down long ago; or whether it's walking along a road you use' to
+know every fence post of; or fishing from a stream that's dried up or
+damned these twenty years; or eating spice' currants or pickle' peaches
+that there aren't none put up like them now; or hearing a voice in a
+glee club that don't sing no more, or milking a dead cow that _wasn't_
+dead on the spring mornings you mean about--no, sir, I don't care what
+one of them all it happens to be, if you know what it is to want to do
+it again and can't, 'count of death and distance and long-ago-ness,
+then I tell you you know one of the lonesomest, hurtingest feelings the
+human heart can, sole outside of the awful things. And that was what had
+got the matter with me awhile ago.
+
+"It had come on me in the meeting of townspeople called by Silas Sykes a
+few weeks before, to discuss how Friendship Village should celebrate the
+Fourth. We hadn't had a Fourth in the village in years. Seeing the
+Fourth and the Cemetery was so closely connected, late years, Sodality
+had took a hand in the matter and had got fire-crackers and pistols
+voted out of town, part by having family fingers blowed off and clothes
+scorched full of holes, and part through Silas and the other dealers
+admitting they wan't no money in the stuff and they'd be glad to be
+prevented by law from having to sell it. So we shut down on it the year
+after little Spudge Cadoza bit down on a cap to see if it'd go off, and
+it done so. But we see we'd made the mistake of not hatching up
+something to take the place of the noise, because the boys and girls all
+went off to the next-town Fourths and come home blowed up and scorched
+off, anyway. And some of the towns, especially Red Barns, that we can
+see from Friendship Village when it's clear, was feeling awful touchy
+and chip-shouldered towards us, and their two weekly papers was saying
+we borrowed our year's supply of patriotism off the county, and sponged
+on public spirit, and like that. So the general Friendship feeling was
+that we'd ought to have a doings this year, and Postmaster Sykes, that
+ain't so much public spirited as he is professional leading
+citizen,--platform introducer of all visiting orators and so on,--he
+called a mass-meeting to decide what to do.
+
+"Mis' Sykes, she was awful interested, too, through being a born leader
+and up in arms most of the time to do something new. And this year she
+was anxious to get up something fancy to impress her niece with--the new
+niece that was coming to visit her, and that none of us had ever see,
+and that the Sykes's themselves had only just developed. Seems she was
+looking for her family tree and she wrote to Mis' Sykes about being
+connect'. And the letter seemed so swell, and the address so
+mouth-melting and stylish that Mis' Sykes up and invited her to
+Friendship Village to look herself up in their Bible, Born and Died
+part.
+
+"The very night of that public mass-meeting Miss Beryl Sessions--such
+was the niece's name--come in on the Through, and Mis' Sykes, she
+snapped her up from the supper table to bring her to the meeting and
+show her off, all brimming with the blood-is-thicker-than-water
+sentiments due to a niece that looked like that. For I never see
+sweller. And being in the Glee Club I set where I got a good view when
+Mis' Sykes rustled into the meeting, last minute, in her best black
+cashmere, though it was an occasion when the rest of us would wear our
+serges and alapacas, and Mis' Sykes knew it. All us ladies see them both
+and took in every stitch they had on without letting on to unpack a
+glance, and we see that the niece was wearing the kind of a dress that
+was to ours what mince-pie is to dried apple, and I couldn't blame Mis'
+Sykes for showing her off, human.
+
+"Silas had had Dr. June open the meeting with prayer, and I can't feel
+that this was so much reverence in Silas as that he isn't real
+parliamentary nor yet real knowledgeable about what to do with his
+hands, and prayer sort of broke the ice for him. That's the way Silas
+is.
+
+"'Folks,' says he, 'we're here to consider the advisability of bein'
+patriotic this year. Of having a doings that'll shame the other towns
+around for their half-an'-half way of giving things. Of making the
+glorious Fourth a real business bringer. Of having a speech that'll
+bring in the country trade--the Honourable Thaddeus Hyslop has been
+named by some. And of getting our city put in the class of the wide
+awake and the hustlers and the up-to-date and doing. It's a grand chance
+we've passed up for years. What are we going to do for ourselves this
+year? To decide it is the purpose of this mass-meetin'. Sentiments are
+now in order.'
+
+"Silas set down with a kitterin' glance to his new niece that he was
+host and uncle of and pleased to be put in a good light before, first
+thing so.
+
+"Several men hopped up--Timothy Toplady saying that Friendship Village
+was a city in all but name and numbers, and why not prove it to the
+other towns? Jimmy Sturgis that takes tintypes, besides running the 'bus
+and was all primed for a day full of both--'A glorious Fourth,' says he,
+'would be money in our pockets.' And the farm machinery and furniture
+dealers, and Gekerjeck, that has the drug store and the ice-cream
+fountain, and others, they spoke the same. Insley had to be to the
+college that night, or I don't believe the meeting would have gone the
+way it did go. For the first line and chorus of everything that all the
+men present said never varied:--
+
+"'The Fourth for a business bringer.'
+
+"It was Threat Hubbelthwait that finally made the motion, and he wasn't
+real sober, like he usually ain't, but he wound up on the key-note:--
+
+"'I sold two hundred and four lunches the last Fourth we hed in
+Friendship Village,' says he, pounding his palm with his fist, 'an' I
+move you that we celebrate this comin' Fourth like the blazes.'
+
+"And though Silas softened it down some in putting it, still that was
+substantially the sentiment that went through at that mass-meeting, that
+was real pleased with itself because of.
+
+"Well, us ladies hadn't taken no part. It ain't our custom to appear
+much on our feet at public gatherings, unless to read reports of a
+year's work, and so that night we never moved a motion. But we looked at
+each other, and us ladies has got so we understand each other's
+eyebrows. And we knew, one and all, that we was ashamed of the men and
+ashamed of their sentiments. But the rest didn't like to speak out,
+'count of being married to them. And I didn't like to, 'count of not
+being.
+
+"But when they got to discussing ways and means of celebrating, a woman
+did get onto her feet, and a little lilt of interest run round the room
+like wind. It was Miss Beryl Sessions, the niece, that stood up like
+you'd unwrapped your new fashion magazine and unrolled her off'n the
+front page.
+
+"'I wonder,' says she--and her voice went all sweet and chirpy and
+interested, 'whether it would amuse you to know some ways we took to
+celebrate the Fourth of July last year at home ...' and while the men
+set paying attention to her appearance and thinking they was paying
+attention to her words alone, she went on to tell them how 'at home' the
+whole town had joined in a great, Fourth of July garden party on the
+village 'common,' with a band and lanterns and fireworks at night, and a
+big marquee in the middle, full of ice-cream. 'We made it,' she wound
+up, 'a real social occasion, a town party with everybody invited. And
+the business houses said that it paid them over and over.'
+
+"Well, of course that went with the men. Land, but men is easy tamed, so
+be the tameress is somebody they ain't used to and is gifted with a good
+dress and a kind of a 'scalloped air. But when she also has some idea of
+business they go down and don't know it. 'Why, I should think that'd
+take here like a warm meal,' says Timothy Toplady, instant--and I see
+Mis' Amanda Toplady's chin come home to place like she'd heard Timothy
+making love to another woman. 'Novel as the dickens,' says Simon
+Gekerjeck. 'Move we adopt it.' And so they done.
+
+"While they was appointing committees I set up there in the Glee Club
+feeling blacker and blacker. Coming down to the meeting that night, I
+recollect I'd been extra gentle in my mind over the whole celebration
+idea. Walking along in the seven-o'clock light, with the sun shining
+east on Daphne Street and folks all streaming to the town-meeting, and
+me sensing what it was going to be for, I'd got all worked up to 'most a
+Declaration of Independence lump in my throat. When I went in the door
+to the meeting, little Spudge Cadoza and some other children was hanging
+around the steps and Silas Sykes was driving them away; and it come to
+me how deathly ridiculous that was, to be driving _children_ away from a
+meeting like that, when children is what such meetings is for; and I'd
+got to thinking of all the things Insley was hoping for us, and I'd been
+real lifted up on to places for glory. And here down had come the men
+with their talk about a _paying_ Fourth, and here was Miss Beryl
+Sessions showing us how to celebrate in a way that seemed to me real
+sweet but not so very patriotic. It was then that all of a sudden it
+seemed to me I'd die, because I wanted so much to feel the way I'd use
+to feel when it was going to be the Fourth o' July. And when they sung
+'Star Spangled Banner' to go home on and all stood up to the sentiment,
+I couldn't open my mouth. I can't go folks that stands up and carols
+national tunes and then talks about having a Fourth that'll be a real
+business bringer.
+
+"'What'd you think of the meeting?' says Mis' Toplady, low, to me on the
+way out.
+
+"'I think,' says I, frank, 'it was darn.'
+
+"'There's just exactly what we all think,' says Mis' Toplady, in a
+whisper.
+
+"But all the same, preparations was gone into head first. Most of us was
+put on to from one to five committees--I mean most of them that works.
+The rest of the town was setting by, watching it be done for them,
+serene or snarling, according to their lights. Of course us ladies
+worked, not being them that goes to a meeting an' sets with their mouths
+shut and then comes out and kicks at what the meetin' done. Yet, though
+we wan't made out of that kind of meal, we spoke our minds to each
+other, private.
+
+"'What under the canopy _is_ a marquee?' asks Mis' Amanda Toplady, when
+we met at her house to plan about refreshments.
+
+"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke right up.
+
+"'Why, it's a finger ring,' she says. 'One of them with stones running
+the long way. The minister's wife's got a blue stone one....'
+
+"'Finger ring!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, scornful. 'It's a title. That's
+what it is. From England.'
+
+"We looked at them both, perplexish. Mis' Holcomb is always up on
+things--it was her that went into short sleeves when the rest of us was
+still crocheting cuff turnovers, unconscious as the dead. But Mis'
+Uppers had been the Mayor's wife, and though he'd run away, 'count o'
+some money matter, still a title is a title, an' we thought Mis' Uppers
+had ought to know.
+
+"Then Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, she spoke up timid. 'I
+see,' she says, 'in the _Caterer's Gazette_ a picture called "Marquee
+Decorated for Fête." The picture wan't nothing but a striped tent. Could
+a tent have anything to do with it?'
+
+"'Pity sakes, no,' says Mis' Uppers. 'This is somethin' real city done,
+Abagail.'
+
+"We worked on what we could, but we all felt kind of lost and left out
+of it, and like we was tinkering with tools we didn't know the names of
+and a-making something we wasn't going to know how to use. And when the
+article about our Fourth flared out in the _Friendship Daily_ and Red
+Barns and Indian Mound weeklies, we felt worse than we had before:
+'Garden Party.' 'All Day Fête.' '_Al Fresco_ Celebration,' the editors
+had wrote it up.
+
+"'All _what_?' says Mis' Uppers, listening irritable to the last one. 'I
+can't catch that word no more'n a rabbit.'
+
+"'It's a French word,' Mis' Holcomb told her, superior. 'Seems to me
+I've heard it means a failure. It's a funny way to put it, ain't it? I
+bet, though, that's what it'll be.'
+
+"But the men, my, the men thought they was doing things right. The
+Committee on Orator, with Silas for rudder, had voted itself Fifty
+Dollars to squander on the speech, and they had engaged the Honourable
+Thaddeus Hyslop, that they'd hoped to, and that was formerly in our
+legislature, to be the orator of the day; they put up a platform and
+seats on the 'common'--that wan't nothing but the market where loads of
+wood stood to be sold; they was a-going to cut evergreens and plant them
+there for the day; the Committee on Fireworks was a-going to buy set
+pieces for the evening; they was a-going to raise Ned. Somebody that was
+on one of the committees wanted to have some sort of historic scenes,
+but the men wouldn't hear to it, because that would take away them that
+had to do the business in the stores; no caluthumpians, no grand basket
+dinner--just the garden party, real sweet, with Miss Beryl Sessions and
+a marquee full of ice-cream that the ladies was to make.
+
+"'It sounds sort of sacrilegious to me,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'connectin'
+the Fourth up with society and secular doin's. When I was young, my
+understandin' of a garden party would of been somethin' worldly. Now it
+seems it's patriotic. Well, I wonder how it's believed to be in the
+sight of the Lord?'
+
+"But whether it was right or whether it was wrong, none of it rung like
+it had ought to of rang. They wan't no _glow_ to it. We all went around
+like getting supper on wash-day, and not like getting up a meal for
+folks that meant a lot to us. It wan't going to be any such Fourth as
+I'd meant about and wanted to have come back. The day come on a pacing,
+and the nearer it come, the worse all us ladies felt. And by a few days
+before it, when our final committee meeting come off in Abagail Arnold's
+home bakery, back room, 'count of being central, we was all blue as the
+grave, and I donno but bluer. We set waiting for Silas that was having
+a long-distance call, and Abagail was putting in the time frosting dark
+cakes in the same room. We was most all there but the niece Miss Beryl
+Sessions. She had gone home, but she was coming back on the Fourth in an
+automobile full o' city folks.
+
+"'The _marquee's_ come,' says Mis' Holcomb, throwing out the word
+clickish.
+
+"Nobody said anything. Seems it _was_ a tent all along.
+
+"'Silas has got in an extra boy for the day,' says Mis' Sykes,
+complacent. 'It's the littlest Cadoza boy, Spudge. He's goin' to walk up
+an' down Daphne Street all day, with a Prize Coffee board on his back.'
+
+"'Where's Spudge's Fourth comin' in?' I couldn't help askin'.
+
+"Mis' Sykes stared. She always could look you down, but she's got a much
+flatter, thicker stare since her niece come. 'What's them kind o' folks
+_for_ but such work?' says she, puckering.
+
+"'Oh, I donno, I donno,' says I. 'I thought mebbe they was partly made
+to thank the Lord for bein' born free.'
+
+"'How unpractical you talk, Calliope,' she says.
+
+"'I donno that word,' says I, reckless from being pent up. 'But it
+seems like a liberty-lovin' people had ought to hev _one_ day to love
+liberty on an' not tote groceries and boards and such.'
+
+"'_Don't it!_' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, explosive.
+
+"'What you talking?' says Mis' Sykes, cold. 'Don't you know the Fourth
+of July can be made one of the best days of the year for your own town's
+good? What's that if it ain't patriotic?'
+
+"'It's Yankee shrewd,' says I, snapping some, 'that's what it is. It
+ain't Yankee spirited, by a long shot.'
+
+"'"_By a long shot_,"' quotes Mis' Sykes, withering. She always was
+death on wording, and she was far more death after her niece come. But I
+always thought, and I think now, that correcting your advisary's grammar
+is like telling him there's a smooch on his nose, and they ain't either
+of them parliamental _or_ decent.
+
+"Mis' Uppers sighed. 'The whole thing,' says she, candid, 'sounds to me
+like Fourth o' July in Europe or somewheres. No get-up-an'-get anywheres
+to it. What do they do in Europe on the Fourth o' July, anyway?' she
+wondered. 'I donno's I ever read.'
+
+"'I donno, either,' says Mis' Holcomb, dark, 'but I bet you it's one of
+these All Frost celebrations--or whatever it is they say.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady set drying her feet by Abagail's stove, and she looked
+regular down in the mouth. 'Well, sir,' she said, 'a Fourth o' July all
+rosettes an' ribbins so don't sound to me one bit like the regular
+Fourth at all. It don't sound to me no more'n the third--or the fifth.'
+
+"I was getting that same homesick feeling that I'd had off and on all
+through the getting ready, that hankering for the old kinds of Fourths
+of Julys when I was a little girl. When us girls had a quarter apiece to
+spend, and father'd cover the quarter with his hands on the gate-post
+for us to guess them; and when the boys picked up scrap-iron and sold
+old rubbers to get their Fourth money. It wan't so much what we used to
+do that I wanted back as it was the _feeling_. Why, none of our spines
+use' to be laid down good and flat in our backs once all day long. And I
+wisht what I'd wisht more than once since the mass-meeting, that some of
+us ladies had of took hold of that Fourth and had run it so's 'twould of
+been like you mean 'way inside when you say 'The Fourth of July'--and
+that death and distance and long-ago-ness is awful in the way of.
+
+"'We'd ought to of had a grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods,' I
+says, restless.
+
+"'An' a p'rade,' says Mis' Toplady. 'I donno nothin' that makes me feel
+more patriotic than the minute before the p'rade comes by.'
+
+"'An' children in the Fourth somehow,' Mis' Uppers says. 'Land, children
+is who it's for, anyhow,' she says, like I'd been thinking; 'an' all
+we've ever done for 'em about it is to leave 'em kill 'emselves with
+it.'
+
+"Well, it was there, just there, and before Mis' Sykes could dicker a
+reply that in come tearing her husband from his long-distance
+telephoning, and raced into the room like he hadn't a manner in his kit.
+
+"'We're all over with,' Silas shouts. 'It's all done for! Thaddeus
+Hyslop is smashed an' bleedin'. He can't come. We ain't got no speech.
+His automobile's turned over on top of his last speakin' place.
+Everybody else that ain't one-horse is sure to be got for somewheres
+else. Our Fourth of July is rooned. We're done for. The editor's gettin'
+it in the _Weekly_ so's to warn the county. We'll be the Laughing Stock.
+Dang the luck!' says Silas; 'why don't some o' you say somethin'?'
+
+"But it wasn't all because Silas was doing it all that the men didn't
+talk, because when he'd stopped, they all stood there with their mouths
+open and never said a word. Seems to me I did hear Timothy Toplady bring
+out, 'Blisterin' Benson,' but nobody offered nothing more fertile. That
+is, nobody of the men did. But 'most before I got my thoughts together I
+heard two feet of a chair come down onto the floor, and Mis' Amanda
+Toplady stood up there by Abagail's cook stove, and she took the griddle
+lifter and struck light on the side of the pipe.
+
+"'Hurrah!' she says. 'Now we can have a real Fourth. A Fourth that does
+as a Fourth is.'
+
+"'What you talkin', Amanda Toplady?' says Silas, crisp; and ''Mandy,
+what the blazes do you mean?' says Timothy, her lawful lord. But Mis'
+Toplady didn't mind them, nor mind Mis' Sykes, that was staring at her
+flat and thick.
+
+"'I mean,' says Mis' Toplady, reckless, 'I been sick to death of the
+idea of a Fourth with no spirit to it. I mean I been sick to death of a
+Fourth that's all starched white dresses an' company manners an' no
+hurrahs anywheres about it. An' us ladies, most all of us, feels the
+same. We didn't like to press in, bein' you men done the original
+plannin', an' so not one of us has said "P'rade," nor nothin' else to
+you. But now that your orator has fell through on himself, you men just
+leave us ladies in on this thing to do more'n take orders, an' you
+needn't be the Laughin' Stock o' nothin' an' nobody. I guess you'll all
+stand by me. What say, ladies?'
+
+"Well, sir, you'd ought to of heard us. We joined in like a patch of
+grasshoppers singing. They wasn't one of us that hadn't been dying to
+get our hands on that Fourth and make it a Fourth full of unction and
+oil of joy, like the Bible said, and must of meant what we meant.
+
+"'Oh, ladies,' I remember I says, fervent, 'I feel like we could make a
+Fourth o' July just like stirrin' up a white cake, so be we was let.'
+
+"'What d' you know about managin' a Fourth?' snarls Silas. 'You'll have
+us all in the hole. You'll have us shellin' out of our own pockets to
+make up--'
+
+"Mis' Toplady whirled on him. 'Would you druther have Red Barns an'
+Indian Mound a-jumpin' on you through the weekly press for bein'
+bluffers, an' callin' us cheap an' like that, or would you druther not?'
+she put it to him.
+
+"'Dang it,' says Silas, 'I never tried to do a thing for this town that
+it didn't lay down an' roll all over me. I wish I was dead.'
+
+"'You wan't tryin' to do this thing for this town,' says Mis' Toplady
+back at him, like the wind. 'You was tryin' to do it for the _stores_
+of this town, an' you know it. You was tryin' to ride the Fourth for a
+horse to the waterin' trough o' good business, an' you know it, Silas
+Sykes,' says she, 'an' so was Jimmy and Threat an' all of you. The hull
+country tries to get behind the Fourth of July an' make money over its
+back like a counter. It ain't what was meant, an' us ladies felt it all
+along. An' neither was it meant for a garden party day alone, though
+_that_,' says Mis' Toplady, gracious, 'is a real sweet side idea. An'
+Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Sessions had ought to go on an' run that part of it,
+bein' the--tent's here,' she could _not_ bring herself to use that other
+word. 'But,' she says, 'that ain't all of a real Fourth, nor yet a
+speech ain't, though he did use to be in the legislature. Them things
+alone don't make a real flag, liberty-praisin' Fourth, to me nor to none
+of us.'
+
+"'Well,' says Silas, sour, 'what you goin' to _do_ if the men decides to
+let you try this?'
+
+"'That ain't the way,' says Mis' Toplady, like a flash; 'it ain't for
+the men to _let us do_ nothin'. It's for us all to do it together, yoke
+to yoke, just like everything else ought to be done by us both, an' no
+talk o' "_runnin_'" by either side.'
+
+"'But what's the idee--what's the idee?' says Silas. 'Dang it all,
+somebody's got to hev an idee.'
+
+"'Us ladies has got 'em,' says Mis' Toplady, calm. 'An',' says she, 'one
+o' the first of 'em is that if we have anything to do with runnin' the
+Fourth of our forefathers, then after 10 A.M., all day on that day,
+every business house in town has got to shut down.'
+
+"'What?' says Silas, his voice slippin'. 'Gone crazy-headed, hev ye?'
+
+"'No, Silas,' says Mis' Toplady, 'nor yet hev we gone so graspin' that
+we can't give up a day's trade to take notice of our country.'
+
+"'Lord Harry,' says Silas, 'you can't get a dealer in town to do it, an'
+you know it.'
+
+"'Oh, yes, you can, Silas,' says somebody, brisk. And it was Abagail,
+frosting dark cakes over by the side of the room. 'I was goin' to shut
+up shop, anyway, all day on the Fourth,' Abagail says.
+
+"'An' lose the country trade in lunches?' yells Silas. 'Why, woman,
+you'd be Ten Dollars out o' pocket.'
+
+"'I wan't never one to spend the mornin' thankin' God an' the afternoon
+dippin' oysters,' says Abagail. And Silas scrunched. He done that one
+year when his Thanksgiving oysters come late, and he knew he done it.
+
+"Well, they went over it and over it and tried to think of some other
+way, and tried to hatch up some other speaker without eating up the
+whole Fifty Dollars in telephone tolls, and tried most other things. And
+then we told them what we'd thought of different times, amongst us as
+being features fit for a Fourth in the sight of the Lord and the sight
+of men. And they hemmed and they hawed and they give in about as
+graceful as a clothes-line winds up when you've left it out in the
+sleet, but they did give in and see reason. Timothy last--that's quite
+vain of being firm.
+
+"'If we come out with a one-horse doin's, seems like it'd be worse than
+sittin' down flat-foot failed,' he mourns, grieving.
+
+"Amanda, his wife, give him one of her looks. 'Timothy,' says she,
+'when, since you was married to me, did I ever fail to stodge up a
+company dinner or a spare bed or a shroud when it was needed sudden?
+When did any of us ladies ever fail that's here? Do you sp'ose we're any
+more scant of idees about our own nation?'
+
+"And Timothy had to keep his silence. He knew what she said was the Old
+Testament truth. But I think what really swung them all round was the
+thought of Red Barns and Indian Mound. Imagination of what them two
+weekly papers would say, so be we petered out on our speech and didn't
+offer nothing else, was too much for flesh and blood to bear. And the
+men ended by agreeing to seeing to shutting every business house in
+Friendship Village and they went off to do it,--resolved, but groaning
+some, like men will.
+
+"Mis' Sykes, she made some excuse and went, too. 'I'll run the garden
+party part,' says she. 'My niece an' I'll do that, an' try our best to
+get some novelty into your Fourth. An' we'll preside on the marquee,
+like we'd agreed. More I don't say.'
+
+"But the rest of us, we stayed on there at Abagail's, and we planned
+like mad.
+
+"We didn't look in no journal nor on no woman's page for something new.
+We didn't rush to our City relations for novelties. We didn't try for
+this and that nor grasp at no agony whatever. We just went down deep
+into the inside of our understanding and thought what the Fourth was and
+how them that made it would of wanted it kept. No fingers blowed off nor
+clothes scorched up, no houses burned down, no ear-drums busted
+out--none of them would of been in _their_ programme, and they wan't in
+ours. Some of the things that was in ours we'd got by hearing Insley
+tell what they was doin' other places. Some o' the things he suggested
+to us. Some o' the things we got by just going back and back down the
+years an' _remembering_--not so much what we'd done as the way we use'
+to feel, long ago, when the Fourth was the Fourth and acted like it knew
+it. Some of the things we got by just reaching forward and forward, and
+seeing what the Fourth is going to mean to them a hundred years from
+now--so be we do our part. And some of the things we got through sheer
+make-shift woman intelligence, that put its heads together and used
+everything it had, that had anything to do with the nation, or the town,
+or with really living at all the way that first Fourth of July meant
+about, 'way down inside.
+
+"Before it was light on the morning of the Fourth, I woke up, feeling
+all happy and like I wanted to hurry. I was up and dressed before the
+sun was up, and when I opened my front door, I declare it was just like
+the glory of the Lord was out there waiting for me. The street was
+laying all still and simple, like it was ready and waiting for the
+light. Early as it was, Mis' Holcomb was just shaking her breakfast
+table-cloth on her side stoop, and she waved it to me, big and billowy
+and white, like a banner. And I offs with my apron and waved it back,
+and it couldn't of meant no more to either of us if we had been shaking
+out the folds of flags. It was too early for the country wagons to be
+rattling in yet, and they wan't no other sounds--except a little bit of
+a pop now and then over to where Bennie Uppers and little Nick Toplady
+was up and out, throwing torpedoes onto the bricks; and then the birds
+that was trilling an' shouting like mad, till every tree all up and down
+Daphne Street and all up and down the town and the valley was just one
+living singing. And all over everything, like a kind of a weave to it,
+was that something that makes a Sunday morning and some holiday mornings
+better and sweeter and _goldener_ than any other day. I ain't got much
+of a garden, not having any real time to fuss in it, but I walked out
+into the middle of the little patch of pinks and parsley that I have
+got, and I says 'way deep in me, deeper than thinking: 'It don't make no
+manner of differ'nce how much of a fizzle the day ends up with, this,
+here and now, is the way it had ought to start.'
+
+"Never, not if I live till beyond always, will I forget how us ladies'
+hearts was in our mouths when, along about 'leven o'clock, we heard the
+Friendship Village Stonehenge band coming fifing along, and we knew the
+parade was begun. We was all on the market square--hundreds of us, seems
+though. Red Barns and Indian Mound had turned out from side to side of
+themselves, mingling the same as though ploughshares was
+pruning-hooks--or whatever that quotation time is--both towns looking
+for flaws in the day, like enough, but both shutting up about it,
+biblical. Even the marquee, with its red and white stripes, showing
+through the trees, made me feel good. 'Land, land,' Mis' Toplady says,
+'it looks kind of homey and old-fashioned, after all, don't it? I mean
+the--tent,' she says--she would _not_ say the other word; but then I
+guess it made her kind of mad seeing Mis' Sykes bobbing around in there
+in white duck an' white shoes--her that ain't a grandmother sole because
+of Nature and not at all through any lack of her own years. Everything
+was all seeming light and confident--but I tell you we didn't feel so
+confident as we'd meant to when we heard the band a-coming to the tune
+o' 'Hail, Columbia! Happy Land.' And yet now, when I look back on that
+Independence Day procession, it seems like regular floats is no more
+than toy doings beside of it.
+
+"What do you guess us ladies had thought up for our procession,--with
+Insley back of us, letting us think we thought it up alone? Mebbe you'll
+laugh, because it wan't expensive to do; but oh; I think it was nice.
+We'd took everything in the town that done the town's work, and we'd run
+them all together. We headed off with the fire-engine, 'count of the
+glitter--and we'd loaded it down with flags and flowers, and the hook
+and ladder and hose-carts the same, wheels and sides; and flags in the
+rubber caps of the firemen up top. Then we had the two big sprinkling
+carts, wound with bunting, and five-foot flags flying from the seats.
+Then come all the city teams drawn by the city horses--nice, plump
+horses they was, and rosettes on them, and each man had decorated his
+wagon and was driving it in his best clothes. Then come the steam roller
+that Friendship Village and Red Barns and Indian Mound owns together and
+scraps over some, though that didn't appear in its appearance, puffing
+along, with posies on it. Then there was the city electric light repair
+wagon, with a big paper globe for an umbrella, and the electric men
+riding with their leggings on and their spurs, like they climb the
+poles; and behind them the telephone men was riding--because the town
+owns its own telephone, too--and then the four Centrals, in pretty
+shirtwaists, in a double-seated buggy loaded with flowers--the telephone
+office we'd see to it was closed down, too, to have its Fourth, like a
+human being. And marching behind them was the city waterworks men, best
+bib and tucker apiece. And then we hed out the galvanized garbage wagon
+that us ladies hed bought ourselves a year ago, and that wasn't being
+used this year count of the city pleading too poison poor; and it was
+all scrubbed up and garnished and filled with ferns and drove by its own
+driver and the boy that had use' to go along to empty the cans. And then
+of course they was more things--some of them with day fireworks shooting
+up from them--but not the hearse, though we had all we could do to keep
+Timothy Toplady from having it in, 'count of its common public office.
+
+"Well, and then we'd done an innovation--an' this was all Insley's idea,
+and it was him that made us believe we could do it. Coming next, in
+carriages and on foot, was the mayor and the city council and every last
+man or woman that had anything to do with running the city life. They
+was all there--city treasurer, clerk of the court, register of deeds,
+sheriffs, marshals, night-watchmen, health officer, postmaster, janitor
+of the city hall, clerks, secretaries, stenographers, school board, city
+teachers, and every one of the rest--they was all there, just like they
+had belonged in the p'rade the way them framers of the first Fourth of
+July had meant they should fit in: Conscience and all. But some of them
+servants of the town had made money off'n its good roads, and some off'n
+its saloons, and some off'n getting ordinances repealed, and some off'n
+inspecting buildings and sidewalks that they didn't know nothing about,
+and some was making it even then by paving out into the marsh; and some
+in yet other ways that wasn't either real elbow work nor clean head
+work. What else could they do? We'd ask' them to march because they
+represented the town, and rather'n own they _didn't_ represent the town,
+there they was marching; but if some of them didn't step down Daphne
+Street feeling green and sick and sore and right down schoolboy ashamed
+of themselves, then they ain't got the human thrill in them that somehow
+I _cannot_ believe ever dies clear out of nobody. They was a lump in my
+throat for them that had sold themselves, and they was a lump for them
+that hadn't--but oh, the differ'nce in the lumps.
+
+"'Land, land,' I says to Mis' Toplady, 'if we ain't done another thing,
+we've made 'em remember they're servants to Friendship Village--like
+they often forget.'
+
+"'Ain't we?' she says, solemn. 'Ain't we?'
+
+"And then next behind begun the farm things: the threshin' machines and
+reapers and binders and mowers and like that, all drawn by the farm
+horses and drove by their owners and decorated by them, jolly and gay;
+and, too, all the farm horses for miles around--we was going to give a
+donated surprise prize for the best kep' and fed amongst them. And last,
+except for the other two bands sprinkled along, come the leading
+citizens, and who do you guess _they_ was? Not Silas nor Timothy nor
+Eppleby nor even Doctor June, nor our other leading business men and our
+three or four professionals--no, not them; but the real, true, leading
+citizens of Friendship Village and Indian Mound and Red Barns and other
+towns and the farms between--the _children_, over two hundred of them,
+dressed in white if they had it and in dark if they didn't, with or
+without shoes, in rags or out of them, village-tough descended or with
+pew-renting fathers, all the same and together, and carrying a flag and
+singing to the tops of their voices 'Hail, Columbia,' that the bands
+kept a-playing, some out of plumb as to time, but all fervent and
+joyous. It was us women alone that got up that part. My, I like to think
+about it.
+
+"They swung the length of Daphne Street and twice around the market
+square, and they come to a halt in front of the platform. And Doctor
+June stood up before them all, and he prayed like this:--
+
+"'Lord God, that let us start free an' think we was equal, give us to
+help one another to be free an' to get equal, in deed an' in truth.'
+
+"And who do you s'pose we hed to read the Declaration of Independence?
+Little Spudge Cadoza, that Silas had been a-going to hev walk up and
+down Daphne Street with a board on his back--Insley thought of him, and
+we picked him out a-purpose. And though he didn't read it so thrilling
+as Silas would of, it made me feel the way no reading of it has ever
+made me feel before--oh, because it was kind of like we'd snapped up the
+little kid and set him free all over again, even though he wasn't it but
+one day in the year. And it sort of seemed to me that all inside the
+words he read was trumpets and horns telling how much them words was
+_going_ to mean to him and his kind before he'd had time to die. And
+then the Glee Club struck into 'America,' and the whole crowd joined in
+without being expected, and the three bands that was laying over in the
+shade hopped up and struck in, too--and I bet they could of heard us to
+Indian Mound. Leastways to Red Barns, that we can see from Friendship
+Village when it's clear.
+
+"The grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods stays in my head as one
+picture, all full of veal loaf and 'scalloped potato and fruit salad and
+nut-bread and deviled eggs and bake' beans and pickle' peaches and layer
+cake and drop sponge-cake and hot coffee--the kind of a dinner that
+comes crowding to your thought whenever you think 'Dinner' at your
+hungriest. And after we'd took care of everybody's baskets and set them
+under a tree for a lunch towards six, us ladies went back to the market
+square. And over by the marquee we see the men gathered--all but Insley,
+that had slipped away as quick as we begun telling him how much of it
+was due to him. Miss Beryl Sessions had just arrived, in a automobile,
+covered with veils, and she was introducing the other men to her City
+friends. Us ladies sort of kittered around back of them, not wanting to
+press ourselves forward none, and we went up to the door of the marquee
+where, behind the refreshment table, Mis' Sykes was a-standing in her
+white duck.
+
+"'My,' says Mis' Holcomb to her, 'it's all going off nice so far, ain't
+it?'
+
+"'They ain't a great deal the matter with it,' says Mis' Sykes, snappy.
+
+"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Uppers, grieving, 'the parade an' the
+basket dinner seemed to me both just perfect.'
+
+"'The parade done well enough,' says Mis' Sykes, not looking at her. 'I
+donno much about the dinner.'
+
+"And all of a sudden we recollected that she hadn't been over to the
+grand basket dinner at all.
+
+"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Toplady, blank, 'ain't you et nothin'?'
+
+"'My niece,' says Mis' Sykes, dignified, 'didn't get here till now. Who
+was I to leave in the _tent_? I've et,' says she, cold, 'two dishes of
+ice-cream an' two chocolate nut-cakes.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady just swoops over towards her. 'Why, my land,' she says,
+hearty, 'they's stuff an' to spare packed over there under the trees.
+You go right on over and get your dinner. Poke right into any of our
+baskets--ours is grouped around mine that's tied with a red bandanna to
+the handle. And leave us tend the marquee. What say, ladies?'
+
+"And I don't think she even sensed she used that name.
+
+"When she'd gone, I stood a minute in the marquee door looking off
+acrost the market square, hearing Miss Beryl Sessions and the men
+congratulating each other on the glorious Fourth they was a-having, and
+the City folks praising them both sky high.
+
+"'Real nice idee it was,' says Silas, with his hands under his best coat
+tails. 'Nice, tastey, up-to-date Fourth. And cheap to do.'
+
+"'Yes, we all hung out for a good Fourth this year,' says Timothy,
+complacent.
+
+"'It's a simply lovely idea,' says Miss Beryl Sessions, all sweet and
+chirpy and interested, 'this making the Fourth a county party and
+getting everybody in town, so. But tell me: Whatever made you close your
+shops? I thought the Fourth could always be made to pay for itself over
+and over, if the business houses went about it right.'
+
+"'Oh, well,' says Silas, lame but genial, 'we closed up to-day. We kind
+o' thought we would.'
+
+"But I stood looking off acrost the market square, where the children
+was playing, and quoits was being pitched, and the ball game was going
+to commence, and the calathumpians was capering, and most of Red Barns
+and Indian Mound and Friendship Village was mingling, lion and lamb; and
+I looked on along Daphne Street, where little Spudge Cadoza wasn't
+walking with a Prize Coffee board on his back,--and all of a sudden I
+felt just the way I'd wanted to feel, in spite of all the distance and
+long-ago-ness. And I turned and says to the other women inside the
+marquee:--
+
+"'Seems to me,' I says, 'as if the Fourth of July _had_ paid for itself,
+over and over. Oh, don't it to you?'
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+"The new editor of the _Friendship Village Evening Daily_ give a fine
+write-up of the celebration. He printed it on the night after the
+Fourth, not getting out any paper at all on the day that was the day;
+but on the night after that, the news columns of his paper fell flat and
+dead. In a village the day following a holiday is like the hush after a
+noise. The whole town seems like it was either asleep or on tiptoe. And
+in Friendship Village this hush was worse than the hush of other years.
+Other years they'd usually been accidents to keep track of, and mebbe
+even an amputation or two to report. But this Fourth there was no
+misfortunes whatever, nor nothing to make good reading for the night of
+July 6.
+
+"So the editor thought over his friends and run right down the news
+column, telling what there _wasn't_. Like this:--
+
+
+     "'SUPPER TABLE JOTTINGS
+
+     "'Postmaster Silas Sykes is well.
+
+     "'Timothy Toplady has not had a cold since before Christmas.
+     Prudent Timothy.
+
+     "'Jimmy Sturgis has not broken his leg yet this year as he did
+     last. Keep it up, Jimmy.
+
+     "'Eppleby Holcomb has not been out of town for quite a while.
+
+     "'None of the Friendship ladies has given a party all season.
+
+     "'The First Church is not burnt down nor damaged nor repaired.
+     Insurance $750.
+
+     "'Nothing local is in much of any trouble.
+
+     "'Nobody is dead here to-day except the usual ones.
+
+     "'Nobody that's got a telephone in has any company at the present
+     writing. Where is the old-time hospitality?
+
+     "'Subscriptions payable in advance.
+
+     "'Subscriptions payable in advance.
+
+     "'Subscriptions payable in advance.'
+
+
+"It made quite some fun for us, two or three of us happening in the
+post-office store when the paper come out--Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady
+and me. But we took it some to heart, too, because to live in a town
+where they ain't nothing active happening all the time is a kind of
+running account of everybody that's in the town. And us ladies wan't
+that kind.
+
+"All them locals done to Silas Sykes, though, was to set him fussing
+over nothing ever happening to him. Silas is real particular about his
+life, and I guess he gets to thinking how life ain't so over-particular
+about him.
+
+"'My dum,' he says that night, 'that's just the way with this town. I
+always calculated my life was goin' to be quite some pleasure to me. But
+I don't see as it is. If I thought I was going to get sold in my death
+like I've been in my life, I swan I'd lose my interest in dyin'.'
+
+"Mis' Timothy Toplady was over in behind the counter picking out her
+butter, and she whirled around from sampling the jars, and she says to
+Mis' Sykes and me:--
+
+"'Ladies,' she says, 'le's us propose it to the editor that seems to
+have such a hard job, that us members of Sodality take a hold of his
+paper for a day and get it out for him and put some news in it, and sell
+it to everybody, subscribers and all, that one night, for ten cents.'
+
+"Mis' Silas Sykes looks up and stopped winking and breathing, in a way
+she has when she sights some distant money for Sodality.
+
+"'Land, land,' she says, 'I bet they'd go like hot cakes.'
+
+"But Silas he snorts, scorching.
+
+"'Will you ladies tell me,' he says, 'where you going to _get_ your news
+to put in your paper? The Fourth don't come along every day. Or less you
+commit murder and arson and runaways, there won't be any more in your
+paper than they is in its editor's.'
+
+"That hit a tender town-point, and I couldn't stand it no longer. I
+spoke right up.
+
+"'Oh, I donno, I donno, Silas,' I says. 'They's those in this town
+that's doin' the murderin' for us, neat an' nice, right along,' I told
+him.
+
+"'Mean to say?' snapped Silas.
+
+"'Mean to say,' says I, 'most every grocery store in this town an' most
+every milkman an' the meat market as well is doin' their best to drag
+the health out o' people's systems for 'em. Us ladies is more or less
+well read an' knowledgeable of what is goin' on in the world outside,' I
+says to Silas that ain't, 'an' we know a thing or two about what ought
+to be clean.'
+
+"Since Insley come, we had talked a good deal more about these things
+and what was and what shouldn't be; and especially we had talked it in
+Sodality, on account of our town stores and social ways and such being
+so inviting to disease and death. But we hadn't talked it official,
+'count of Sodality being for Cemetery use, and talking it scattering we
+hadn't been able to make the other men even listen to us.
+
+"'Pack o' women!' says Silas, now, and went off to find black molasses
+for somebody.
+
+"Mis' Toplady sampled her butter, dreamy.
+
+"'Rob Henny's butter here,' she says, 'is made out of cow sheds that I
+can't bear to think about. An' Silas knows it. Honest,' she says, 'I'm
+gettin' so I spleen against the flowers in the fields for fear Rob
+Henny's cows'll get holt of 'em. I should think the _Daily_ could write
+about that.'
+
+"I remember how us three women looked at each other then, like our
+brains was experimenting with our ideas. And when Mis' Toplady got her
+butter, we slipped out and spoke together for a few minutes up past the
+Town Pump. And it was there the plan come to a head and legs and arms.
+And we see that we had a way of picking purses right off of every day,
+so be the editor would leave us go ahead--and of doing other things.
+
+"The very next morning we three went to see the editor and get his
+consent.
+
+"'What's your circulation, same as City papers print to the top of the
+page?' Mis' Toplady asks him, practical.
+
+"'Paid circulation or got-out circulation?' says the editor.
+
+"'Paid,' says Mis' Toplady, in silver-dollar tones.
+
+"'Ah, well, _paid for_ or subscribed for?' asks the editor.
+
+"'Paid for,' says Mis' Toplady, still more financial.
+
+"'Six hundred and eighty paid for,' the editor says, 'an' fifty-two
+that--mean to pay.'
+
+"'My!' says Mis' Toplady, shuddering. 'What business is! Well, us ladies
+of the Sodality want to run your paper for one day and charge all your
+subscribers ten cents extra for that day's paper. Will you?'
+
+"The editor, he laughed quite a little, and then he looked thoughtful.
+He was new and from the City and young and real nervous--he used to pop
+onto his feet whenever a woman so much as come in the room.
+
+"'Who would collect the ten cents?' says he.
+
+"'Sodality,' says Mis' Toplady, firm. 'Ourself, cash an' _in advance_.'
+
+"The editor nodded, still smiling.
+
+"'Jove,' he said, 'this fits in remarkably well with the fishing I've
+been thinking about. I confess I need a day. I suppose you wouldn't want
+to do it this week?'
+
+"Mis' Toplady looked at me with her eyebrows. But I nodded. I always
+rather hurry up than not.
+
+"'So be we had a couple o' hours to get the news to happenin',' says
+she, 'that had ought to do us.'
+
+"The editor looked startled.
+
+"'News!' said he. 'Oh, I say now, you mustn't expect too much. I ought
+to warn you that running a paper in this town is like trying to raise
+cream on a cistern.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady smiled at him motherly.
+
+"'You ain't ever tried pouring the cream into the cistern, I guess,' she
+says.
+
+"So we settled it into a bargain, except that, after we had planned it
+all out with him and just as we was going out the door, Mis' Toplady
+thought to say to him:--
+
+"'You know, Sodality don't know anything about it yet, so you'd best not
+mention it out around till this afternoon when we vote to do it. We'll
+be up at eight o'clock Thursday morning, rain or shine.'
+
+"There wasn't ever any doubt about Sodality when it see Sixty Dollars
+ahead--which we would get if everybody bought a paper, and we was
+determined that everybody should buy. Sodality members scraps among
+themselves personal, but when it comes to raising money we unite yoke to
+yoke, and all differences forgot. It's funny sometimes at the meetings,
+funny and disgraceful, to hear how we object to each other, especially
+when we're tired, and then how we all unite together on something for
+the good of the town. I tell you, it makes me feel sometimes that the
+way ain't so much to try to love each other,--which other folks'
+peculiarities is awful in the way of,--but for us all to pitch in and
+love something altogether, your town or your young folks, or your
+cemetery or keeping something clean or making somethin' look nice--and
+before you know it you're loving the folks you work with, no matter how
+peculiar, or even more so. It's been so nice since we've been working
+for Cemetery. Folks that make each other mad every time they try to talk
+can sell side by side at the same bazaar and count the money mutual.
+There's quite a few disagreements in Sodality, so we have to be real
+careful who sets next to who to church suppers. But when we pitch in to
+work for something, we sew rags and 'scallop oysters in the same pan
+with our enemies. Don't it seem as if that must mean something?
+Something big?
+
+"Sodality voted to publish the paper, all right, and elected the
+officers for the day: Editor, Mis' Postmaster Sykes, 'count of her
+always expecting to take the lead in everything; assistant editor, me,
+'count of being well and able to work like a dog; business manager and
+circulation man, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, 'count of no dime
+ever getting away from her unexpected. And the reporters was to be most
+of the rest of the Sodality: Mis' Timothy Toplady, the three Liberty
+girls, Mis' Mayor Uppers, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, Mis' Threat
+Hubbelthwait, an' Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery. It was
+hard for Abagail to get away from her cook stove and her counter, so we
+fixed it that she was to be let off any other literary work along of her
+furnishing us our sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs that day noon. It was
+quite a little for Abagail to do, but she's always real willing, and we
+didn't ask coffee of her. Mis' Sturgis, her that is the village invalid,
+we arranged should have charge of the Woman's Column, and bring down her
+rocking chair and make her beef broth right there on the office
+wood-stove.
+
+"I guess we was all glad to go down early in the morning that day,
+'count of not meeting the men. One and all and with one voice the
+Friendship men had railed at us hearty.
+
+"'Pack o' women!' says Silas Sykes, over and over.
+
+"'You act like bein' a woman an' a wife was some kind o' nonsense,' says
+Mis' Sykes back at him, majestic. 'Well, I guess bein' yours is.'
+
+"'Land, Amandy,' says Timothy Toplady, 'you women earn money so
+_nervous_. Why don't you do it regular an' manly?'
+
+"Only Eppleby Holcomb had kept his silence. Eppleby sees things that the
+run of men don't see, or, if they did see them, they would be bound to
+stick them in their ledgers where they would never, never belong.
+Eppleby was our friend, and Sodality never had truer.
+
+"So though we went ahead, the men had made us real anxious. And most of
+us slipped down to the office by half past seven so's not to meet too
+many. The editor had had a column in the paper about what we was goin'
+to do--'Loyal to our Local Dead' he headed it, and of course full half
+the town was kicking at the extra ten cents, like full half of any town
+can and will kick when it's asked to pay out for its own good, dead or
+alive. But we was leaving all that to Mis' Holcomb, that knows a thing
+or two about the human in us, and similar.
+
+"Extra-paper morning, when we all come in, Mis' Sykes she was sitting at
+the editor's desk with her big apron on and a green shade to cover up
+her crimping kids, and her list that her and Mis' Toplady and I had made
+out, in front of her.
+
+"'Now then, let's get right to work,' she says brisk. 'We ain't any too
+much time, I can tell you. It ain't like bakin' bread or gettin' the
+vegetables ready. We've all got to use muscles this day we ain't used to
+usin',' she says, 'an' we'd best be spry.'
+
+"So then she begun giving out who was to do what--assignments, the
+editor named it when he told us what to do. And I skipped back an' hung
+over the files, well knowing what was to come.
+
+"Mis' Sykes stood up in her most society way, an'--
+
+"'Anybody want to back out?' says she, gracious.
+
+"'Land!' says everyone in a No-I-don't tone.
+
+"'Very well,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Mis' Toplady, you go out to Rob Henney's
+place, an' you go through his cow sheds from one end to the other an'
+take down notes so's he sees you doin' it. You go into his kitchen an'
+don't you let a can get by you. Open his churn. Rub your finger round
+the inside of his pans. An' if he won't tell you, the neighbours will.
+Explain to him you're goin' to give him a nice, full printed description
+in to-night's _Daily_, just the way things are. If he wants it changed
+any, he can clean all up, an' we'll write up the clean-up like a
+compliment.'
+
+"Just for one second them assembled women was dumb. But it hardly took
+them that instant to sense what was what. And all of a sudden, Mame
+Holcomb, I guess it was, bursted out in a little understanding giggle,
+and after a minute everybody joined in, too. For we'd got the whole
+world of Friendship Village where we wanted it, and every one of them
+women see we had, so be we wasn't scared.
+
+"'Mis' Uppers,' Mis' Sykes was going on, 'you go down to Betts's meat
+market. You poke right through into the back room. An' you tell Joe
+Betts that you're goin' to do a write-up of that room an' the alley back
+of it for the paper to-night, showin' just what's what. If so be he
+wants to turn in an' red it up this mornin', tell him you'll wait till
+noon an' describe it then, _providin'_ he keeps it that way. An' you
+might let him know you're goin' to run over to his slaughterhouse an'
+look around while you're waitin', an' put that in your write-up, too.'
+
+"'Miss Hubbelthwait,' Mis' Sykes went on, 'you go over to the Calaboose.
+They won't anybody be in the office--Dick's saloon is that. Skip right
+through in the back part, an' turn down the blankets on both beds an'
+give a thorough look. If it's true they's no sheets an' pillow-cases on
+the calaboose beds, an' that the blankets is only washed three times a
+year so's to save launderin', we can make a real interestin' column
+about that.'
+
+"'Miss Merriman,' says Mis' Sykes to Mis' Fire Chief, 'I've give you a
+real hard thing because you do things so delicate. Will you take a walk
+along the residence part of town an' go into every house an' ask 'em to
+let you see their back door an' their garbage pail. Tell 'em you're
+goin' to write a couple of columns on how folks manage this. Ask 'em
+their idees on the best way. Give 'em to understand if there's a real
+good way they're thinkin' of tryin' that you'll put that in, providin'
+they begin tryin' right off. An' tell 'em they can get it carted off for
+ten cents a week if enough go in on it. An' be your most delicate, Mis'
+Fire Chief, for we don't want to offend a soul.'
+
+"Libby an' Viney Liberty Mis' Sykes sent round to take a straw vote in
+every business house in town to see how much they'd give towards
+starting a shelf library in the corner of the post-office store, a full
+list to be printed in order with the amount or else 'Not a cent' after
+each name. And the rest of Sodality she give urrants similar or even
+more so.
+
+"'An' all o' you,' says Mis' Sykes, 'pick up what you can on the way.
+And if anybody starts in to object, you tell 'em you have instructions
+to make an interview out of any of the interestin' things they say. And
+you might tell 'em you don't want they should be buried in a nice
+cemetery if they don't want to be.'
+
+"Well, sir, they started off--some scairt, but some real brave, too. And
+the way they went, we see every one of them meant business.
+
+"'But oh,' says Mis' Sturgis, fixing her medicine bottles outside on the
+window-sill, '_supposin'_ they can't do it. _Supposin'_ folks ain't nice
+to 'em. What'll we put in the paper then?'
+
+"Mis' Sykes drew herself up like she does sometimes in society.
+
+"'Well,' she says, 'supposin'. Are we runnin' this paper or ain't we?
+There's nothin' to prevent our writin' editorials about these things, as
+I see. Our husbands can't very well sue us for libel, because they'd hev
+to pay it themselves. Nor they can't put us in prison for debt, because
+who'd get their three meals? I can't see but we're sure of an
+interestin' paper, anyway.'
+
+"Then she looked over at me sort of sad.
+
+"'Go on, Calliope,' says she, 'you know what you've got to do. Do it,'
+she says, 'to the bitter end.'
+
+"I knew, and I started out, and I made straight for Silas Sykes, and the
+post-office store. Silas wan't in the store, it was so early; but he had
+the floor all sprinkled nice, and the vegetables set out, all uncovered,
+close to the sidewalk; and everything real tasty and according to
+grocery-store etiquette. The boy was gone that day. And Silas himself
+was in the back room, sortin' over prunes.
+
+"'Hello, Calliope,' s'he. 'How's literchoor?'
+
+"'Honest as ever,' I says. 'Same with food?'
+
+"'Who says I ain't honest?' says Silas, straightening up, an' holding
+all his fingers stiff 'count of being sticky.
+
+"'Why, I donno who,' says I. 'Had anybody ought to? How's business,
+Silas?'
+
+"'Well,' says he, 'for us that keeps ourselves up with the modern
+business methods, it's pretty good, I guess.'
+
+"'Do you mean pretty good, Silas, or do you mean pretty paying?' I ask'
+him.
+
+"Silas put on his best official manner. 'Look at here,' s'e, 'what can I
+do for you? Did you want to buy somethin' or did you want your mail?'
+
+"'Oh, neither,' I says. 'I want some help from you, Silas, about the
+paper to-day.'
+
+"My, that give Silas a nice minute. He fairly weltered in satisfaction.
+
+"'Huh,' he says, elegant, 'didn't I tell you you was bitin' off more'n
+you could chew? Want some assistance from me, do you, in editin' this
+paper o' yours? Well, I suppose I can help you out a little. What is it
+you want me to do for you?'
+
+"'We thought we'd like to write you up,' I told him.
+
+"Silas just swelled. For a man in public office, Silas Sykes feels about
+as presidential as anybody I ever see. If they was to come out from the
+City and put him on the front page of the morning paper, he's the kind
+that would wonder why they hadn't done it before.
+
+"'Sketch of my life?' s'e, genial. 'Little outline of my boyhood? Main
+points in my career?'
+
+"'Well,' I says, 'no. We thought the present'd be about all we'd hev
+room for. We want to write up your business, Silas,' I says, 'in an
+advertising way.'
+
+"'Oh!' says Silas, snappy. 'You want me to pay to be wrote up, is that
+it?'
+
+"'Well,' I says, 'no; not if you don't want to. Of course everybody'll
+be buried in the Cemetery whether they give anything towards the fund
+for keeping it kep' up or not.'
+
+"'Lord Heavens,' says Silas, 'I've had that Cemetery fund rammed down my
+throat till I'm sick o' the thought o' dyin'.'
+
+"That almost made me mad, seeing we was having the disadvantage of doing
+the work and Silas going to get all the advantages of burial.
+
+"'Feel the same way about some of the Ten Commandments, don't you,
+Silas?' I says, before I knew it.
+
+"Silas just rared.
+
+"'The Ten Commandments!' says he, 'the Ten Commandments! Who can show me
+one I ain't a-keepin' like an old sheep. Didn't I honour my father an'
+mother as long as I had 'em? Did they ever buy anything of me at more
+than cost? Didn't I give 'em new clothes an' send 'em boxes of oranges
+an' keep up their life insurance? Do I ever come down to the store on
+the Sabbath Day? Do I ever distribute the mail then, even if I'm
+expectin' a letter myself? The Sabbath I locked the cat in, didn't I
+send the boy down to let it out, for fear I'd be misjudged if I done it?
+Who do I ever bear false witness against unless I know they've done what
+I say they've done? I can't kill a fly--an' I'm that tender-hearted
+that I make the hired girl take the mice out o' the trap because I can't
+bring myself to do it. So you might go through the whole list an' just
+find me workin' at 'em an' a-keepin' 'em. What do you mean about the Ten
+Commandments?' he ends up, ready to burst.
+
+"'Don't ask me,' I says. 'I ain't that familiar with 'em. I didn't know
+anybody was. Go on about 'em. Take stealing--you hadn't got to that
+one.'
+
+"'_Stealing_,' says Silas, pompous. 'I don't know what it is.'
+
+"And with that I was up on my feet.
+
+"'I thought you didn't,' says I. 'Us ladies of Sodality have all thought
+it over an' over again: That you don't know stealing when you see it.
+No, nor not even when you've done it. Come here, Silas Sykes!' I says.
+
+"I whipped by him into the store, and he followed me, sheer through
+being dazed, and keeping still through being knocked dumb.
+
+"'Look here,' I says, 'here's your counter of bakery stuff--put in to
+take from Abagail, but no matter about that now. Where do you get it?
+From the City, with the label stuck on. What's the bakery like where you
+buy it? It's under a sidewalk and dust dirty, and I happen to know you
+know it. And look at the bread--not a thing over it, flies promenadin'
+on the crust, and you counting out change on an apple-pie the other
+day--I see you do it. Look at your dates, all uncovered and dirt from
+the street sticking to them like the pattern. Look at your fly-paper,
+hugged up against your dried-fruit box that's standing wide open. Look
+at you keeping fish and preserved fruit and canned stuff that you know
+is against the law--going to start keeping the law quick as you get
+these sold out, ain't you, Silas? Look at your stuff out there in front,
+full of street dirt and flies and ready to feed folks. And you keepin'
+the Ten Commandments like an old sheep--and being a church elder, and
+you might better climb porches and bust open safes. I s'pose you wonder
+what I'm sayin' all this to you for?'
+
+"'No, ma'am,' says Silas, like the edge o' something, 'I don't wonder at
+your sayin' _anything_ to anybody.'
+
+"'I've got more to say,' I says, dry. 'I've only give you a sample. An'
+the place I'm goin' to say it is _The Friendship Village Evening Daily_,
+_Extra_, to-night, in a descriptive write-up of you and your store. I
+thought it might interest you to know.'
+
+"'It's libel--it's libel!' says Silas, arms waving.
+
+"'All right,' says I, liberating a fly accidentally caught on a date.
+'Who you going to sue? Your wife, that's the editor? And everybody
+else's wife, that's doing the same thing to every behind-the-times
+dealer in town?'
+
+"Silas hung on to that straw.
+
+"'Be they doin' it to the others, too?' he asks.
+
+"Then I told him.
+
+"'Yes,' I says, 'Silas, only--they ain't goin' to start writing up the
+descriptions till noon. And if you--and they all--want to clean up the
+temples where you do business and make them fit for the Lord to look
+down on and a human being to come into, you've got your chance. And
+seeing your boy is gone to-day, if you'll do it, I'll stay and help you
+with it--and mebbe make room for some of the main points in your career
+as well,' says I, sly.
+
+"Silas looked out the door, his arms folded and his beard almost
+pointing up, he'd made his chin so firm. And just in that minute when I
+was feeling that all the law and the prophets, and the health of
+Friendship Village, and the life of people not born, was hanging around
+that man's neck--or the principle of them, anyway--Silas's eye and mine
+fell on a strange sight. Across the street, from out Joe Betts's meat
+market come Joe Betts, and behind him his boy. And Joe begun pointing,
+and the boy begun taking down quarters of beef hung over the sidewalk.
+Joe pointed consid'able. And then he clim' up on his meat wagon that
+stood by the door, and out of the shop I see Mis' Mayor Uppers come,
+looking ready to drop. And she clim' up to the seat beside him--he
+reaching down real gentlemanly to help her up. And he headed his horse
+around on what I guessed was a bee-line for the slaughterhouse.
+
+"Well, sir, at that, Silas Sykes put his hands on his knees and bent
+over and begun laughing. And he laughed like I ain't seen him since he's
+got old and begun to believe that life ain't cut after his own plan that
+he made. And I laughed a little, too, out of sheer being glad that a
+laugh can settle so many things right in the world. And when he sobered
+down a little, I says gentle:--
+
+"'Silas, I'll throw out the dates and the dusty lettuce. And we'll hev
+it done in no time. I'll be glad to get an early start on the write-up.
+I don't compose very ready,' I told him.
+
+"He was awful funny while we done the work. He was awful still, too.
+Once when I lit on a piece of salt pork that I knew, first look, was
+rusty, 'Them folks down on the flats buys it,' he says. 'They like it
+just as good as new-killed.' 'All right,' s'I, careless, 'I'll make a
+note of that to shine in my article. It needs humour some,' s'I. Then
+Silas swore, soft and under his breath, as an elder should, but quite
+vital. And he took the pork out to the alley barrel, an' I sprinkled
+ashes on it so's he shouldn't slip out and save it afterwards.
+
+"It was 'leven o'clock when we got done, me having swept out behind the
+counters myself, and Silas he mopped his face and stood hauling at his
+collar.
+
+"'I'll get on my white kids now,' s'e, dry. 'I can't go pourin' kerosene
+an' slicin' cheese in this place barehanded any more. Gosh,' he says, 'I
+bet when they see it, they'll want to have church in here this comin'
+Sunday.'
+
+"'No need to be sacrilegious, as I know of, Silas,' s'I, sharp.
+
+"'No need to be livin' at all, as I see,' says Silas, morbid; 'just lay
+low an' other folks'll step in an' do it for you, real capable.'
+
+"I give him the last word. I thought it was his man's due.
+
+"When I got back to the office, Libby Liberty an' Mis' Toplady was there
+before me. They was both setting on high stools up to the file shelf,
+with their feet tucked up, an' the reason was that Viney Liberty was
+mopping the floor. She had a big pail of suds and her skirt pinned up,
+and she was just lathering them boards. Mis' Sykes at the main desk was
+still labouring over her editorials, breathing hard, the boards steaming
+soap all around her.
+
+"'I couldn't stand it,' Viney says. 'How a man can mould public opinion
+in a place where the floor is pot-black gets me. My land, my ash house
+is a dinin' room side of this room, an' the window was a regular gray
+frost with dust. Ain't men the funniest lot of folks?' she says.
+
+"'Funny,' says I, 'but awful amiable if you kind of sing their key-note
+to 'em.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes pulled my skirt.
+
+"'How was he?' she asks in a pale voice.
+
+"'He was crusty,' says I, triumphant, 'but he's beat.'
+
+"She never smiled. 'Calliope Marsh,' says she, cold, 'if you've sassed
+my husband, I'll never forgive you.'
+
+"I tell you, men may be some funny, and often are. But women is odd as
+Dick's hatband and I don't know but odder.
+
+"'How'd you get on?' I says to Mis' Toplady and the Libertys. The
+Libertys they handed out a list on two sheets, both sides with sums
+ranging from ten to fifty cents towards a shelf library for public use;
+but Mis' Toplady, the tears was near streaming down her cheeks.
+
+"'Rob Henney,' she says, mournful, 'gimme to understand he'd see me
+in--some place he hadn't ought to of spoke of to me, nor to no
+one--before I could get in his milk sheds.'
+
+"'What did you say to him?' I ask', sympathetic.
+
+"'I t-told him,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that lookin' for me wouldn't be the
+only reason he'd hev for goin' there. And then he said some more. He
+said he'd be in here this afternoon to stop his subscription off.'
+
+"'So you didn't get a thing?' I says, grieving for her, but Mis'
+Toplady, she bridled through her tears.
+
+"'I got a column!' she flashed out. 'I put in about the sheds, that the
+whole town knows, anyway, an' I put in what he said to me. An' I'm goin'
+to read it to him when he comes in. An' after that he can take his pick
+about havin' it published, or else cleanin' up an' allowin' Sodality to
+inspect him reg'lar.'
+
+"By just before twelve o'clock we was all back in the office, Mis' Fire
+Chief, Mis' Uppers, fresh from the slaughterhouse, and so on, all but
+Mame Holcomb that was out seeing to the circulation. And I tell you we
+set to work in earnest, some of us to the desks, and some of us working
+on their laps, and everybody hurrying hectic. The office was awful
+hot--Mis' Sturgis had built up a little light fire to heat up her beef
+broth, and she was stirring it, her shawl folded about her, in between
+writing receipts. But it made it real confusing, all of us doing our
+best so hard, and wanting to tell each other what had happened, and
+seeing about spelling and all.
+
+"'Land, land,' says Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'you'd ought to _see_ the
+Carters' back door. They wan't nobody to home there, so I just took a
+look, anyway, bein' it was for Sodality, so. They ain't no real garbage
+pail--'
+
+"'Who said, "Give me Liberty or give me Death?"' ask' Mis' Sykes,
+looking up kind o' glassy. 'Was it Daniel Webster or Daniel Boone?'
+
+"'Ladies,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, when we'd settled down on Daniel
+Boone, 'if I ever do a crime, I won't stop short at stealin' somebody's
+cow an' goin' to calaboose. I'll do a whole beef corner, or some real
+United States sin, an' get put in a place that's clean. Why over to the
+calaboose--'
+
+"'Ugh!' says Mis' Uppers, 'don't say "beef" when I'm where I can hear.
+I donno what I'll do without my steak, but do it I will. Ladies, the
+cleanest of us is soundin' brass an' tinklin' cannibals. Why do they
+call 'em _tinklin'_ cannibals?' she wondered to us all.
+
+"'Oh--,' wailed Mis' Sturgis in the rocking-chair, 'some of you ladies
+give me your salad dressing receipt. Mine is real good on salad, but on
+paper it don't sound fit to eat. I don't seem to have no book-style
+about me to-day.'
+
+"'How do you spell _embarrass_?' asked Libby Liberty. 'Is it an _r_ an'
+two _s_'s or two _r_'s and an _s_?'
+
+"'It's two _s_'s at the end, so it must be one _r_,' volunteers Mis'
+Sykes. 'That used to mix me up some, too.'
+
+"Just then up come Abagail Arnold bringing the noon lunch, and she had
+the sandwiches and the eggs not only, but a pot of hot coffee thrown in,
+and a basket of doughnuts, sugared. She set them out on Mis' Sykes's
+desk, and we all laid down our pencils and drew up on our high stools
+and swing chairs, Mis' Sturgis and all, and nothing in the line of food
+had ever looked so welcoming.
+
+"'Oh, the eatableness of nice refreshments!' says Mis' Toplady, sighing.
+
+"'This is when it ain't victuals, its viands,' says Mis' Sykes, showing
+pleased.
+
+"But well do I remember, we wasn't started to eat, and Abagail still
+doing the pouring, when the composing room door opened--I donno _why_
+they called it that, for we done the composing in the office, and they
+only got out the paper in there--and in come the foreman, with an apron
+of bed-ticking. He was Riddy Styles, that we all knew him.
+
+"'Excuse me,' he says, hesitating, 'but us fellows thought we'd ought to
+mention that we can't get no paper out by quittin' time if we don't get
+a-hold of some copy pretty quick.'
+
+"'Copy o' what?' says Mis' Sykes, our editor.
+
+"'Why, copy,' says Riddy. 'Stuff for the paper.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes looked at him, majestic.
+
+"'_Stuff_,' she says. 'You will please to speak,' she says, 'more
+respectfully than that to us ladies, Mr. Styles.'
+
+"'It was meant right,' says Riddy, stubborn. 'It's the word we always
+use.'
+
+"'It ain't the word you use, not with us,' says Mis' Sykes, womanly.
+
+"'Well,' says Riddy, 'we'd ought to get to settin' up _somethin'_ by
+half past twelve, if we start in on the dictionary.'
+
+"Then he went off to his dinner, and the other men with him, and Mis'
+Sykes leaned back limp.
+
+"'I been writin' steady,' she says, 'since half past eight o'clock this
+mornin', an' I've only got one page an' one-half composed.'
+
+"We ask' each other around, and none of us was no more then started, let
+be it was Mis' Toplady, that had got in first.
+
+"'Le's us leave our lunch,' says Mis' Sykes, then. 'Le's us leave it
+un-et. Abagail, you put it back in the basket an' pour the coffee into
+the pot. An' le's us _write_. Wouldn't we all rather hev one of our sick
+headaches,' she says, firm, 'than mebbe make ourselves the Laughing
+Stock? Ladies, I ask you.'
+
+"An' we woulded, one and all. Sick headaches don't last long, but
+laughed-at has regular right down eternal life.
+
+"Ain't it strange how slow the writing muscles and such is, that you
+don't use often? Pitting cherries, splitting squash, peeling potatoes,
+slicing apples, making change at church suppers,--us ladies is lightning
+at 'em all. But getting idees down on paper--I declare if it ain't more
+like waiting around for your bread to raise on a cold morning. Still
+when you're worried, you can press forward more than normal, and among
+us we had quite some material ready for Riddy and the men when they came
+back. But not Mis' Sykes. She wan't getting on at all.
+
+"'If I could only _talk_ it,' she says, grieving, 'or I donno if I could
+even do that. What I want to say is in me, rarin' around my head like
+life, an' yet I can't get it out no more'n money out of a tin bank. I
+shall disgrace Sodality,' she says, wild.
+
+"'Cheer up,' says Libby Liberty, soothing. 'Nobody ever reads the
+editorials, anyway. I ain't read one in years.'
+
+"'You tend to your article,' snaps Mis' Sykes.
+
+"I had got my write-up of Silas all turned in to Riddy, and I was
+looking longing at Abagail's basket, when, banging the door, in come
+somebody breathing like raging, and it was Rob Henney, that I guess we'd
+all forgot about except it was Mis' Toplady that was waiting for him.
+
+"Rob Henney always talks like he was long distance.
+
+"'I come in,' he says, blustering, 'I come in to quit off my
+subscription to this fool paper, that a lot o' fool women--'
+
+"Mis' Sykes looks up at him out from under her hand that her head was
+resting on.
+
+"'Go on out o' here, Mr. Henney,' she says sharp to him, 'an' quit your
+subscription quiet. Can't you see you're disturbing us?' she says.
+
+"With that Mis' Toplady wheeled around on her high stool and looked at
+him, calm as a clock.
+
+"'Rob Henney,' says she, 'you come over here. I'll read you what I've
+wrote about you,' she told him.
+
+"The piece begun like this:--
+
+"'Rob Henney, our esteemed fellow-townsman and milkman, was talked with
+this morning on his cow sheds. The reporter said to same that what was
+wanting would be visiting the stables, churn, cans, pans, and like that,
+being death is milked out of most cows if they are not kept clean and
+inspected regular for signs of consumption. Mr. Henney replied as
+follows:
+
+"'First: That his cows had never been inspected because nothing of that
+kind had ever been necessary.
+
+"'Second: That he was in the milk business for a living, and did the
+town expect him to keep it in milk for its health?
+
+"'Third: That folks had been drinking milk since milk begun, and if the
+Lord saw fit to call them home, why not through milk, or even through
+consumption, as well as through pneumonia and others?
+
+"'Fourth: That he would see the reporter--a lady--in the
+lake-that-burneth-with-fire before his sheds and churn and pans and cans
+should be put in the paper.
+
+"'Below is how the sheds, churn, pans, and cans look to-day....' And I
+tell you, Mis' Toplady, she didn't spare no words. When she meant What,
+she said What, elaborate.
+
+"I didn't know for a minute but we'd hev to mop Rob up off the clean
+floor. But Mis' Toplady she never forgot who she was.
+
+"'Either that goes in the paper to-night,' she says, 'or you'll clean up
+your milk surroundin's--pick your choice. An' Sodality's through with
+you if you don't, besides.'
+
+"'Put it in print! Put it in print, if you dast!' yells Rob,
+wind-milling his arms some.
+
+"'No need to make an earthquake o' yourself,' Mis' Toplady points out to
+him, serene.
+
+"And at that Rob adds a word intending to express a cussing idee, and he
+outs and down the stairs. And Mis' Toplady starts to take her article
+right in to Riddy. But in the door she met Riddy, hurrying into the
+office again. I never see anybody before that looked both red and
+haggard, but Riddy did. He come right to the point:--
+
+"'Some of you ladies has got to quit handing in--news,' he says,
+scrabbling for a word to please Mis' Sykes. 'We're up to our eyes in
+here now. An' there ain't enough room in the paper, either, not without
+you get out eight pages or else run a supplement or else throw away the
+whole patent inside. An' those ways, we ain't got enough type even if we
+had time to burn.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes pushed back her green shade, looking just _chased_.
+
+"'What does he mean?' she says. 'Can't he tend to his type and things
+with us doing all the work?'
+
+"Riddy took this real nettlish.
+
+"'I mean,' s'he, clear but brutal, 'you got to cut your stuff somewheres
+to the tune of a couple o' columns.'
+
+"Well, it's hard to pick out which colour you'll take when you have a
+new dress only once in every so seldom; or which of your hens you'll
+kill when you know your chickens like you know your own mind; but these
+are nothing to the time we had deciding on what to omit out of the paper
+that night. And the decision hurt us even more than the deciding, for
+what we left out was Mis' Sturgis's two women's columns.
+
+"'We _can't_ leave out meat nor milk nor cleanliness nor the library,'
+says Mis' Toplady, reasonable, 'because them are the things we live by.
+An' so with the other write-ups we got planned. But receipts and
+patterns an' moth balls is only kind o' decorations, seems though.
+Besides, we all know about 'em, an' it's time we stopped talkin' about
+'em, anyway.'
+
+"Mis' Sturgis she cried a little on the corner of her shawl.
+
+"'The receipts an' patterns an' moth balls is so w-womanly,' she says.
+
+"Mis' Toplady whirled round at her.
+
+"'If you know anything more womanly than conquerin' dirt an' disease an'
+the-dead-that-needn't-die,' s'she, 'I'll roll up my sleeves an' be into
+it. But it won't be eyelet embroidery nor yet boiled frostin'!'
+
+"After that they wrote in hasty peace, though four o'clock come racing
+across the day like a runaway horse, and us not out of its way. And a
+few minutes past, when Riddy was waiting in the door for Mis' Sykes's
+last page, somebody most knocked him over, and there come Mis' Holcomb,
+our circulation editor, purple and white, like a ghost.
+
+"'Lock the door--lock it!' she says. 'I've bolted the one to the foot of
+the stairs. Lock both outside ones an' lay yourselves low!' s'she.
+
+"Riddy an' I done the locking, me well knowing Mis' Holcomb couldn't
+give a false alarm no more than a map could.
+
+"'What is it?' we says, pressing Mis' Holcomb to speak, that couldn't
+even breathe.
+
+"'Oh, ladies,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'they've rejoined us, or whatever it
+is they do. I mean they're going to rejoin us from gettin' out
+to-night's paper. The sheriff or the coroner or whoever it is they have,
+is comin' with injunctions--_is_ that like handcuffs, do you know? An'
+it's Rob Henney's doin'. Eppleby told me. An' I run down the alley an'
+beat 'em to it. They're most here. Let's us slap into print what's wrote
+an' be ready with the papers the livin' minute we can.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes had shoved her green shade onto the back of her head, and
+her crimping pins was all showing forth.
+
+"'What good'll it do us to get the paper _out_?' says she, in a numb
+voice. 'We can't distribute 'em around to no one with the sheriff to the
+front door with them things to put on us.'
+
+"Then Mis' Holcomb smiled, with her eyes shut, where she sat, breathing
+so hard it showed through.
+
+"'I come in the coal door, at the alley,' s'she. 'They'll never think o'
+that. Besides, the crowd'll be in front an' the carrier boys too, an'
+they'll want to show off out there. An' Eppleby knows--he told me to
+come in that way--an' he'll keep 'em interested out in front. Le's us
+each take the papers, an' out the coal door, an' distribute 'em around,
+ourselves, without the boys, an' collect in the money same time.'
+
+"And that was how we done. For when they come to the door and found it
+locked, they pounded a little to show who was who and who wan't and then
+they waited out there calm enough, thinking to stop us when the papers
+come down would be plenty time. They waited out there, calm and sure,
+while upstairs Bedlam went on, but noiseless. And after us ladies was
+done with our part, we sat huddled up in the office, soothing Mis'
+Sturgis and each other.
+
+"'In one sentence,' Mis' Holcomb says, 'Eppleby says Rob Henney was
+going to _put_ injunctions on us. An' in the next he says he was goin'
+to _serve_ 'em. What did he mean by that, do you s'pose?'
+
+"'I donno what he meant,' says Mis' Toplady, 'but I wouldn't have
+anything to do with _anything_ Rob Henney served.'
+
+"That made us think of Abagail's lunch, laying un-et in the basket. They
+wasn't none of us felt like eating, but Mis' Sturgis says she bet if we
+didn't eat it, Abagail would feel she hadn't had no part in writing the
+paper like us, and so we broke off a little something once around; but
+food didn't have much fun for us, not then. And nothing did up to the
+minute the paper was done, and we was all ready to sly out the alley
+door.
+
+"With Sodality and Riddy Styles and the composing-room men we had above
+twenty carriers. Riddy and the men helped us, one and all, because of
+course the paper was a little theirs, too, and they was interested and
+liked the lark. Land, land, I ain't felt so young or so wicked as I done
+getting out that alley door. There's them I wish could see that there's
+just as much fun keeping secret about something that may be good as in
+being sly about something regular bad.
+
+"When we finally got outside it was suppertime and summer seeming, and
+the hour was all sweet and frank, and the whole village was buried in
+its evening fried mush and potatoes, or else sprinkling their front
+yards. I donno how it was with the others, but I know I went along the
+streets seeing through them little houses like they was glass, and
+seeing the young folks eating their suppers and growing up and getting
+ready to live and to _be_. And in us ladies' arms, in them heavy papers,
+it seemed to me we was carrying new life to them, in little ways--in
+little ways, but ways that was going to be big with meaning. And I felt
+as if something in me kind of snuggled up closer to the way things was
+meant to be.
+
+"Us that went west got clear the whole length of Daphne Street without
+anybody seeing what we was doing, or else believing that we was doing it
+orderly and legitimate. And away out by the Pump pasture, we started in
+distributing, and we come working down town, handing out papers to the
+residence part like mad and taking in dimes like wild. They was so many
+of us, and the _Evening Daily_ office was so located, that by the time
+Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I come around the corner where the men
+and Rob Henney and the rejoiners and the carriers was loafing, waiting,
+smoking, and secure, we didn't have many papers left. And we three was
+the first ones back.
+
+"'Evenin' paper?' says Mis' Toplady, casual. '_Friendship Village
+Evenin' Daily, Extra?_ All the news for a dime?'
+
+"Never have I see a man so truly flabbergasted as Rob Henney, and he did
+look like death.
+
+"'You're rejoined!' he yelled, or whatever it is they say--'you're
+rejoined by law from printin' your papers or from deestributin' the
+same.'
+
+"'Why, Rob Henney,' says Mis' Toplady, 'no call to show fight like that.
+Half the town is readin' its papers by now. They've been out for
+three-quarters of an hour,' she says.
+
+"Then soft and faint and acrost the street, we heard somebody laugh, and
+then kind of spat hands; and we all looked up. And there in the open
+upstairs window of the building opposite, we see leaning out Eppleby
+Holcomb and Timothy Toplady and Silas Sykes. And when we crossed eyes,
+they all made a little cheer like a theatre; and then they come clumping
+down stairs and acrost to where we was.
+
+"'Won out, didn't you, by heck!' says Silas, that can only see that far.
+
+"'Blisterin' Benson,' says Timothy, gleeful. '_I_ say we ain't got no
+cause to regret our wifes' brains.'
+
+"But Eppleby, he never said a word. He just smiled slow and a-looking
+past us. And we knew that from the beginning he had seen our whole plan,
+face to face.
+
+"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and me, seeing how Rob Henney stood
+muttering and beat, and seeing how the day had gone, and seeing what was
+what in the world and in all outside of it, we looked at each other,
+dead tired, and real happy, and then we just dragged along home to our
+kitchens and went to cooking supper. But oh, it wasn't our same old
+kitchens nor it wasn't our same old Friendship Village. We was in places
+newer and better and up higher, where we see how things are, and how
+life would get more particular about us if we'd get particular about
+some more of life.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+"Well, of course then we had Sixty Dollars or so to spend, and Sodality
+never could rest a minute when it had money to do with if it wasn't
+doing it, any more than it could rest when it had something to do and no
+money to do with. It made a nice, active circle. Wishing for dreams to
+come true, and then, when they do come true, making the true things
+sprout more dreams, is another of them circles. I always think they're
+what keeps us a-going, not only immortal but busy.
+
+"And then with us there's another reason for voting our money prompt. As
+soon as we've made any and the news has got out around, it's happened
+two-three times that somebody has put in an application for a headstone
+for somebody dead that can't afford one. The first time that was done
+the application was made by the wife of a harness maker that had a
+little shop in the back street and had been saving up his money for a
+good tombstone. 'I ain't had much of a position here in life,' he used
+to say. 'I never was pointed out as a leading citizen. But I'm goin' to
+fix it so's when I'm buried and folks come to the Cemetery, nobody'll
+get by my grave without noticin' my tombstone.' And then he took sick
+with inflammatory rheumatism, and if it didn't last him three years and
+et up his whole tombstone fund. He use' to worry about it considerable
+as the rheumatism kept reducing the granite inch after inch, and he
+died, thinking he wasn't going to have nothing but markers to him. So
+his old wife come and told Sodality, crying to think he wasn't going to
+seem no real true inhabitant of Cemetery, any more than he had of the
+village. And we felt so sorry for her we took part of the Thirty Dollars
+we'd made at the rummage sale and bought him a nice cement stone, and
+put the verse on to attract attention that he'd wrote himself:--
+
+
+     "'STOP. LOOK. LISTEN.
+         HERE LAYS ME.
+     MY GRAVE IS JUST AS BIG
+       AS YOURS WILL BE.'
+
+
+"Some was inclined to criticise Jeb for being so ambitious in death, and
+stopping to think how good a showing he could make. But I donno, I
+always sort of understood him. He wanted to be somebody. He'd used to
+try to have a voice in public affairs, but somehow what he proposed
+wasn't ever practical and never could get itself adopted. His judgment
+wasn't much, and time and again he'd voted against the town's good, and
+he see it afterward. He missed being a real citizen of his town, and he
+knew it, and he hankered to be a citizen of his Cemetery. And wherever
+he is now, I bet that healthy hankering is strained and purified and
+helping him ahead.
+
+"But our buying that stone for Jeb's widow's husband's grave let us in
+for perpetual applications for monuments; and so when we had any money
+we always went right to work and voted it for general Cemetery
+improvement, so there wasn't ever any money in the treasury for the
+applications. Anyway, we felt we'd ought to encourage self-made graves
+and not pauperize our corpses.
+
+"So the very next afternoon after we got our paper out, we met at Mis'
+Sykes's; and the day being mild and gold, almost all of Sodality turned
+out, and Mis' Sykes used both her parlours. It was funny; but such times
+there fell on them that sat Front Parlour a sort of
+what-you-might-call-distinction over them that sat Back Parlour. It's
+the same to our parties. Them that are set down to the dining-room table
+always seem a little more company than them that are served to the
+little sewing tables around in the open rooms, and we all feel it,
+though we all pretend not, as well-bred as we know how. I donno but
+there's something to it, too. Mis' Sykes, for instance, she always gets
+put to a dining table. Nobody would ever think of setting her down to a
+small one, no more than they would a Proudfit. But me, I generally get
+tucked down to a sewing table and in a rocking-chair, if there ain't
+enough cane seats to go around. Things often divide themselves true to
+themselves in this life, after all.
+
+"This was the last regular meeting before our Annual. The Annual, at
+Insley's suggestion, was going to be in the schoolhouse, and it was
+going to be an open evening meeting, with the whole town invited in and
+ice-cream served after. Regular meetings Sodality gives just tea;
+special meetings we give hot chocolate or ice-lemonade, or both if the
+weather is unsettled; for entertainments we have cut-up fruit and little
+bakery cakes; but to our Annual we mount up to ice-cream and some of our
+best cake makers' layer cake. And us ladies always dress according:
+afternoon home dresses to regular meetings; second best to specials;
+Sunday silks to entertainments; and straight going-out clothes for the
+Annual. It makes it real nice. Nobody need to come dressed wrong, and
+nobody can go away disappointed at what they've been fed.
+
+"The meeting that day all ought to have gone smooth enough, it being so
+nice that our paper had sold well and all, but I guess the most of us
+was too tired out to have tried to have a meeting so soon. Anyhow, we
+didn't seem to come together slippery and light-running, like we do some
+days; but instead I see the minute we begun to collect that we was all
+inclined to be heavy and, though not cross, yet frictionish.
+
+"For instance: Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss had come in a new red
+waist with black raspberry buttons. And it was too much for Mis' Fire
+Chief Merriman that's been turning her black poplin ever since the Fire
+Chief died.
+
+"'Dear me, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'I never see anybody have more
+dressy clothes. Did you put that on just for us?'
+
+"Mis' Holcomb shut her lips tight.
+
+"'This is for home wear,' she says short, when she opened them.
+
+"'Mean to say you get a cooked supper in that rig?' says Mis' Merriman.
+'Fry meat in it, do you?'
+
+"'We don't eat as hearty as some,' says Mame. 'We don't insist on warm
+suppers. We feel at our house we have to keep our bills down.'
+
+"Mis' Merriman straightened up, real brittle.
+
+"'My gracious,' she says, 'I guess I live as cheap as the best does.'
+
+"'I see you buying _shelled_ nuts, just the same,' says Mis' Holcomb,
+'when shellin' 'em with your fingers cost twenty cents off.'
+
+"'I ain't never had my store-buyin' criticised before,' says Mis'
+Merriman, elbows back.
+
+"'Nor,' says Mis' Holcomb, bitter, 'have I ever before, in my twenty-six
+years of married life, ever been called _dressy_.'
+
+"Then Mis' Toplady, she sort of shouldered into the minute, big and
+placid and nice-feeling.
+
+"'Mame,' she says, 'set over here where you can use the lead-pencil on
+my watch chain, and put down that crochet pattern I wanted, will you?'
+
+"Mame come over by her and took the pencil, Mis' Toplady leaning over
+so's she could use it; but before she put the crochet pattern down, Mame
+made one, experimental, on the stiff bottom of her work-bag, and Libby
+Liberty thought she'd make a little joking.
+
+"'S-sh-h,' says Libby, 'the authoress is takin' down notes.'
+
+"Mis' Holcomb has had two-three poems in the _Friendship Daily_, and
+she's real sensitive over it.
+
+"'I'd be polite if I couldn't be pleasant, Libby,' says Mame, acid.
+
+"'I'm pleasant enough to pleasant folks,' snaps Libby, up in arms in a
+minute. Nothing whatever makes anybody so mad as to have what was meant
+playful took plain.
+
+"'I,' says Mis' Holcomb, majestic, 'would pay some attention to my
+company manners, no matter what I was in the home.'
+
+"'That makes me think,' puts in Mis' Toplady, hasty, 'speaking of
+company so, who's heard anything about the evenin' company up to
+Proudfits'?'
+
+"It was something all our heads was full of, being half the village had
+just been invited in to the big evening affair that was to end up the
+house party, and we'd all of pitched in and talked fast anyhow to take
+our minds off the spat.
+
+"'Elbert's comin' home to go to it an' to stay Sunday an' as much as he
+can spare,' says Mis' Sykes. Elbert is her son and all Silas Sykes ought
+to of been, Elbert is.
+
+"'Letty Ames is home for the party, too,' says Libby Liberty, speaking
+up in defence of their block, that Letty lives in. She's just graduated
+at Indian Mound and has been visiting up the state.
+
+"My niece that had come on for a few days would be gone before the party
+come off, so she didn't seem worth mentioning for real news value at a
+time when everything was centring in an evening company at Proudfit
+House. No doubt about it, Proudfit House does give distinction to
+Friendship Village, kind of like a finishing school would, or a circus
+wintering in us.
+
+"'I heard,' says Mis' Jimmy Sturgis, 'that the hired help set up all
+night long cleanin' the silver. I shouldn't think _that_ would of been
+necessary, with any kind of management behind 'em.'
+
+"'You don't get much management now'-days,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait,
+sighing. 'Things slap along awful haphazard.'
+
+"'I know I ain't the system to myself that I use' to have,' says Abagail
+Arnold. 'Why, the other day I found my soda in one butt'ry an' my bakin'
+powder in the other.'
+
+"'An' I heard,' says Mame Holcomb--that's one thing about Mame, you
+can't keep her mad. She'll flare up and be a tongue of flame one minute,
+and the next she's actin' like a friendly open fire on a family hearth.
+And I always trust that kind--I can't help it--'I heard,' she said,
+'that for the party that night the ice-cream is coming in forms,
+calla-lilies an' dogs an' like that.'
+
+"'I heard,' says Mis' Uppers, 'that Emerel Daniel was invited up to help
+an' she set up nights and got her a new dress for helpin' in, and now
+little Otie's sick and she likely can't go near.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady looks over her glasses.
+
+"'Is Otie sick again?' says she. 'Well, if Emerel don't move out of
+Black Hollow, she'll lose him just like she done Abe. Can't she sell?'
+
+"Black Hollow is the town's pet breeding place for typhoid, that the
+ladies has been at the council to clean up for a year now. And nobody
+will buy there, so Emerel's had to live in her house to save rent.
+
+"'She's made her a nice dress an' she was so excited and pleased,' says
+Mis' Uppers, grieving. 'I do hope it was a dark shade so if bereavement
+follows--'
+
+"'I suppose you'll have a new cloth, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis'
+Hubbelthwait, 'you're so up-to-date.' It's always one trouble with Mis'
+Hubbelthwait: she will flatter the flatterable. But that time it didn't
+work. Mis' Sykes was up on a chair fixing a window-shade that had flew
+up, and I guess she must have pinched her finger, she was so crispy.
+
+"'I thought I _had_ things that was full stylish enough to wear,' she
+says stiff.
+
+"'I didn't mean harm,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, humble.
+
+"Just then we all got up to see out the window, for the Proudfit
+automobile drew up to Mis' Sykes's gate. They was several folks in it,
+like they had been most of the time during the house party, with
+everybody flying hither and yon; and they was letting Mis' Emmons out.
+It was just exactly like her to remember to come right out of the midst
+of a house party to a meeting of Sodality. That woman was pure gold.
+When they was a lot of things to choose about, she always seemed to let
+the pleasant and the light and the easy-to-do slip right through her
+fingers, that would close up by and by on the big real thing that most
+folks would pretend to try to catch _after_ it had slipped through, and
+yet would be awful glad to see disappearing.
+
+"We didn't talk clothes any more after Mis' Emmons come in. Some way her
+clothes was so professional seeming, in colour and cut, that beside of
+her the rest of us never said much about ours; though I will say Mis'
+Emmons always wore her clothes like she was no more thinking about them
+than she would be thinking about morning housework togs.
+
+"'Well-said, how's the little boy, Mis' Emmons?' asks Mis' Toplady,
+hearty. 'I declare I couldn't go to sleep a night or two ago for
+thinkin' about the little soul. Heard any sound out of his folks?'
+
+"'I'm going to tell you about that pretty soon,' Mis' Emmons
+answered--and it made my heart beat a little with wondering if she'd got
+her plans thought out, not only four-square, but tower-high. 'He is
+well--he wanted to come to the meeting. "I like ladies," he said, "when
+they look at me like loving, but not when they touch me much." Mr.
+Insley has him out walking.'
+
+"'Little soul,' says Mis' Toplady, again.
+
+"Out in the back parlour, some of us had been talking about Christopher
+already.
+
+"'I heard,' Mis' Merriman says, that wasn't to the church the night
+Christopher come, 'I heard that he didn't have much of any clothes on.
+An' that nobody could understand what he said. An' that nobody could get
+him to speak a word.'
+
+"'Pshaw,' Mis' Sturgis puts in, 'he was a nice-dressed little boy,
+though wet; an' quite conversational.'
+
+"'Well, I think it's a great problem,' says Mis' Uppers. 'He's too young
+for the poorhouse and too old for the babies' home. Seems like they
+wasn't anything _to_ do with him.'
+
+"There come a lull when Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in a ruffled lawn that
+had shrunk too short for anything but house wear, stood up by the piano
+and called the meeting to order. And when we'd got on down to new
+business, the purpose of the meeting and a hint of the pleasure was
+stated formal by Mis' Sykes herself. 'One thing why I like to preside at
+Sodality,' I heard her tell once, 'is, you do get your say whenever you
+want it, and nobody can interrupt you when you're in the chair.'
+
+"'Ladies,' she says, 'we've seen from the treasurer's report we've got
+some Sixty-odd Dollars on hand. The question is, where shall we vote it
+to. Let the discussion be free.'
+
+"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke first, with a kind of a bright
+manner of having thought it all out over her dish pan and her bread pan.
+There is this about belonging to Sodality: We just live Sodality every
+day, around our work. We don't forget it except to meetings, same as
+some.
+
+"'Well, I just tell you what,' Mame says, 'I think now is our time to
+get a big monument for the middle of Cemetery that'll do some credit to
+the Dead. All our little local headstones is quite tasty and shows our
+interest in them that's gone before; but not one of them is real
+up-to-date. Let's buy a nice monument that'll show from the railroad
+track.'
+
+"I spoke up short off from the back parlour, where I set 'scallopin' a
+bedspread about as big as the carpet.
+
+"'Who to?' I says.
+
+"'Oh, I donno's it makes much differ'nce,' Mis' Holcomb says, warming to
+her theme, 'so's it was some leadin' citizen. We might take a town vote
+on it.'
+
+"Mis' Sturgis set up straight, eyebrows up. I donno how it is, but Mis'
+Sturgis's pompadour always seems so much higher as soon as she gets
+interested.
+
+"'Why, my gracious,' she says, 'we might earn quite a lot o' money that
+way. We might have a regular votin' contest on who that's dead should
+get the monument--so much a vote an' the names of the successful ones
+run every night in the _Daily_--'
+
+"'Well-a, why do it for anybody dead?' says Libby Liberty. 'Why not get
+the monument here and have it on view an' then have folks kind of bid on
+it for their own, real votin' style. In the cities now everybody picks
+out their own monuments ahead of time. That would be doing for the
+Living, the way Mr. Insley said.'
+
+"'Oh, there'd be hard feelin' that way,' spoke up Mis' Uppers, decided.
+'Whoever got it, an' got buried under it, never could feel it was his
+own stone. Everybody that had bought votes for themselves could come out
+walking in the Cemetery Sunday afternoons and could point out the
+monument and tell how much of a money interest they had in it. Oh, no, I
+don't think that'd do at all.'
+
+"'Well, stick to havin' it for the Dead, then,' Libby gives in. 'We've
+got to remember our constitution.'
+
+"Mis' Amanda Toplady was always going down after something in the bottom
+of her pocket, set low in her full black skirt. She done this now, for a
+spool or a lozenger. And she says, meantime: 'Seems like that'd be awful
+irreverent, connectin' up the Dead with votes that way.'
+
+"'_My_ notion,' says Mis' Sykes, with her way of throwin' up one corner
+of her head, 'it ain't one-tenth part as irreverent as forgettin' all
+about 'em.'
+
+"'Of course it ain't,' agreed Mis' Hubbelthwait. 'Real, true irreverence
+is made up of buryin' folks and leavin' 'em go their way. Why, I bet
+you there ain't any one of 'em that wouldn't be cheered up by bein'
+voted for.'
+
+"I couldn't help piping up again from the back parlour. 'What about them
+that don't get no votes?' I asks. 'What about them that is beat in death
+like they may of been in life? What's there to cheer them up? If I was
+them,' says I, 'I'd ha'nt the whole Sodality.'
+
+"'No need to be so sacrilegious in speakin' of the Dead as I know of,
+Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes that was in the chair and could rebuke at
+will.
+
+"That made me kind o' mad, and I answered back, chair or no chair: 'A
+thing is sacrilegious,' says I, 'according to which side of the fence
+you're on. But the fence it don't change none.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady looked over her glasses and out the window and like she
+see far away.
+
+"'Land, land,' she says, 'I'd like to take that Sixty Dollars and hire
+some place to invite the young folks into evenings, that don't have no
+place to go on earth for fun. Friendship Village,' says she, 'is about
+as lively as Cemetery is for the young folks.'
+
+"'Well, but, Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes, reprovin', 'the young folks
+is alive and able to see to themselves. They don't come in Sodality's
+scope. Everything we do has got to be connect' with Cemetery.'
+
+"'I can't help it,' Mis' Toplady answers, 'if it is. I'd like to invite
+'em in for some good safe evenin's somewheres instead of leaving 'em
+trapse the streets. And if I had to have Cemetery in it somehow, I donno
+but I'd make it a lawn party and give it in Cemetery and have done with
+it.'
+
+"We all laughed, but I knew that underneath, Mis' Toplady was kind of
+half-and-half in earnest.
+
+"'The young folks,' says Mis' Sykes, mysterious, 'is going to be took
+care of by the proper means, very, very soon.'
+
+"'I donno,' says Mis' Holcomb, obstinate. 'I think the monument is a
+real nice idea. Grandfather Holcomb, now, him that helped draft the
+town, or whatever it is they do, I bet he'd be real pleased to be voted
+for.'
+
+"But Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, seems she couldn't forget the little way
+Mame had spoke to her before, and she leaned forward and cut her way
+into the talking.
+
+"'Why, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'of course your Grandfather Holcomb can
+be voted on if he wants to and if he thinks he could get it. But dead
+though he is, what he done can't hold a candle to what Grandfather
+Merriman done. That man just about run this town for years on end.'
+
+"'I heard he did,' said Mame, short. 'Those was the days before things
+was called by their true names in politics and in graft and like that.'
+
+"'I'm sure,' says Mis' Merriman, her voice slipping, 'Grandfather
+Merriman was an angel in heaven to his family. And he started the very
+Cemetery by bein' buried in it first himself, and he took a front lot--'
+
+"'Ladies, ladies,' says Mis' Sykes, stern, 'we ain't votin' _yet_. Has
+anybody got anything else to offer? Let the discussion be free.'
+
+"'What do we get a monument for, anyway?' says Mis' Toplady, hemming
+peaceful. 'Why don't we stick the money onto the new iron fence for
+Cemetery, same as we've been trying to do for years?'
+
+"'That's what I was thinking,' says Abagail Arnold, smiling. 'Whenever I
+make one of my layer cakes for Sodality Annual, and frost it white and
+make mounds of frosted nuts on top, I always wish Cemetery had a fence
+around so's I could make a frosting one on the edge of the cake,
+appropriate.'
+
+"'Why, but my land, Abagail,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'can't you see the
+differ'nce between workin' for a dead iron fence and working for the
+real, right down Dead that once was the living? Where's your humanity,
+I'd like to know, and your loyalty to Friendship Village inhabitants
+that was, that you set the old iron fence over against 'em. What's a
+fence beside folks?'
+
+"All this time Mis' Emmons, there in the front parlour, had just sat
+still, stitching away on some little garment or other, but now she
+looked up quick, as if she was going to speak. She even begun to speak
+with a 'Madame President' that covered up several excited beginnings.
+But as she done so, I looked through the folding doors and see her catch
+sight of somebody out in the street. And I looked out the bay-window in
+the back parlour and I see who it was: it was a man, carefully guiding a
+little bit of a man who was walking on the flat board top of the Sykes's
+fence. So, instead of speaking formal, all Mis' Emmons done was to make
+a little motion towards the window, so that her contribution to the
+debating was nothing but--
+
+"'Madame President--look.'
+
+"We all looked, them in the out-of-range corners of the room getting up
+and holding their work in their aprons, and peering past; and us in the
+back parlour tried for glimpses out the side bay-window, past Mis'
+Sykes's big sword fern. And so the most of us see Insley walking with
+Christopher, who was footing it very delicate and grave, picking out his
+places to step as if a real lot depended on it.
+
+"'That's Chris,' says Mis' Emmons, simple, 'that's come to us.' And
+you'd of said she hardly spoke the 'us' real conscious of herself. She
+looked round at us all. 'Let's have him in for a minute,' she says.
+
+"'The little soul! Let's so do,' Mis' Amanda Toplady says, hearty.
+
+"It was Mis' Emmons that went to the door and called them, and I guess
+Insley, when he see her, must of wondered what made her face seem like
+that. He went on up town, and the little chap come trotting up the walk.
+
+"When Chris come in Mis' Sykes's front parlour among all the women,
+there run round that little murmuring sound that a crowd of women uses
+to greet the coming in their midst of any child. And I s'pose it was a
+little more so than ever for Chris, that they hadn't all seen
+yet--'count of so few being out the night he come and 'count of his
+having been up to Proudfit House 'most ever since. Us in the back
+parlour went crowding in the front, and some come down to the hall door
+to be the nearer. Mis' Amanda Toplady, hunting in her deep pocket, this
+time for a lozenger, says fervent above the rest:--
+
+"'The little soul.'
+
+"And he did resemble one, standing there so shy and manly in his new
+little brown clothes.
+
+"Mis' Emmons's eyes was bright, and I thought I see a kind of challenge
+in her way of drawing the child towards her.
+
+"'Chris,' she says, 'tell them what you had in your paper bag when you
+came to the church the other night.'
+
+"Chris remembered: Sugar rolls and cream-puffs and fruit-cake, he
+recites it grand. 'My supper,' he adds, no less grand. 'But that was
+'cause I didn't have my dinner nor my breakfast,' he explains, so's we
+wouldn't think he'd had too much at once.
+
+"'What was the matter with your foot?' Mis' Emmons goes on.
+
+"Christopher had a little smile that just about won you--a sort of
+abashed little smile, that begun over by one side of his mouth, and when
+he was going to smile that way he always started in by turning away his
+head. He done this now; but we could all hear what he said. It was:--
+
+"'My biggest toe went right through a hole, an' it choked me awful.'
+
+"About a child's foot hurting, or a little sore heel, there is something
+that makes mothers out of everybody, for a minute or two. The women all
+twittered into a little ripple of understanding. Probably to every woman
+there come the picture of the little cold, wet foot and the choked toe.
+I know I could see it, and I can see it yet.
+
+"'Lambin',' says Mis' Toplady, in more than two syllables, 'come here
+for a peppermint.'
+
+"Chris went right over to her. 'I been thirsty for a drink of water
+since all day,' he says confidential. 'Have you got one?'
+
+"Mis' Toplady went with the child, and then Mis' Emmons took something
+from her bag and held it up. It was Christopher's father's letter that
+he'd brought with him that night.
+
+"She read the letter out loud, in everybody's perfectly breathless
+silence that was broken only by Christopher laughing out in the kitchen.
+'My friends,' Mis' Emmons says when she'd got through, 'doesn't it seem
+to you as if our work had come to us? And that if it isn't Chris
+himself, at least it ought to be people, live people--and not an iron
+fence or even a monument that will show from the railroad track?'
+
+"And with that, standing in the doorway with my arms full of bedspread,
+I piped right up, just like I'd been longing to pipe up ever since that
+night at Mis' Emmons's when I'd talked with Insley:--
+
+"'Yes, sir,' I says emphatic, 'it does. Without meaning to be
+sacrilegious in the least,' I says toward Mis' Sykes, 'I believe that
+the Dead is a lot better prepared to take care of themselves than a good
+many of the Living is.'
+
+"There was a kind of a little pause at this, all but Mis' Sykes. Mis'
+Sykes don't pause easy. She spoke right back, sort of elevating one
+temple:--
+
+"'The object of this meeting as the chair understands it,' says she, 'is
+to discuss money spending, _not_ idees.'
+
+"But I didn't pay no more attention than as if I'd been a speaker in
+public life. And Mis' Toplady and Christopher, coming back to the room
+just then, I spoke to him and took a-hold of his little shoulder.
+
+"'Chris,' I says, 'tell 'em what you're going to be when you grow up.'
+
+"The little boy stood up with his back against the door-casing, and he
+spoke back between peppermints:--
+
+"'I'm going to drive the loads of hay,' he declares himself.
+
+"'A little bit ago,' I says to 'em, 'he was going to be a cream-puff
+man, and keep a church and manufacture black velvet for people's
+coffins. Think of all them futures--not to spend time on other
+possibilities. Don't it seem like we'd ought to keep him around here
+somewheres and help him decide? Don't it seem like what he's going to be
+is resting with us?'
+
+"But now Mis' Sykes spoke out in her most presidential tone.
+
+"'It would be perfectly impossible,' she says, 'for Sodality to spend
+its money on the child or on anybody else that's living. Our
+constitution says we shall work for Cemetery.'
+
+"'Well,' says I, rebellish, 'then let's rip up our old constitution and
+buy ourselves a new pattern.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes was getting to verge on mad.
+
+"'But Sodality ain't an orphan asylum, Calliope,' says she, 'nor none of
+us is that.'
+
+"'Ain't we--ain't we, Mis' Sykes?' I says. 'Sometimes I donno what we're
+for if we ain't that.'
+
+"And then I just clear forgot myself, in one of them times that don't
+let you get to sleep that night for thinking about, and that when you
+wake up is right there by the bed waiting for you, and that makes you
+feel sore when you think of afterwards--sore, but glad, too.
+
+"'That's it,' I says, 'that's it. I've been thinking about that a good
+deal lately. I s'pose it's because I ain't any children of my own to be
+so busy for that I can't think about their real good. Seems to me there
+ain't a child living no matter how saucy or soiled or similar, but could
+look us each one in the face and say, "What you doing for me and the
+rest of us?" And what could we say to them? We could say: "I'm buying
+some of you ginghams that won't shrink nor fade. Some of you I'm cooking
+food for, and some of you I'm letting go without it. And some of you I'm
+buying school books and playthings and some of you I'm leaving without
+'em. I'm making up some of your beds and teaching you your manners and
+I'm loving you--some of you. And the rest of you I'm leaving walk in
+town after dark with a hole in your stocking." _Where's the
+line--where's the line?_ How do we know which is the ones to do for? I
+tell you I'm the orphan asylum to the whole lot of 'em. And so are you.
+And I move the Cemetery Improvement Sodality do something for this
+little boy. We'd adopt him if he was dead--an' keep his grave as nice
+and neat as wax. Let's us adopt him instead of his grave!'
+
+"My bedspread had slipped down onto the floor, but I never knew when nor
+did I see it go. All I see was that some of them agreed with me--Mis'
+Emmons and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Hubbelthwait and Libby and even Mame
+that had proposed the monument. But some of the others was waiting as
+usual to see how Mis' Sykes was going to believe, and Mis' Sykes she was
+just standing there by the piano, her cheeks getting pinker and pinker
+up high on her face.
+
+"'Calliope,' she said, making a gesture. 'Ladies! this is every bit of
+it out of order. This ain't the subject that we come together to
+discuss.'
+
+"'It kind of seems to me,' says I, 'that it's a subject we was born to
+discuss.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady sort of rolled over in her chair and looked across her
+glasses to Mis' Sykes.
+
+"'Madame President,' says she, 'as I understand it this fits in all
+right. What we're proposing is to spend Sodality's money on this little
+boy just the same as though he was dead. I move we do so.'
+
+"Two-three of 'em seconded it, but scairt and scattering.
+
+"'Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Ladies! This is a good deal too
+headlong. A committee'd ought--'
+
+"'Question--question,' demands Mis' Emmons, serene, and she met my eye
+and smiled some, in that little _we_-understand look that can pierce
+through a roomful of people like the wind.
+
+"'Mis' Emmons,' says Mis' Sykes, wildish. 'Ladies! Sodality has been
+organized over twenty years, doing the same thing. You can't change so
+offhand--' You can't help admiring Mis' Sykes, for she simply don't know
+when she's beat. But this time she had a point with her, too. 'If we
+want to vote to amend the constitution,' she said, 'you've got to lay
+down your wishes on the table for one week.'
+
+"'I daresay you have,' says Mis' Emmons, looking grave. 'Well, I move
+that we amend the constitution of this society, and I move that we do it
+next week at the open annual meeting of the Sodality.'
+
+"'Second the motion,' says I, with my feet on my white bedspread.
+
+"And somehow the phrase caught Christopher's ear, like a tune might to
+march by.
+
+"'Second a motion--second a motion!' he chants to himself, standing by
+Mis' Toplady's knee.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+"I had promised Insley to run in the Cadozas' after the meeting, and see
+the little boy; and Mis' Emmons having to go home before she started
+back to the Proudfits', Christopher walked along with me. When we got
+out to the end of Daphne Street, Insley overtook us on his way out to
+the Cadozas', too.
+
+"His shoes were some muddy, and I guessed that he had been where of late
+he'd spent as much time as he could spare, both when he was in the
+village and when he was over to Indian Mound. Without digging down into
+his eyes, the same as some do to folks that's in trouble, I had sensed
+that there had come down on him everybody's hour of cutting something
+out of life, which is as elemental a thing to do as dying is, and I
+donno but it's the same kind as dying is besides. And he had been taking
+his hour in the elemental way, wanting to be alone and to kind of get
+near to the earth. I mean tramping the hills, ploughing along the narrow
+paths close to the barb' wire fences, plunging into the little groves.
+The little groves have such an' I-know look of understanding all about
+any difficulty till you walk inside of them, when all to once they stop
+seeming to know about your special trouble and begin another kind of
+slow soothing, same as summing things up will soothe you, now and then.
+
+"Chris chattered to him, lovable.
+
+"'I had some peppermenges,' he says, 'and I like hot ice-cream, too.
+Don't you? Can you make that?' he inquires, slipping his hand in
+Insley's.
+
+"Of course this made a pang--when you're hurt, 'most everything makes a
+pang. And this must of brought back that one evening with Robin that he
+would have to remember, and all the little stupid jokes they'd had that
+night must of rose up and hit at him, with the awful power of the little
+things that don't matter one bit and yet that matter everything.
+
+"'What can _you_ make, Chris?' Insley says to him. 'Can you make candy?
+And pull it--like this?'
+
+"'Once a lady stirred me some an' cut it up in squares,' Chris
+explained, 'but I never did make any. My mama couldn't make candy, I
+guess, but she could make all other things--pancakes an' mittens an'
+nice stove fires my mama could make. The bag we got the salt in--she
+made me two handkerchiefs out of that bag,' he ended proudly.
+
+"'Did she--did she?' Insley tempted him on.
+
+"'Yes,' Chris went on, hopping beside him, 'but now I've got to hurry
+an' be a man, 'cause litty boys ain't very good things. Can you make
+po'try?' he wound up.
+
+"'Why, Chris--can you?' Insley asked.
+
+"'Well, when I was comin' along with my daddy that night I made one,'
+the child says. And when Insley questions him a little he got this much
+more out of him. 'It started, "Look at the trees so green an' fair,"' he
+says, 'but I forget the rest.'
+
+"'Do you want to be a poet when you grow up?' Insley ask' him.
+
+"'Yes, I do,' the child says ready. 'I think I'll be that first an' then
+I'll be the President, too. But what I'd rather be is the sprinkler-cart
+man, wouldn't you?'
+
+"'Conceivably,' Insley says, and by the look on his face I bet his hand
+tightened up on the child's hand.
+
+"'At Sodality,' I says, 'he just told them he was going to drive loads
+of hay. He's made several selections.'
+
+"He looked at me over the child's head, and I guess we was both
+thinking the same thing: Trust nature to work this out alone?
+'Conceivably,' again. But all of a sudden I know we both burned to help
+to do it. And as Insley talked to the child, I think some touch of his
+enterprise come back and breathed on him. In them few last days I
+shouldn't wonder if his work hadn't stopped soaring to the meaning of
+spirit and sunk down again to be just body drudgery. He couldn't ever
+help having his old possessing love of men, and his man's strong
+resolution to keep a-going, but I shouldn't wonder if the wings of the
+thing he meant to do had got folded up. And Christopher, here, was sort
+of releasing them out again.
+
+"'How's the little Cadoza boy?' I ask' him pretty soon.
+
+"'He's getting on,' he says. 'Dr. Barrows was down yesterday--he wants
+him for a fortnight or so at the hospital in town, where he can have
+good care and food. His mother doesn't want him to go. I hoped you'd
+talk with her.'
+
+"Before we got to the Cadoza house Insley looked over to me, enigmatish.
+'Want to see something?' he says, and he handed me a letter. I read it,
+and some of it I knew what it meant and some of it I didn't. It was
+from Alex Proudfit, asking him up to Proudfit House to the house party.
+
+" ... Ain't it astonishing how awful festive the word 'house party'
+sounds. 'Party' sounds festive, though not much more so than 'company'
+or 'gathering' that we use more common. 'Ball,' of course, is real
+glittering, and paints the inside of your head into pictures,
+instantaneous. But a house party--maybe it's because I never was to one;
+maybe it's because I never heard of one till late in life; maybe it's
+because nobody ever had one before in Friendship Village--but that word
+give me all the sensation that 'her golden coach' and 'his silver
+armour' and 'good fairy' used to have for me when I was a little girl.
+'House party!' Anything shiny might happen to one of them. It's like
+you'd took something vanishin', like a party, and just seized onto it
+and made it stay longer than Time and the World ever intended. It's like
+making a business of the short-lived.
+
+"Well, some of Alex's letter went about like this:--
+
+"'Join us for the whole time, do,' it says, and it went on about there
+being rather an interesting group,--'a jolly individualist,' I recollect
+he says, 'for your special benefit. He'll convert you where I couldn't,
+because he's kept his love for men and I haven't. And of course I've
+some women--pretty, bless them, and thank the Lord not one of them
+troubling whether she loves mankind or not, so long as men love her. And
+there you have Nature uncovered at her task! I shall expect you for
+every moment that you can spare....' I remember the wording because it
+struck me it was all so like Alex that I could pretty near talk to it
+and have it answer back.
+
+"'Tell me,' Insley says, when I handed the letter back to him, 'you
+know--him. Alex Proudfit. Does he put all that on? Is it his mask? Does
+he feel differently and do differently when folks don't know?'
+
+"'Well,' I says, slow, 'I donno. He gives the Cadozas their rent, but
+when Mis' Cadoza went to thank him, once, he sent down word for her to
+go and see his agent.'
+
+"He nodded, and I'd never heard him speak bitter before. 'That's it,' he
+says, 'that's it. That's the way we bungle things....'
+
+"We'd got almost to the Cadozas' when we heard an automobile coming
+behind us, and as we stood aside to let it go by, Robin's face flashed
+past us at the window. Mis' Emmons was with her, that Robin had come
+down after. Right off the car stopped and Robin jumped out and come
+hurrying back towards us. I'll never forget the minute. We met right in
+front of the old tumble-down Cadoza house with the lilacs so high in the
+front yard that the place looked pretty near nice, like the rest of the
+world. It was a splendid afternoon, one that had got it's gold persuaded
+to burst through a gray morning, like colour from a bunch of silver
+buds; and now the air was all full of lovely things, light and little
+wind and late sun and I donno but things we didn't know about. And
+everyone of them seemed in Robin's face as she came towards us, and
+more, too, that we couldn't name or place.
+
+"I think the mere exquisite girlishness of her come home to Insley as
+even her strength and her womanliness, that night he talked with her,
+had not moved him. I donno but in the big field of his man's dream, he
+had pretty near forgot how obvious her charm was. I'm pretty sure that
+in those days when he was tramping the hills alone, the thing that he
+was fighting with was that he was going to lose her companioning in the
+life they both dreamed. But now her hurrying so and her little faint
+agitation made her appeal a new thing, fifty times as lovely, fifty
+times as feminine, and sort of filling in the picture of herself with
+all the different kinds of women she was in one.
+
+"So now, as he stood there with her, looking down in her face, touching
+her friendly hand, I think that was the first real, overhauling minute
+when he was just swept by the understanding that his loss was so many
+times what he'd thought it was going to be. For it was her that he
+wanted, it was her that he would miss for herself and not for any dear
+plans of work-fellowship alone. She understood his dream, but there was
+other things she understood about, too. A man can love a woman for a
+whole collection of little dear things--and he can lose her and grieve;
+he can love her for her big way of looking at things, and he can lose
+her and grieve; he can love her because she is his work-fellow, and he
+can lose her and grieve. But if, on top of one of these, he loves her
+because she is she, the woman that knows about life and is capable of
+sharing all of life with him and of being tender about it, why then if
+he loses her, his grieving is going to be something that there ain't
+rightly no name for. And I think it was that minute there in the road
+that it first come to Insley that Robin was Robin, that of all the many
+women that she was, first and most she was the woman that was capable
+of sharing with him all sides of living.
+
+"'I wanted ...' she says to him, uncertain. 'Oh, I wish very much that
+you would accept the invitation to some of the house party. I wanted to
+tell you.'
+
+"'I can't do that,' he answers, short and almost gruff. 'Really I can't
+do that.'
+
+"But it seemed there was even a sort of nice childishness about her that
+you wouldn't have guessed. I always think it's a wonderful moment when a
+woman knows a man well enough to show some of her childishness to him.
+But a woman that shows right off, close on the heels of an introduction,
+how childish she can be, it always sort o' makes me mad--like she'd told
+her first name without being asked about it.
+
+"'Please,' Robin says, 'I'm asking it because I wish it very much. I
+want those people up there to know you. I want--'
+
+"He shook his head, looking at her, eyes, mouth, and fresh cheeks, like
+he wished he was able to look at her face _all at once_.
+
+"'At least, at least,' she says to him rapid, then, 'you must come to
+the party at the end. You know I want to keep you for my friend--I want
+to make you our friend. That night Aunt Eleanor is going to announce my
+engagement, and I want my friends to be there.'
+
+"That surprised me as much as it did him. Nobody in the village knew
+about the engagement yet except us two that knew it from that night at
+Mis' Emmons's. I wondered what on earth Insley was going to say and I
+remember how I hoped, pretty near fierce, that he wasn't going to smile
+and bow and wish her happiness and do the thing the world would have
+wanted of him. It may make things run smoother to do that way, but
+smoothness isn't the only thing the love of folks for folks knows about.
+I do like a man that now and then speaks out with the breath in his
+lungs and not just with the breath of his nostrils. And that's what
+Insley done--that's what he done, only I'm bound to say that I do think
+he spoke out before he knew he was going to.
+
+"'That would be precisely why I couldn't come,' he said. 'Thank you, you
+know--but please don't ask me.'
+
+"As for Robin, at this her eyes widened, and beautiful colour swept her
+face. And she didn't at once turn away from him, but I see how she stood
+looking at him with a kind of a sharp intentness, less of wonder than of
+stopping short.
+
+"Christopher had run to the automobile and now he come a-hopping back.
+
+"'Robin!' he called. 'Aunt Eleanor says you haf to be in a dress by
+dinner, and it's _now_.'
+
+"'Do come for dinner, Mr. Insley,' Mis' Emmons calls, as Robin and
+Christopher went to join him. 'We've got up a tableau or two for
+afterward. Come and help me be a tableau.'
+
+"He smiled and shook his head and answered her. And that reminded me
+that I'd got to hurry like wild, as usual. It was most six o'clock
+then,--it always _is_ either most six o'clock or most noon when I get
+nearest to being interested,--and that night great things was going to
+be going on. Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and the School Board and I was
+going to have a tableau of our own.
+
+"But for all that I couldn't help standing still a minute and looking
+after the automobile. It seemed as bad as some kind of a planet,
+carrying Robin off for forever and ever. And I wasn't so clear that I
+fancied its orbit.
+
+"'I've got a whole string of minds not to go to that party myself,' I
+says, meditative.
+
+"But Insley never answered. He just come on around the Cadozas' house.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+"I never speak much about my relations, because I haven't got many. If I
+did have, I suppose I should be telling about how peculiar they take
+their tea and coffee, and what they died of, and showing samples of
+their clothes and acting like my own immediate family made up life, just
+like most folks does. But I haven't got much of any relatives, nor no
+ancestors to brag about. 'Nothing for kin but the world,' I always say.
+
+"But back in the middle of June I had got a letter from a cousin, like a
+bow from the blue. And the morning I got it, and with it yet unopened in
+my hand, Silas Sykes come out from behind the post-office window and
+tapped me on the arm.
+
+"'Calliope,' he says, 'we've about made up our minds--the School Board
+an' some o' the leadin' citizens has--to appoint a Women's Evenin'
+Vigilance Committee, secret. An' we want you an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis'
+Sykes should be it.'
+
+"'Vigilance,' I says, thoughtful. 'I recollect missin' on the meanin'
+of that word in school. I recollect I called it "viligance" an' said it
+meant a 'bus. I donno if I rightly know what it means now, Silas.'
+
+"Silas cleared his throat an' whispered hoarse, in a way he's got:
+'Women don't have no call, much for the word,' he says. 'It means when
+you sic your notice onto some one thing. We want a committee of you
+women should do it.'
+
+"'Notice _what_?' I says, some mystified. 'What the men had ought to be
+up to an' ain't?'
+
+"But customers come streaming into the post-office store then, and some
+folks for their mail, and Silas set a time a couple o' days later in the
+afternoon for Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and me to come down to the
+store and talk it over.
+
+"'An' you be here,' says Silas, beatin' it off with his finger. 'It's
+somethin' we got to do to protect our own public decency.'
+
+"'_Public_ decency,' I says over, thoughtful, and went out fingerin' my
+letter that was in a strange handwriting and that I was dying to read.
+
+"It was a couple of days later that I what-you-might-say finished that
+letter, and between times I had it on the clock-shelf and give every
+spare minute to making it out. Minerva Beach the letter was from--my
+cousin Minnie Beach's girl. Minnie had died awhile before, and Minerva,
+her daughter, was on her way West to look for a position, and should she
+spend a few days with me? That was what I made out, though I donno how I
+done it, for her writing was so big and so up-and-down that every letter
+looked like it had on corsets and high heels. I never see such a mess!
+It was like picking out a crochet pattern to try to read it.
+
+"I recollect that I was just finishing composing my letter telling her
+to come along, and hurrying so's to take it to mail as I went down to
+the Vigilance Committee meeting, when the new photographer in town come
+to my door, with his horse and buggy tied to the gate. J. Horace Myers
+was his name, and he said he was a friend of the Topladys, and he was
+staying with them while he made choice art photographs of the whole
+section; and he wanted to take a picture of my house. He was a dapper
+little man, but awful tired-seeming, so I told him to take the picture
+and welcome, and I put the stone dog on the front porch and looped the
+parlour curtains over again and started off for the meeting.
+
+"'I'll be up to show you the proofs in a few days,' he says as I was
+leaving. He was fixing the black cloth over his head, kind of listless
+and patient.
+
+"'Land!' I says, before I knew it, 'don't you get awful sick of takin'
+pictures of humbly houses you don't care nothin' about?'
+
+"He peeked out from under the black cloth sort of grateful. 'I do,' he
+says, simple,--'sick enough to bust the camera.'
+
+"'Well, I should think you would,' I says hearty; and I went down Daphne
+Street with the afternoon kind of feeling tarnished. I was wondering how
+on earth folks go on at all that dislikes their work like that. There
+was Abe Luck, just fixing the Sykes's eaves-trough--what was there to
+_like_ about fixing eaves-troughs and about the whole hardware business?
+Jimmy Sturgis coming driving the 'bus, Eppleby Holcomb over there
+registering deeds, Mis' Sykes's girl Em'ly washing windows,--what was
+there about any of it to _like_ doing? I looked at Mis' Sykes's Em'ly
+real pitying, polishing panes outside, when Abe Luck come climbing down
+the ladder from the roof; and all of a sudden I see Abe stick his head
+through the rungs, and quick as a flash kiss Mis' Sykes's Em'ly.
+
+"'My land!' I started to think, 'Mis' Sykes had ought to discharge--'
+and then I just stopped short off, sudden. Her hating windows, and him
+hating eaves-troughs, and what else did either of them have? Nothing. I
+could sense their lives like I could sense my own--level and even and
+_darn_. And all at once I had all I could do to keep from being glad
+that Abe Luck had kissed Em'ly. And I walked like lightning to keep back
+the feeling.
+
+"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady was to the post-office store before me. It
+was a slack time of day, and Silas set down on a mail-bag and begun
+outlining the situation that he meant about.
+
+"'The School Board,' says Silas, important, 'has got some women's work
+they want done. It's a thing,' s'he, 'that women can do the best--I mean
+it's the girls an' boys, hangin' round evenin's--you know we've all
+talked about it. But somebody's got to get after 'em in earnest, an' see
+they don't disgrace us with their carryin' on in the streets, evenin's.'
+
+"'Why don't the men do it?' I ask' him, wonderin', 'or is it 'count of
+offending some?'
+
+"'No such thing!' says Silas, touchy. 'Where's your delicate feelin's,
+Calliope? Women can do these things better than men. This is somethin'
+delicate, that had ought to be seen to quiet. It ain't a matter for the
+authorities. It's women's work,' says he. 'It's women that's the
+mothers--it ain't the men,' says Silas, convincing.
+
+"But still I looked at him, real meditative. 'What started you men off
+on that tack at this time?' I ask' him, blunt--because young folks had
+been flooding the streets evenings since I could remember, and no
+Friendship Village man had ever acted like this about it.
+
+"'Well,' says Silas, 'don't you women tell it out around. But the thing
+that's got us desperate is the schoolhouse. The entry to it--they've
+used it shameful. Peanut shucks, down-trod popcorn, paper bags, fruit
+peelin's--every mornin' the stone to the top o' the steps, under the
+archway, is full of 'em. An' last week the Board went up there early
+mornin' to do a little tinkerin', an' there set three beer bottles, all
+empty. So we've figgered on puttin' some iron gates up to the
+schoolhouse entry an' appointin' you women a Vigilance Committee to help
+us out.'
+
+"We felt real indignant about the schoolhouse. It stands up a little
+slope, and you can see it from 'most anywheres daytimes, and we all felt
+kind of an interest--though of course the School Board seemed to own it
+special.
+
+"Mis' Toplady looked warm and worried. 'But what is it you want we
+should do, Silas?' she ask', some irritable. 'I've got my hands so full
+o' my own family it don't seem as if I could vigilance for nobody.'
+
+"'S-h-h, Mis' Toplady. _I_ think it's a great trust,' says Mis' Silas
+Sykes.
+
+"'It is a great trust,' says Silas, warm, 'to get these young folks to
+stop gallivantin' an' set home where they belong.'
+
+"'How you going to get them to set home, Silas?' I ask', some puzzled.
+
+"'Well,' says Silas, 'that's where they ought to be, ain't it?'
+
+"'Why,' I says thoughtful, 'I donno's they had.'
+
+"'_What?_' says Silas, with horns on the word. 'What say, Calliope?'
+
+"'How much settin' home evenings did you do when you was young, Silas?'
+I says.
+
+"'I'd 'a' been a long sight better off if I'd 'a' done more of it,' says
+Silas.
+
+"'However that is, you _didn't_ set home,' I says back at him. 'Neither
+will young folks set there now, I don't believe.'
+
+"'Well,' says Silas, '_anyhow_, they've got to get off'n the streets.
+We've made up our minds to that. They can't set on steps nor in
+stairways down town, nor in entries, nor to the schoolhouse. We've got
+to look out for public decency.'
+
+"'_Public_ decency,' says I, again. 'They can do what they like, so's
+public decency ain't injured, I s'pose, Silas?'
+
+"'No such thing!' shouts Silas. 'Calliope, take shame! Ain't we doin'
+our best to start 'em right?'
+
+"'That's what I donno,' I answers him, troubled. 'Driving folks around
+don't never seem to me to be a real good start towards nowheres.'
+
+"Mis' Amanda Toplady hitched forward in her chair and spoke for the
+first time--ponderous and decided, but real sweet, too. 'What I think is
+this,' she says. 'They won't set home, as Calliope says. And when we've
+vigilanced 'em off the streets, where are we goin' to vigilance 'em
+_to_?'
+
+"'That ain't our lookout,' says Silas.
+
+"'Ain't it?' says Mis' Toplady. '_Ain't it?_' She set thinking for a
+minute and then her face smoothed. 'Anyhow,' she says, comfortable, 'us
+ladies'll vigilance awhile. It ain't clear in my mind yet what to do.
+But we'll do it, I guess.'
+
+"We made up that we three should come down town one night that week and
+look around and see what we see. We all knew--every woman in Friendship
+Village knew--how evenings, the streets was full of young folks, loud
+talking and loud laughing and carrying on. We'd all said to each other,
+helpless, that we _wisht_ something could be done, but that was as far
+as anybody'd got. So we made it up that we three should be down town in
+a night or two, so's to get our ideas started, and Silas was to have
+Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb, that's on the School Board, down to
+the store so we could all talk it over together afterwards. But still I
+guess we all felt sort of vague as to what we was to drive _at_.
+
+"'It seems like Silas wanted us to unwind a ball o' string from the
+middle out,' says Mis' Toplady, uneasy, when we'd left the store.
+
+"A few days after that Minerva come. I went down to the depot to meet
+her, and I would of reco'nized her anywheres, she looked so much like
+her handwriting. She was dressed sort of tawdry swell. She had on a good
+deal. But out from under her big hat with its cheap plume that was goin'
+to shed itself all over the house, I see her face was little and young
+and some pretty and excited. Excited about life and new things and
+moving around. I liked her right off. 'Land!' thinks I, 'you'll try me
+to death. But, you poor, nice little thing, you can if you want to.'
+
+"I took her home to supper. She talked along natural enough, and seemed
+to like everything she et, and then she wiped the dishes for me, and
+looked at herself in the clock looking-glass all the while she was doing
+it. Then, when I'd put out the milk bottles, we locked up the back part
+of the house and went and set in the parlour.
+
+"I'd always thought pretty well of my parlour. It hasn't anything but a
+plush four-piece set and an ingrain and Nottinghams, but it's the
+_parlour_, and I'd liked it. But when we'd been setting there a little
+while, and I'd asked her about everybody, and showed her their pictures
+in the album, all of a sudden it seemed as if they wasn't anything to
+_do_ in the parlour. Setting there and talking was nice, but I missed
+something. And I thought of this first when Minerva got up and walked
+kind of aimless to the window.
+
+"'How big is Friendship Village?' she ask'.
+
+"I told her, real proud.
+
+"'They can't be a great deal goin' on here, is they?' she says.
+
+"'Land, yes!' I says. 'We're so busy we're nearly dead. Ladies' Aid,
+Ladies' Missionary, Cemetery Improvement Sodality, the rummage sale
+coming on, the bazaar, and I donno what all.'
+
+"'Oh,' she says, vague. 'Well--is they many young people?'
+
+"And when I'd told her, 'Quite a few,' she didn't say anything more--but
+just stood looking down the street. And pretty soon I says, 'Land! the
+parlour's kind o' stuffy to-night. Let's go out in the yard.' And when
+we'd walked around out there a minute, smelling in my pinks, I thought,
+'Land! it's kind o' dreary doin' this,' an' I says to her all of a
+sudden, 'Let's go in the house and make some candy.'
+
+"'Oh, _let's_,' she says, like a little girl.
+
+"We went back in and lit the kitchen fire, and made butter-scotch--she
+done it, being real handy at it. She livened up and flew around and
+joked some, and the kitchen looked nice and messy and _used_, and we had
+a real good time. And right in the midst of it there come a rap at the
+side door and there stood the dapper, tired-looking little photograph
+man, J. Horace Myers, seeming as discouraged as he could.
+
+"We spread out the proofs of the pictures of my house and spent some
+time deciding. And while we was deciding, he showed us some more
+pictures that he'd made of the town, and talked a little about them. He
+was a real pleasant, soft-spoken man, and he knew how to laugh and when
+to do it. He see the funny in things--he see that the post-office looked
+like a rabbit with its ears up; he see that the engine-house looked like
+it was lifting its eyebrows; and he see the pretty in things, too--he
+showed us a view or two he'd took around Friendship Village just for the
+fun of it. One was Daphne Street, by the turn, and he says: 'It looks
+like a deep tunnel, don't it? An' like you wanted to go down it?' He was
+a wonderful nice, neutral little man, and I enjoyed looking at his
+pictures.
+
+"But Minerva--I couldn't help watching her. She wasn't so interested in
+the pictures, and she wasn't so quick at seeing the funny in things, nor
+the pretty, either; but even the candy making hadn't livened her up the
+way that little talking done. She acted real easy and told some little
+jokes; and when the candy was cool, she passed him some; and I thought
+it was all right to do. And he sort of spruced up and took notice and
+quit being so down-in-the-mouth. And I thought, 'Land! ain't it funny
+how just being together makes human beings, be they agent or be they
+cousin, more themselves than they was before!'
+
+"Her liking company made me all the more sorry to leave Minerva alone
+that next evening, that was the night Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I
+was due to a tableau of our own in the post-office store. It was the
+night when the Vigilance Committee was to have its first real meeting
+with the School Board. But I lit the lamp for Minerva in the parlour,
+and give her the day's paper, and she had her sewing, and when Mis'
+Toplady and Mis' Sykes come for me, I went off and left her setting by
+the table. My parlour had been swept that day, and it was real tidy and
+quiet and lamp-lit; and yet when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and I
+stepped out into the night, all smelling of pinks and a new moon
+happening, and us going on that mission we wasn't none of us sure what
+it was, the dark and the excitement sort of picked me up and I felt like
+I never felt in my parlour in my life--all kind of young and free and
+springy.
+
+"'Let's us walk right down through town first,' says Mis' Toplady.
+'That's where the young folks gets to, seems though.'
+
+"'Well-a, I don't see the necessity of that,' says Mis' Sykes. 'We've
+all three done that again and again. We know how it is down there
+evenings.'
+
+"'But,' says Mis' Toplady, in her nice, stubborn way, 'let's us, anyway.
+I know, when I walk through town nights, I'm 'most always hurrying to
+get my yeast before the store shuts, an' I never half look around.
+To-night let's _look_.'
+
+"Well, we looked. Along by the library windows in some low stone ledges.
+In front of a store or two they was some more. Around the corner was a
+place where they was some new tombstones piled up, waiting for their
+folks. And half a block down was the canal bridge. And ledges and bridge
+and tombstones and streets was alive with girls and boys--little young
+things, the girls with their heads tied in bright veils and pretty
+ribbons on them, and their laughs just shrilling and thrilling with the
+sheer fun of _hanging around_ on a spring night.
+
+"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, '_what_ is their mothers thinkin' of?'
+
+"But something else was coming home to me.
+
+"'I dunno,' I says, kind of scairt at the way I felt, 'if I had the
+invite, this spring night, all pinks and new moons, I donno but I'd go
+and hang over a tombstone with 'em!'
+
+"'Calliope!' says Mis' Sykes, sharp. But Mis' Toplady, she kind of
+chuckled. And the crowd jostled us--more young folks, talking and
+laughing and calling each other by nicknames, and we didn't say no more
+till we got up in the next block.
+
+"There's a vacant store there up towards the wagon shop, and a house or
+two, and that's where the open stairways was that Silas meant about.
+Everything had been shut up at six o'clock, and there, sure as the
+world, 'most every set of steps and every stairway had its couple,
+sitting and laughing and talking, like the place was differ'nt sofas in
+a big drawing-room, or rocks on a seashore, or like that.
+
+"'Mercy!' says Mis' Sykes. 'Such goin'-ons! Such bringin'-ups!'
+
+"Just then I recollect I heard a girl laugh out, pretty and pleased, and
+I thought I recognized Mis' Sykes's Em'ly's voice, and I thought I knew
+Abe Luck's answering--but I never said a word to Mis' Sykes, because I
+betted she wouldn't get a step farther than discharging Em'ly, and I was
+after more steps than that. And besides, same minute, I got the scent of
+the Bouncing Bet growing by the wagon shop; and right out of thin air,
+and acrost more years than I like to talk about, come the quick little
+feeling that made me know the fun, the sheer _fun_, that Em'ly thought
+she was having and that she had the right to.
+
+"'Oh, well, whoever it is, maybe they're engaged,' says Mis' Toplady,
+soothin'.
+
+"'Oh, but the bad taste!' says Mis' Sykes, shuddering. Mis' Sykes is a
+good cook and a good enough mother, and a fair-to-middling housekeeper,
+but she looks hard on the fringes and the borders of this life, and to
+her 'good taste' is both of them.
+
+"They wasn't nobody on the wagon shop steps, for a wonder, and we set
+down there for a minute to talk it over. And while Mis' Toplady and Mis'
+Sykes was having it out between them, I set there a-thinking. And all of
+a sudden the night sort of stretched out and up, and I almost felt us
+little humans crawling around on the bottom of it. And one little bunch
+of us was Friendship Village, and in Friendship Village some of us was
+young. I kind of saw the whole throng of them--the _young_ humans that
+would some day be the village. There they was, bottled up in school all
+day, or else boxed in a store or a factory or somebody's kitchen, and
+when night come, and summer come, and the moon come--land, land! they
+_wanted_ something, all of them, and they didn't know what they wanted.
+
+"And what had they got? There was the streets stretching out in every
+direction, each house with its parlour--four-piece plush set, mebbe, and
+ingrain and Nottinghams, and mebbe not even that, and mebbe the rest of
+the family flooding the room, anyway. And what was the parlour, even
+with somebody to set and talk to them--what was the parlour, compared to
+the _magic_ they was craving and couldn't name? The feeling young and
+free and springy, and the wanting somehow to express it? Something to
+do, somewheres to go, something to see, somebody to be with and laugh
+with--no wonder they swept out into the dark in numbers, no wonder they
+took the night as they could find it. They didn't have no hotel piazza
+of their own, no boat-rides, no seashore, no fine parties, no
+automobiles--no nothing but the big, exciting dark that belongs to us
+all together. No wonder they took it for their own.
+
+"Why, Friendship Village was no more than a great big ball-room with
+these young folks leaving the main floor and setting in the alcoves, to
+unseen music. If the alcoves had been all palms and expense and
+dressed-up chaperons on the edges, everything would of seemed right. As
+it was, it was all a danger that made my heart ache for them, and for us
+all. And yet it come from their same longing for fun, for joy--and
+where was they to get it?
+
+"'Oh, ladies!' I says, out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, 'if
+only we had some place to invite 'em to!'
+
+"'They wouldn't come if we had,' says Mis' Sykes, final.
+
+"'Not come!' I says. 'With candy making and pictures and music and mebbe
+dancin'? Not come!'
+
+"'Dancin'!' says Mis' Toplady, low. 'Oh, Calliope, I donno as I'd go
+that far.'
+
+"'We've went farther than that long ago,' I says, reckless. 'We've went
+so far that the dangers of dancin' would be safe beside the dangers of
+what is.'
+
+"'But we ain't responsible for that,' says Mis' Sykes.
+
+"'Ain't we--_ain't we?_' I says, like Mis' Toplady had. 'Mis' Sykes, how
+much does Silas rent the post-office hall for, a night?'
+
+"'Ten dollars, if he makes something; and five dollars at cost,' she
+says.
+
+"'That's it,' I says, groaning. 'We never could afford that, even to ask
+them in once a week. Oh, we'd ought to have some place open every night
+for them, and us ladies take turns doing the refreshments; but they
+ain't no place in town that belongs to young folks--'
+
+"And all of a sudden I stopped, like an idee had took me from all four
+sides of my head at once.
+
+"'Why, ladies,' I says, 'look at the schoolhouse, doing nothing every
+night out of the year and _built_ for the young folks!'
+
+"'Oh, well,' says Mis' Sykes, superior, 'you know the Board'd never
+allow 'em to use the schoolhouse _that_ way. The Board wouldn't think of
+it!'
+
+"'_Whose_ Board?' says I, stern. 'Ain't they our Board? Yours and mine
+and Friendship Village's? Come on--come on and put it to 'em,' I says,
+kind o' wild.
+
+"I was climbing down the steps while I spoke. And we all went down, me
+talking on, and Mis' Toplady catching fire on the minute, an' Mis' Sykes
+holding out like she does unless so be she's thought of an idea herself.
+But oh, Mis' Toplady, she's differ'nt.
+
+"'Goodness alive!' she said, 'why ain't some of us thought o' that
+before? Ain't it the funniest thing, the way folks can have a way out
+right under their noses, an' not sense it?'
+
+"I had never had a new-born notion come into my head so ready-made. I
+could hardly talk it fast enough, and Mis' Toplady same way, and we
+hurried back to the post-office store, Mis' Sykes not convinced but
+keeping still because us two talked it so hard.
+
+"Silas and Timothy and Eppleby Holcomb was setting in the back part of
+the post-office store waiting for us, and Mis' Toplady and I hurried
+right up to them.
+
+"'You tell, Calliope,' says Mis' Toplady. 'It's your idee.'
+
+"But first we both told, even Mis' Sykes joining in, shocked, about the
+doorway carryin' ons and all the rest. 'Land, land!' Mis' Toplady says,
+'I never had a little girl. I lost my little girl baby when she was
+eleven months. But I ain't never felt so like _shieldin'_ her from
+somethin' as I feel to-night.'
+
+"'It's awful, awful!' says Timothy Toplady, decided. 'We've just got to
+get some law goin', that's all.'
+
+"Silas agreed, scowling judicial. 'We been talkin' curfew,' he says. 'I
+donno but we'll hev to get the curfew on 'em.'
+
+"'Curfew!' says I. 'So you're thinking of curfewin' 'em off the streets.
+Will you tell me, Silas Sykes, where you're going to curfew 'em _to_?'
+
+"'Yes,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that's what I meant about vigilancin' 'em
+off somewheres. _Where to?_ What say, Silas?'
+
+"'That ain't our concern, woman!' shouts Silas, exasperated by us
+harping on the one string. 'Them young folks has all got one or more
+parents. Leave 'em use 'em.'
+
+"'Yes, indeed,' says Mis' Sykes, nodding once, with her eyes shut brief.
+'An' young people had ought to be encouraged to do evening studyin'.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady jerked her head sideways. 'Evenin' fiddlestick!' she
+snaps, direct. 'If you've got a young bone left in your body, Mis'
+Sykes,' says she, 'you know you're talkin' nonsense.'
+
+"'Ain't you no idees about how well-bred young ladies should conduct
+themselves?' says Mis' Sykes, in her most society way.
+
+"'I donno so much about well-bred young ladies,' says Mis' Toplady,
+frank. 'I was thinkin' about just girls. Human girls. An' boys the
+same.'
+
+"'Me, too,' I says, fervent.
+
+"'What you goin' to _do_?' says Silas, spreading out his hands stiff and
+bowing his knees. 'What's your idee? You've got to have a workin' idee
+for this thing, same as the curfew is.'
+
+"'Oh, Silas,' I says then, 'that's what we've got--that's what we've
+got. Them poor young things wants a good time--same as you and all of
+us did, and same as we do yet. Why not give 'em a place to meet and be
+together, normal and nice, and some of us there to make it pleasant for
+'em?'
+
+"'Heh!' says Silas. 'You talk like a dook. Where you goin' to _get_ a
+place for 'em? Hire the opery-house, air ye?'
+
+"'No, sir,' I says to him. 'Give 'em the place that's theirs. Give 'em
+the schoolhouse, open evenings, an' all lit up an' music an' things
+doin'.'
+
+"'My Lord heavens!' says Silas, that's an elder in the church and ain't
+no more control of his tongue than a hen. 'Air you crazy, Calliope
+Marsh? Plump, stark, starin' ravin'--why, woman alive, who's goin' to
+donate the light an' the coal? _You?_'
+
+"'I thought mebbe the building and the School Board, too, was _for_ the
+good o' the young folks,' I says to him, sharp.
+
+"'So it is,' says Silas, 'it's for their _good_. It ain't for their
+foolishness. Can't you see daylight, Calliope?'
+
+"'Is arithmetic good an' morals _not_, Silas Sykes?' I says.
+
+"Then Timothy Toplady let loose: 'A school-buildin', Calliope',
+s'he,--'why, it's a dignified place. They must respect it, same as they
+would a church. Could you learn youngsters the Constitution of the
+United States in a room where they'd just been cookin' up cough drops
+an' hearin' dance tunes?'
+
+"'Well,' says I, calm, 'if you can't, I'd leave the Constitution of the
+United States _go_. If it's that delicate,' I says back at him, 'gimme
+the cough drops.'
+
+"'You're talkin' treason,' says Silas, hoarse.
+
+"Timothy groans. '_Dancin!_' he says. 'Amanda,' he says, 'I hope you
+ain't sunk so low as Calliope?'
+
+"Mis' Toplady wavered a little. She's kind of down on dancing herself.
+'Well,' she says, 'anyhow, I'd fling some place open and invite 'em in
+for _somethin'_.'
+
+"'_I_ ain't for this, Silas,' says Mis' Sykes, righteous. '_I_ believe
+the law is the law, and we'd best use it. Nothin' we can do is as good
+as enforcin' the dignity of the law.'
+
+"'Oh, _rot_!' says Eppleby Holcomb, abrupt. Eppleby hadn't been saying a
+word. But he looked up from the wood-box where he was setting, and he
+wrinkled up his eyes at the corners the way he does--it wasn't a real
+elegant word he picked, but I loved Eppleby for that 'rot.' 'Asking your
+pardon, Mis' Sykes,' he says, 'I ain't got so much confidence in
+enforcin' the law as I've got in edgin' round an' edgin' round
+accordin' to your cloth--an' your pattern. An' your pattern.'
+
+"'Lord heavens!' says Silas, looking glassy, 'if this was Roosia, you
+an' Calliope'd both be hoofin' it hot-foot for Siberia.'
+
+"Well, it was like arguing with two trees. They wasn't no use talking to
+either Silas or Timothy. I forget who said what last, but the meeting
+broke up, after a little, some strained, and we hadn't decided on
+anything. Us ladies had vigilanced one night to about as much purpose as
+mosquitoes humming. And I said good night to them and went on up street,
+wondering why God lets a beautiful, burning plan come waving its wings
+in your head and your heart if he don't intend you to make a way for
+yourself to use it.
+
+"Then, by the big evergreens a block or so from my house, I heard
+somebody laugh--a little, low, nice, soft, sort of foolish laugh, a
+woman's laugh, and a man's voice joined in with it, pleasant and sort of
+singing. I was right onto them before they see me.
+
+"'I thought it was a lonesome town,' says somebody, 'but I guess it
+ain't.'
+
+"And there, beside of me, sitting on the rail fence under the
+evergreens, was Minerva Beach, my own cousin, and the little, tired
+photograph-taking man. I had just bare time to catch my breath and to
+sense where the minute really belonged--that's always a good thing to
+do, ain't it?--and then I says, cool as you please:
+
+"'Hello, Minerva! My! ain't the night grand? I don't wonder you couldn't
+stay in the house. How do, Mr. Myers? I was just remembering my
+lemon-pie that won't be good if it sets till to-morrow. Come on in and
+let's have it, and make a little lemonade.'
+
+"Ordinarily, I think it's next door to immoral to eat lemon-pie in the
+evening; but I had to think quick, and it was the only thing like a
+party that I had in the butt'ry. Anyhow, I was planning bigger morals
+than ordinary, too.
+
+"Well, sir, I'd been sure before, but that made me certain sure. There
+had been my parlour and my porch, and them two young people was welcome
+to them both; but they wanted to go somewheres, natural as a bird
+wanting to fly or a lamb to caper. And there I'd been living in
+Friendship Village for sixty years or so, and I'd reco'nized the laws of
+housekeeping and debt paying and grave digging and digestion, and I'd
+never once thought of this, that's as big as them all.
+
+"Ain't it nice the way God has balanced towns! He never puts in a Silas
+Sykes that he don't drop in an Eppleby Holcomb somewheres to undo what
+the Silases does. It wasn't much after six o'clock the next morning, and
+I was out after kindling, when they come a shadow in the shed door, and
+there was Eppleby. He had a big key in his hand.
+
+"'I'm a-goin' to the City, Calliope,' says he. 'Silas an' Timothy an' I
+are a-goin' up to the City on the Dick Dasher' (that's our daily
+accommodation train, named for the engineer). 'Silas and Timothy is set
+on buying the iron gates for the schoolhouse entry, an' I'm goin' along.
+He put the key in my hand, meditative. 'We won't be back till the ten
+o'clock Through,' he says, 'an' I didn't know but you might want to get
+in the schoolhouse for somethin' to-night--you an' Mis' Toplady.'
+
+"I must of stood staring at him, but he never changed expression.
+
+"'The key had ought to be left with some one, you know,' he says. 'I'm
+leavin' it with you. You go ahead. I'll go snooks on the blame. Looks
+like it was goin' to be another nice day, don't it?' he says, casual,
+and went off down the path.
+
+"For a minute I just stood there, staring down at the key in my hand.
+And then, 'Eppleby,' I sings after him, 'oh, Eppleby,' I says, 'I feel
+just like I was going to _crow_!'
+
+"I don't s'pose I hesitated above a minute. That is, my head may have
+hesitated some, like your head will, but my heart went right on ahead. I
+left my breakfast dishes standing--a thing I do for the very few--and I
+went straight for Mis' Toplady. And she whips off her big apron and left
+_her_ dishes standing, an' off we went to the half a dozen that we knew
+we could depend on--Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that's going to
+be married again and has got real human towards other folks, like she
+wasn't in her mourning grief--we told 'em the whole thing. And we one
+and all got together and we see that here was something that could be
+done, right there and then, so be we was willing to make the effort, big
+enough and unafraid.
+
+"When I remember back, that day is all of a whirl to me. We got the
+notice in the daily paper bold as a lion, that there would be a party to
+the schoolhouse that night, free to everybody. We posted the notice
+everywheres, and sent it out around by word of mouth. And when we'd gone
+too far to go back, we walked in on Mis' Sykes--all but Abagail, that
+had pitched in to making the cakes--and we told her what we'd done, so
+she shouldn't have any of the blame.
+
+"She took it calm, not because calm is Christian, I bet, but because
+calm is grand lady.
+
+"'It's what I always said,' says she, 'would be the way, if the women
+run things.'
+
+"'Women don't run things,' says Mis' Toplady, placid, 'an' I hope to the
+land they never will. But I believe the time'll come when men an'
+women'll run 'em together, like the Lord meant, an' when women can see
+that they're mothers to all men an' not just to their little two-by-four
+families.'
+
+"'My duty to men is in my own home,' says Mis' Sykes, regal.
+
+"'So is mine,' says Mis' Toplady, 'for a beginning. But it don't stop in
+my wood box nor my clothes-basket nor yet in my mixin'-bowl.'
+
+"We went off and left her--it's almost impossible to federate Mis' Sykes
+into anything. And we went up to the building and made our preparations.
+And then we laid low for the evening, to see what it would bring.
+
+"I was putting on my hat that night in front of the hall-tree
+looking-glass when J. Horace Myers come up on the front porch to call
+for Minerva. He was all dressed up, and she come downstairs in a little
+white dimity she had, trimmed with lace that didn't cost much of
+anything, and looking like a picture. They sat down on the porch for a
+little, and I heard them talking while I was hunting one o' my gloves.
+
+"'Ain't it the dandiest night!' says J. Horace Myers.
+
+"'Ain't it!' says Minerva. 'I should say. My! I'm glad I come to this
+town!'
+
+"'I'm awful glad you did, too,' says J. Horace. 'I thought first it was
+awful lonesome here, but I guess--'
+
+"'They're goin' to have music to-night,' says Minerva, irrelevant.
+
+"'Cricky!' says the little photograph man.
+
+"Minerva had her arm around a porch post and she sort of swung back and
+forth careless, and--'My!' she said, 'I just do love to go. Have you
+ever travelled anywheres?'
+
+"'Texas an' through there,' he says. 'I'm goin' again some day, when--'
+
+"'I'm goin' West now,' says Minerva. 'I just can't stand it long in one
+place, unless,' she added, 'it's _awful_ nice.'
+
+"I'd found my glove, but I recollect I stood still, staring out the
+door. I see it like I never see it before--_They was living_. Them two
+young things out there on my porch, and all the young folks of
+Friendship Village, they was just living--trying to find a future and a
+life of their own. They didn't know it. They thought what they wanted
+was a good time, like the pioneers thought they wanted adventure. But
+here they were, young pioneers of new villages, flocking together
+wherever they could, seeking each other out, just living. And us that
+knew, us that had had life, too, or else had missed it, we was just
+letting them live, haphazard. And us that had ought to of been mothers
+to the town young, no less than to our own young, had been leaving them
+live alone, on the streets and stairways and school entries of
+Friendship Village.
+
+"I know I fair run along the street to the schoolhouse. It seemed as if
+I couldn't get there quick enough to begin the new way.
+
+"The schoolhouse was lit up from cellar to garret and it looked sort of
+different and surprised at itself, and like it was sticking its head up.
+Maybe it sounds funny, but it sort of seemed to me the old brick
+building looked _conscious_, and like it had just opened its eyes and
+turned its face to something. Inside, the music was tuning up, the desks
+that was only part screwed down had been moved back; in one of the
+recitation-rooms we'd got the gas plates for the candy making, and
+Abagail was in there stirring up lemonade in a big crock, and the other
+ladies, with white aprons on, was bustling round seeing to cutting the
+cakes.
+
+"It wasn't a good seven-thirty before they begun coming in, the girls
+nipping in pretty dresses, the boys awkward and grinning, school-girls,
+shop-girls, Mis' Sykes's Em'ly an' Abe Luck and everybody--they come
+from all directions that night, I guess, just to see what it was like.
+
+"And when they got set down, I realized for the first time that the law
+and some of the prophets of time to come hung on what kind of a time
+they had that first night.
+
+"While I was thinking that, the music struck into a tune, hurry-up time,
+and before anybody could think it, there they were on their feet, one
+couple after another. And when the lilty sound of the dance and the
+sliding of feet got to going, like magic and as if they had dropped out
+of the walls, in come them that had been waiting around outside to see
+what we was really going to do. They come in, and they joined in and in
+five minutes the floor was full of them. And after being boxed in the
+house all day, or bottled in shops or polishing windows or mending
+eaves-troughs or taking photographs of humbly houses or doing I donno
+what-all that they didn't like, here they were, come after their good
+time and having it--_and having it_.
+
+"Mis' Toplady was peeking through a crack in the recitation-room door.
+
+"'_Dancin'!_' she says, with a little groan. 'I donno what my
+conscience'll say to me about this when it gets me alone.'
+
+"'Well,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, seeing to the frosting
+on the ends of her fingers, 'I feel like they'd been pipin' to me for
+years an' I'd never let 'em dance. An' now they're dancin' up here safe
+an' light an' with us. An' I'm glad of it, to my marrow.'
+
+"'I know,' says Mis' Toplady, wiping her eyes. 'I donno but _my_ marrow
+might get use' to it.'
+
+"Long about ten o'clock, when we'd passed the refreshments and everybody
+had carried their own plates back and was taking the candy out of the
+tins, I nudged Mis' Toplady and we slipped out into the schoolhouse
+entry and set down on the steps. We'd just heard the Through whistle,
+and we knew the School Board Iron Gate Committee was on it, and that
+they must of seen the schoolhouse lit from 'way acrost the marsh.
+Besides, I was counting on Eppleby to march them straight up there.
+
+"And so he done. Almost before I knew it they stepped out onto us,
+setting there in the starlight. I stood up and faced them, not from
+being brave, but from intending to jump _first_.
+
+"'Silas and Timothy,' I says, 'what's done is done, but the consequences
+ain't. The Women's Evening Vigilance Committee that you appointed
+yourself has tried this thing, and now it's for us all to judge if it
+works.'
+
+"'Heh!' says Silas, showing his teeth. 'Hed a little party, did you?
+Thought you'd get up a little party an' charge it to the Board, did you?
+Be su'prised, won't you, when you women get a bill for rent an' light
+for this night's performance?'
+
+"'Real surprised,' I says, dry.
+
+"'Amanda,' pipes up Timothy, 'air you a fool party to this fool doin's?'
+
+"'Oh, shucks!' says Mis' Toplady, tired. 'I been doin' too real things
+to row, Timothy.'
+
+"'Nev' mind,' says Silas, pacific. 'When the new iron gates gets here
+for this here entry, we won't have no more such doin's as this. They're
+ordered,' says Silas, like a bombshell, 'to keep out the hoodlums.'
+
+"Then Eppleby, that had been peeking through the schoolhouse window,
+whirled around.
+
+"'Yes,' says he. 'Let's put up the gates to keep out the hoodlums. But
+what you going to do for the girls and boys of Friendship Village that
+ain't hoodlums? What you goin' to do for them? I want to tell you that I
+knew all about what was goin' on here to-night, and I give over the
+schoolhouse key myself. And now you look down there.'
+
+"It was Friendship Village he pointed to, laying all around the
+schoolhouse slope, little lights shining for homes. And Eppleby went on
+before Silas and Timothy could get the breath to reply:--
+
+"'The town's nothin' but _roots_, is it?' Eppleby says. 'Roots, sendin'
+up green shoots to the top o' this hill to be trained up here into some
+kind of shape to meet life. What you doin' to 'em? Buildin' 'em a great,
+expensive schoolhouse that they use a few hours a day, part o' the year,
+an' the rest of the time it might as well be a hole in the ground for
+all the good it does anybody. An' here's the young folks, that you built
+it _for_ chasin' the streets to let off the mere flesh-an'-blood energy
+the Lord has give to 'em. Put up your iron gates if you want to, but
+don't put 'em up till the evenin's over an' till there's been some sort
+o' doin's here like this to give 'em what's their right. Put up your
+iron gates, but shame on the schoolhouse that puts 'em up an' stops
+there! Open the buildin' in the name of public decency, but in the name
+of public decency, don't shut it up!'
+
+"Timothy was starting to wave his arms when Mis' Toplady stood up,
+quiet, on the bottom step.
+
+"'Timothy,' she says, 'thirty-five years ago this winter you an' I was
+keepin' company. Do you remember how we done it? Do you remember singin'
+school? Do you remember spellin' school? Did our straw ridin' an' sleigh
+ridin' to the Caledonia district schoolhouse for our fun ever hurt the
+schoolhouse, or do you s'pose we ever learnt any the less in it? Well, I
+remember; an' we both remember; an' answer me this: Do you s'pose them
+young things in there is any differ'nt than we was? An' what's the sin
+an' the crime of what they're doin' now? Look at 'em!'
+
+"She pushed open the door. But just while we was looking, the music
+struck up the 'Home Sweet Home' waltz, and they all melted into dancing,
+the ladies in white aprons standing by the recitation-room doors looking
+on.
+
+"'_Dancin'!_' says Timothy, shuddering--but looking, too.
+
+"'Yes,' says Amanda, brave as you please, 'ain't it pretty? Lots
+prettier than chasin' up an' down Daphne Street. What say, Timothy?'
+
+"Eppleby give Silas a little nudge. 'Le's give it a trial,' he says.
+'This is the Vigilance Committee's idee. Le's give it a trial.'
+
+"Silas stood bitin' the tail of his beard. 'Go on to destruction if you
+want to!' he says. 'I wash my hands of you!'
+
+"'So do I,' says Timothy, echoish, 'wash mine.'
+
+"Eppleby took them both by the shoulders. 'Well, then, go on inside a
+minute,' he says to 'em. 'Don't let's leave 'em all think we got stole a
+march on by the women!'
+
+"And though it was that argument that made them both let Eppleby push
+them inside, still, when the door shut behind them, I knew there wasn't
+anything more to worry over. But me--I waited out there in the entry
+till the waltz was through. And it was kind of like the village down
+there to the foot of the hill was listening, quiet, to great councils.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+"Up to Proudfit House the conservatory wasn't set aside from everyday
+living for just a place to be walked through and looked at and left
+behind for something better. It was a glass regular room, full of green,
+but not so full that it left you out of account. Willow chairs and a
+family of books and open windows into the other rooms made the
+conservatory all of a piece with the house, and at one end the tile was
+let go up in a big You-and-me looking fireplace, like a sort of shrine
+for fire, I use' to think, in the middle of a temple to flowers, and
+like both belonged to the household.
+
+"On the day of the evening company at Proudfit House Robin was sitting
+with a book in this room. I'd gone up that day to do what I could to
+help out, and to see to Christopher some. Him I'd put to taking his nap
+quite awhile before, and I was fussing with the plants like I love to
+do--it seems as if while I pick off dead leaves and give the roots a
+drink I was kind of doing their thinking for them. When I heard Alex
+Proudfit coming acrost the library, I started to go, but Robin says to
+me, 'Don't go, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'stay here and do what you're
+doing--if you don't mind.'
+
+"'Land,' thinks I, turning back to the ferns, 'never tell me that young
+ladies are getting more up-to-date in love than they use' to be. My day,
+she would of liked that they should be alone, so be she could manage it
+without seeming to.'
+
+"I donno but I'm foolish, but it always seems to me that a minute like
+that had ought to catch fire and leap up, like a time by itself. In all
+the relationships of men and women, it seems like no little commonplace
+time is so vital as the minute when the man comes into a room where a
+woman is a-waiting for him. There is about it something of time to be
+when he'll come, not to gloat over his day's kill, or to forget his
+day's care, but to talk with her about their day of hardy work. Habitual
+arriving in a room again and again for ever can never quite take off,
+seems though, the edge of that coming back to where she is.... But
+somehow, that day, Alex Proudfit must have stepped through the door
+before the minute had quite caught fire, and Robin merely smiled up at
+him, calm and idle, from her low chair as he come to a chair beside her.
+
+"'Tea, Robin Redbreast,' says he, 'is going to be here in a minute, with
+magnificent macaroons. But I think that you and I will have it by
+ourselves. Everybody is either asleep or pretending. I'm glad,' he tells
+her, 'you're the sort that can do things in the evening without resting
+up for from nine to ten hours preceding.'
+
+"'I'm resting now,' Robin said; 'this is quite heavenly--this green
+room.'
+
+"He looked at her, eager. 'Do you like it?' he asked. 'I mean the
+room--the house?'
+
+"'Enormously,' she told him. 'How could I help it?'
+
+"'I wanted you to like it,' he says. 'We shall not be here much, you
+know, but we shall be here sometimes, and I'm glad if you feel the
+feeling of home, even with all these people about. It's all going very
+decently for to-night, thanks to Mrs. Emmons. Not a soul that we really
+wanted has failed us.'
+
+"'Except Mr. Insley,' Robin says.
+
+"'Except Insley,' Alex concedes, 'and I own I can't make him out. Not
+because he didn't come here. But because he seems so enthusiastic about
+throwing his life away. Very likely,' he goes on, placid, 'he didn't
+come simply because he wanted to come. Those people get some sort of
+mediæval renunciation mania, I believe. Robin,' he went on, 'where do
+you think you would like to live? Not to settle down, you know, but for
+the Eternal Place To Come Back To?'
+
+"'To come back to?' Robin repeated.
+
+"'The twentieth century home is merely that, you know,' Alex explained.
+'We're just beginning to solve the home problem. We've tried to make
+home mean one place, and then we were either always wanting to get away
+for a while, or else we stayed dreadfully put, which was worse. But I
+think now we begin to see the truth: Home is nowhere. Rather, it is
+everywhere. The thing to do is to live for two months, three months, in
+a place, and to get back to each place at not too long intervals. Home
+is where you like to be for the first two weeks. When that wears off,
+it's home no more. Then home is some other place where you think you'd
+like to be. We are becoming nomadic again--only this time we own the
+world instead of being at its feet for a bare living. You and I, Robin
+Redbreast, are going to be citizens of the whole world.'
+
+"Robin looked over at him, reflective. And it seemed to me as if the
+whole race of women that have always liked one place to get in and be in
+and stay in spoke from her to Alex.
+
+"'But I've always had a little garden,' she says.
+
+"'A little what?' Alex asks, blank.
+
+"'Why, a garden,' she explains, 'to plant from year to year so that I
+know where things are going to come up.'
+
+"She was laughing, but I knew she meant what she said, too.
+
+"'My word,' Alex says, 'why, every place we take shall have a garden and
+somebody to grub about in it. Won't those and the conservatories do
+you?'
+
+"'I like to get out and stick my hands in the spring-smelly ground,' she
+explains, 'and to remember where my bulbs are.'
+
+"'But I've no objection to bulbs,' Alex says. 'None in the world. We'll
+plant the bulbs and take a run round the world and come back to see them
+bloom. No?'
+
+"'And not watch them come up?' Robin says, so serious that they both
+laughed.
+
+"'We want more than a garden can give,' Alex says then, indulgent. 'We
+want what the whole world can give.'
+
+"She nodded. 'And what we can give back?' she says.
+
+"He leaned toward her, touched along her hair.
+
+"'My dear,' he said, 'we've got two of us to make the most of we can in
+this life: that's you and I. The world has got to teach us a number of
+things. Don't, in heaven's name, let's be trying to teach the wise old
+world.'
+
+"He leaned toward her and, elbow on his knee, he set looking at her. But
+she was looking a little by him, into the green of the room, and I guess
+past that, into the green of all outdoors. I got up and slipped out,
+without their noticing me, and I went through the house with one fact
+bulging out of the air and occupying my brain. And it was that sitting
+there beside him, with him owning her future like he owned his own,
+Robin's world was as different from Alex's as the world is from the
+Proudfits' conservatory.
+
+"I went up to Chris, in the pretty, pinky room next to Robin's and found
+him sitting up in bed and pulling the ties out of the down comforter, as
+hard as he could. I just stood still and looked at him, thinking how
+eating and drinking and creating and destroying seems to be the native
+instincts of everybody born. Destroying, as I look at it, was the weapon
+God give us so that we could eat and drink and create the world in
+peace, but we got some mixed up during getting born and we got to
+believing that destruction was a part of the process.
+
+"'Chris,' I says, 'what you pulling out?'
+
+"'I donno those names of those,' he says. 'I call 'em little pulls.'
+
+"'What are they for?' I ask' him.
+
+"'I donno what those are for,' he says, 'but they come out _slickery_.'
+
+"Ain't it funny? And ain't it for all the world the way Nature works,
+destroying what comes out _slickery_ and leaving that alone that resists
+her? I was so struck by it I didn't scold him none.
+
+"After a while I took him down for tea. On the way he picked up a sleepy
+puppy, and in the conservatory door we met the footman with the little
+tea wagon and the nice, drowsy quiet of the house went all to pieces
+with Chris in it:--
+
+"'Supper, supper--here comes supper on a wagon, runnin' on litty wheels
+goin' wound an a-w-o-u-n-d--' says he, some louder than saying and
+almost to shouting. He sat down on the floor and looked up expectant:
+'Five lumps,' he orders, not having belonged to the house party for
+nothing.
+
+"'Tell us about your day, Chris,' Robin asks. 'What did you do?'
+
+"'It isn't _by_, is it?' Chris says, anxious. 'To-day didn't stop yet,
+did it?'
+
+"'Not yet,' she reassures him. 'Now is still now.'
+
+"'I want to-day to keep being now,' Chris said, 'because when it stops,
+then the bed is right there. It don't be anywhere near to-night, is it?'
+he says.
+
+"'Not very near,' Robin told him. 'Well, then, what are you doing
+to-day?' she asks.
+
+"'I'm to the house's party,' he explained. 'The house is having its
+party. An' I'm to it.'
+
+"'Do you like this house, dear?' Robin asked.
+
+"'It's nice,' he affirmed. 'In the night it--it talks wiv its lights. I
+saw it. With my daddy. When I was off on a big road.' Chris looked at
+her intent, from way in his eyes. 'I was thinkin' if my daddy would
+come,' he says, patient.
+
+"Robin stoops over to him, quick, and he let her. He'd took a most
+tremendous fancy to her, the little fellow had, and didn't want her long
+out of his sight. 'Is that Robin?' he always said, when he heard anybody
+coming from any direction. She give him a macaroon, now, for each hand,
+and he run away with the puppy. And then she turned to Alex, her face
+bright with whatever she was thinking about.
+
+"'Alex,' she says, 'he's a dear little fellow--a dear little fellow. And
+all alone. I've wanted so much to ask you: Can't we have him for ours?'
+
+"Alex looks at her, all bewildered up in a minute. 'How ours?' he asks.
+'Do you mean have him educated? That, of course, if you really want it.'
+
+"'No, no,' she says. '_Ours._ To keep with us, bring up, make. Let's let
+him be really ours.'
+
+"He just leaned back in the big chair, smiling at her, meditative.
+
+"'My dear Robin,' he says, 'it's a terrible responsibility to meddle
+that way with somebody's life.'
+
+"She looked at him, not understanding.
+
+"'It's such an almighty assumption,' he went on, 'this jumping blithely
+into the office of destiny--keeping, bringing-up, making, as you
+say--meddling with, I call it--anybody's life.'
+
+"'Isn't it really meddling to let him be in a bad way when we can put
+him in a better one?' she asked, puzzled.
+
+"'I love you, Robin,' says he, light, 'but not for your logic. No, my
+dear girl. Assuredly we will not take this child for ours. What leads
+you to suppose that Nature really wants him to live, anyway?'
+
+"I looked at him over my tea-cup, and for my life I couldn't make out
+whether he was speaking mocking or speaking plain.
+
+"'If Chris is to be inebriate, criminal, vicious, even irresponsible,
+as his father must be,' Alex says, 'Nature wants nothing of the sort.
+She wants to be rid of him as quickly as possible. How do you know what
+you are saving?'
+
+"'How do you know,' Robin says, 'what you are letting go?'
+
+"'I can take the risk if Nature can,' he contends.
+
+"She sat up in her chair, her eyes bright as the daylight, and I thought
+her eagerness and earnestness was on her like a garment.
+
+"'You have nobody to refer the risk to,' Robin says, 'Nature has us. And
+for one, I take it. So far as Chris is concerned, Alex, if no one claims
+him, I want him never to be out of touch with me.'
+
+"But when a woman begins to wear that garment, the man that's in love
+with her--unless he is the special kind--he begins thinking how much
+sweeter and softer and _womaner_ she is when she's just plain gentle.
+And he always gets uneasy and wants her to be the gentle way he
+remembers her being--that is, unless he's special, unless he's special.
+Like Alex got uneasy now.
+
+"'My heavens, dear,' he says--and I judged Alex had got to be one of
+them men that lays a lace 'dear' over a haircloth tone of voice, and so
+solemnly believes they're keeping their temper--'My heavens, dear, don't
+misunderstand me. Experiment as much as you like. Material is cheap and
+abundant. If you don't feel the responsibility, have him educated
+wherever you want to. But don't expect me to play father to him. The
+personal contact is going it a little too strong.'
+
+"'That is exactly what he most needs,' says Robin.
+
+"'Come, dear,' says Alex, 'that's elemental--in an age when everybody
+can do things better than one can do them oneself.'
+
+"She didn't say nothing, and just set there, with her tea. Alex was
+watching her, and I knew just about as sure what he was thinking as
+though I had been his own thought, oozing out of his mind. He was
+watching her with satisfaction, patterned off with a kind of quiet
+amusement and jabbed into by a kind of worryin' wonder. How exactly, he
+was thinking, she was the type everlasting of Wife. She was girlish, and
+in little things she was all I'll-do-as-you-say, and she was even shy;
+he believed that he was marrying a girl whose experience of the world
+was commendably slight, whose ideas about it was kind of
+vague--commendably again; and whose ways was easy-handled, like skein
+silk. By her little firmnesses, he see that she had it in her to be
+firm, but what he meant was that she should adopt his ideas and turn
+firm about them. He had it all planned out that he was going to
+embroider her brain with his notions of what was what. But all of a
+sudden, now and then, there she was confronting him as she had just done
+then with a serious, settled look of Woman--the Woman everlasting,
+wanting a garden, wanting to work, wanting a child....
+
+"In the doorway back of Alex, Bayless come in, carrying a tray, but it
+didn't have no card.
+
+"'It's somebody to speak with you a minute, Mr. Proudfit,' says Bayless.
+'It's Mr. Insley.'
+
+"'Have him come here,' Alex says. 'I hope,' he says, when the man was
+gone, 'that the poor fellow has changed his mind about our little
+festivities.'
+
+"Robin sort of tipped up her forehead. 'Why _poor_?' she asks.
+
+"'Poor,' says Alex, absent, 'because he lives in a pocket of the world,
+instead of wearing the world like a garment--when it would fit him.'
+
+"I was just setting my tea-cup down when she answered, and I recollect I
+almost jumped:
+
+"'He knows something better to do with the world than to wear it at
+all,' was what she said.
+
+"I looked over at her. And maybe it was because she was sort of
+indignant, and maybe it was because she thought she had dared quite a
+good deal, but all of a sudden something sort of seemed to me to set
+fire to the minute, and it leaped up like a time by itself as we heard
+Insley's step crossing the library and coming towards us....
+
+"When he come out where we were, I see right off how pale he looked.
+Almost with his greeting, he turned to Alex with what he had come for,
+and he put it blunt.
+
+"'I was leaving the Cadozas' cottage on the Plank Road half an hour
+ago,' he said. 'A little way along I saw a man, who had been walking
+ahead of me, stagger and sprawl in the mud. He wasn't conscious when I
+got to him. He was little--I picked him up quite easily and got him back
+into the Cadozas' cottage. He still wasn't conscious when the doctor
+came. He gave him things. We got him in bed there. And then he spoke. He
+asked us to hunt up a little boy somewhere in Friendship Village, who
+belonged to him. And he said the boy's name was Chris.'
+
+"It seemed like it was to Alex Proudfit's interested lifting of eyebrows
+rather than to Robin's exclamation of pity that Insley answered.
+
+"'I'm sorry it was necessary to trouble you,' he says, 'but Chris ought
+to go at once. I'll take him down now.'
+
+"'That man,' Robin says, 'the father--is he ill? Is he hurt? How badly
+is he off?'
+
+"'He's very badly off,' says Insley, 'done for, I'm afraid. It was in a
+street brawl in the City--it's his side, and he's lost a good deal of
+blood. He walked all the way back here. A few hours, the doctor thought
+it would be, at most.'
+
+"Robin stood up and spoke like what she was saying was a
+take-for-granted thing.
+
+"'Oh,' she says, 'poor, poor little Chris. Alex, I must go down there
+with him.'
+
+"Alex looks over at her, incredulous, and spoke so: 'You?' says he.
+'Impossible.'
+
+"I was just getting ready to say that of course I'd go with him, if that
+was anything, when from somewheres that he'd gone with the puppy, Chris
+spied Insley, and come running to him.
+
+"'Oh, you are to the house's party, too!' Chris cried, and threw himself
+all over him.
+
+"Robin knelt down beside the child, and the way she was with him made me
+think of that first night when she see him at the church, and when her
+way with him made him turn to her and talk with her and love her ever
+since.
+
+"'Listen, dear,' she said. 'Mr. Insley came here to tell you something.
+Something about daddy--your daddy. Mr. Insley knows where he is, and
+he's going to take you to him. But he's very, very sick, dear
+heart--will you remember that when you see him? Remember Robin told you
+that?'
+
+"There come on his little face a look of being afraid that give it a
+sudden, terrible grown-up-ness.
+
+"'Sick like my mama was?' he asked in a whisper. 'And will he _go out_,
+like my mama?'
+
+"Robin put her arm about him, and he turned to her, clung to her.
+
+"'You come, too, Robin,' he said. 'You come, too!'
+
+"She got up, meeting Alex's eyes with her straight look.
+
+"'I must go, Alex,' she said. 'He wants me--needs me. Why, how could I
+do anything else?'
+
+"Alex smiles down at her, with his way that always seemed to me so much
+less that of living every minute than of watching it live itself about
+him.
+
+"'May I venture to remind you,' he says--like a little thin edge of
+something, paper, maybe, that's smooth as silk, but that'll cut neat and
+deep if you let it--'May I venture to remind you that your aunt is
+announcing our engagement to-night? I think that will have escaped your
+mind.'
+
+"'Yes,' Robin says, simple, 'it had. Everything had escaped my mind
+except this poor little thing here. Alex--it's early. He'll sleep after
+a little. But I must go down with him. What did you come in?' she asked
+Insley, quiet.
+
+"I told her I'd go down, and she nodded that I was to go, but Chris
+clung to her hand and it was her that he wanted, poor little soul, and
+only her. Insley had come up in the doctor's rig. She and I would join
+him with the child, she told him, at the side entrance and almost at
+once. There was voices in the house by then, and some of the young folks
+was coming downstairs and up from the tennis-court for tea. She went
+into the house with Chris. And I wondered if she thought of the thing I
+thought of and that made me glad and glad that there are such men in the
+world: Not once, not once, out of some felt-he-must courtesy, had Insley
+begged her not to go with him. He knew that she was needed down there
+with Chris and him and me--he knew, and he wouldn't say she wasn't.
+Land, land I love a man that don't talk with the outside of his head and
+let what he means lay cramped somewheres underneath, but that reaches
+down and gets up what he means, and holds it out, for you to take or to
+leave.
+
+"Mis' Emmons was overseeing the decorations in the dining room. The
+whole evening party she had got right over onto her shoulders the way
+she does everything, and down to counting the plates she was seeing to
+it all. We found her and told her, and her pity went to the poor fellow
+down there at the Cadozas' almost before it went to Chris.
+
+"'Go, of course,' she said. 'I suppose Alex minds, but leave him to me.
+I've got to be here--but it's not I Chris wants in any case. It's you.
+Get back as soon as you can, Robin.'
+
+"I must say Alex done that last minute right, the way he done
+everything, light and glossy. When Robin come down, I was up in the
+little seat behind the doctor's cart, and Alex stood beside and helped
+her. A servant, he said, would come on after us in the automobile with a
+hamper, and would wait at the Cadozas' gate until she was ready to come
+back. Somehow, it hadn't entered anybody's head, least of all, I guess,
+Alex's own, that he should come, too. He see us off with his manners on
+him like a thick, thick veil, and he even managed to give to himself a
+real dignity so that Robin said her good-by with a kind of wistfulness,
+as if she wanted to be reassured. And I liked her the better for that.
+For, after all, she _was_ going--there was no getting back of that. And
+when a woman is doing the right thing against somebody's will, I'm not
+the one to mind if she hangs little bells on herself instead of going
+off with no tinkle to leave herself be reminded of, pleasant.
+
+"We swung out onto the open road, with Chris sitting still between the
+two of them, and me on the little seat behind. The sunset was flowing
+over the village and glittering in unfamiliar fires on the windows. The
+time was as still as still, in that hour 'long towards night when the
+day seems to have found its harbour it has been looking for and to have
+slipped into it, with shut sails--so still that Robin spoke of it with
+surprise. I forget just what she said. She was one of them women that
+can say a thing so harmonious with a certain minute that you never wish
+she'd kept still. I believe if she spoke to me when I was hearing music
+or feeling lifted up all by myself, I wouldn't mind it. What she'd say
+would be sure to fit what was being. They ain't many folks in anybody's
+life like that. I believe she could talk to me any time, sole unless
+it's when I first wake up in the morning; then any talking always seems
+like somebody stumbling in, busy, among my sleeping brains.
+
+"For a minute Insley didn't say anything. I was almost sure he was
+thinking how unbelievable it was that he should be there, alone with
+her, where an hour ago not even one of his forbidden dreams could have
+found him.
+
+"'Beautifully still,' he answered, 'as if all the things had stopped
+being, except some great thing.'
+
+"'I wonder,' she says, absent, 'what great thing.' And all the time she
+seemed sort of relaxed, and resting in the sense--though never in the
+consciousness--that the need to talk and to be talked to, to suggest and
+to question, had found some sort of quiet, levelling process with which
+she was moving along, assentin'.
+
+"Insley stooped down, better to shield her dress from the mud there was.
+I see him look down at her uncovered hands laying on the robe, and then,
+with a kind of surprise, up at her face; and I knew how surprising her
+being near him seemed.
+
+"'That would be one thing for you,' he answered, 'and another for me.'
+
+"'No,' she says, 'I think it's the same thing for us both.'
+
+"He didn't let himself look at her, but his voice--well, I tell you,
+his voice looked.
+
+"'What do you mean?' he says--just said it a little and like he didn't
+dare trust it to say itself any more.
+
+"'Why, being able to help in this, surely,' she says.
+
+"I could no more of helped watching the two of them than if they had
+been angels and me nothing but me. I tried once or twice to look off
+across the fields that was smiling at each other, same as faces, each
+side of the road; but my eyes come back like they was folks and wanted
+to; and I set there looking at her brown hair, shining in the sun,
+without any hat on it, and at his still face that was yet so many kinds
+of alive. He had one of the faces that looked like it had been cut out
+just the way it was _a-purpose_. There wasn't any unintentional
+assembling of features there, part make-shift and part rank growth of
+his race. No, sir. His face had come to life by being meant to be just
+the way it was, and it couldn't have been better.... It lit up wonderful
+when he answered.
+
+"'Yes,' he said, 'a job is a kind of creation. It's next best to getting
+up a sunrise. Look here,' he remembered, late in the day, 'you'll have
+no dinner. You can't eat with them in that place. And you ought to have
+rest before to-night.'
+
+"Ain't it funny how your voice gets away from you sometimes and goes
+dilly-nipping around, pretty near saying things on its own account? I
+use' to think that mebbe my voice didn't belong to the me I know about,
+but was some of the real me, inside, speaking out with my mouth for a
+trumpet. I donno but I think so yet. For sometimes your voice is a
+person and it says things all alone by itself. So his voice done then.
+The tender concern of it was pretty near a second set of words. It was
+the first time he had struck for her the great and simple note, the note
+of the caring of the man for the physical comfort of the woman. And
+while she was pretending not to need it, he turned away and looked off
+toward the village, and I was certain sure he was terrified at what
+might have been in his voice.
+
+"'I like to think of it down there,' he said, pretty near at random,
+'waiting to be clothed in a new meaning.'
+
+"'The village?' she asked.
+
+"'Everywhere,' he answered. 'Some of the meanings we dress things up in
+are so--dowdy. We wouldn't think of wearing them ourselves.'
+
+"She understood him so well that she didn't have to bother to smile.
+And I hoped she was setting down a comparison in her head: Between
+clothing the world in a new meaning, and wearing it for a garment.
+
+"Chris looked up in Insley's face.
+
+"'I'm new,' he contributes, 'I'm new on the outside of me. I've got on
+this new brown middie.'
+
+"'I've been admiring it the whole way,' says Insley, hearty--and that
+time his eyes and Robin's met, over the little boy's head, as we stopped
+at the cottage gate.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+"The lonesome little parlour at Mis' Cadoza's was so far past knowing
+how to act with folks in it, that it never changed expression when we
+threw open the shutters. Rooms that are used to folks always sort of
+look up when the shutters are opened; some rooms smile back at you; some
+say something that you just lose, through not turning round from the
+window quite quick enough. But Mis' Cadoza's parlour was such a poor
+folkless thing that it didn't make us any reply at all nor let on to
+notice the light. It just set there, kind of numb, merely enduring
+itself.
+
+"'You poor thing,' I thought, 'nobody come in time, did they?'
+
+"Insley picked out a cane-seat rocker that had once known how to behave
+in company, and drew it to the window. Ain't it nice, no matter what
+kind of a dumb room you've got into, you can open its window and fit the
+sky onto the sill, and feel right at home....
+
+"Robin sat there with Chris in her arms, waiting for any stir in the
+front bedroom. I went in the bedroom, while Dr. Heron told me about the
+medicine, and it seemed to me the bare floor and bare walls and
+dark-coloured bedcovers was got together to suit the haggardy unshaven
+face on the pillow. Christopher's father never moved. I set in the
+doorway, so as to watch him, and Insley went with the doctor to the
+village to bring back some things that was needed. And I felt like we
+was all the first settlers of somewheres.
+
+"Chris was laying so still in Robin's arms that several times she looked
+down to see if he was awake. But every time his eyes was wide and dark
+with that mysterious child look that seems so much like thought. It kind
+of hurt me to see him doing nothing--that's one of the parts about
+sickness and dying and some kinds of trouble that always twists
+something up in my throat: The folks that was so eager and able and
+flying round the house just being struck still and not able to go on
+with everyday doings. I know when Lyddy Ember, the dressmaker, died and
+I looked at her laying there, it seemed to me so surprising that she
+couldn't hem and fell and cut out with her thumb crooked like she
+done--and that she didn't know a dart from a gore; her hands looked so
+much like she knew how yet. It's like being inactive made death or grief
+double. And it's like working or playing around was a kind of life....
+The whole house seemed inactive and silence-struck, even to the kitchen
+where Mis' Cadoza and the little lame boy was.
+
+"Robin set staring into the lilacs that never seemed to bloom, and I
+wondered what she was thinking and mebbe facing. But when she spoke, it
+was about the Cadoza kitchen.
+
+"'Miss Marsh,' she says, 'what kind of people must they be that can stay
+alive in a kitchen like that?'
+
+"'Pioneers,' I says. 'They's a lot of 'em pioneerin' away and not
+knowing it's time to stop.'
+
+"'But the dirt--' she says.
+
+"'What do you expect?' I says. 'They're emergin' out of dirt. But they
+_are_ emergin'.'
+
+"'Don't it seem hopeless?' says she.
+
+"'Oh, I donno,' I says; 'dirt gets to be apples--so be you plant 'em.'
+
+"But the Cadoza kitchen _was_ fearful. When we come through it, Mis'
+Cadoza was getting supper, and she'd woke up nameless smells of greasy
+things. There the bare table was piled with the inevitable mix-up of
+unwashed dishes that go along with the Mis' Cadozas of this world, so
+that you wonder how they ever got so much crockery together. There the
+floor wasn't swept, clothes was drying on a line over the stove, Spudge
+was eating his supper on the window-sill, and in his bed in the corner
+lay little Eph, so white and frail and queer-coloured that you felt you
+was looking on something bound not to last till much after you'd stopped
+looking. And there was Mis' Cadoza. When we had come through the
+kitchen, little Eph had said something glad at seeing Insley and hung
+hold of his hand and told him how he meant to model a clay Patsy,
+because it was Patsy, the dog, that had gone out in the dark and first
+brought Insley in to see him.
+
+"'An' when I'm big,' the child says, 'I'm going to make a clay _you_,
+Mr. Insley.'
+
+"Mis' Cadoza had turned round and bared up her crooked teeth.
+
+"'Don't you be impident!' she had said, raspish, throwing her hand out
+angular.
+
+"Mis' Cadoza was like somebody that hadn't got outside into the daylight
+of _Yet_. She was ignorant, blind to life, with some little bit of a
+corner of her brain working while the rest lay stock-still in her skull;
+unclean of person, the mother to no end of nameless horrors of
+habit--and her blood and the blood of some creature like her had been
+poured into that poor little boy, sickly, bloodless, not ready for the
+struggle.
+
+"'_Is_ there any use trying to do anything with anybody like that?'
+says Robin.
+
+"'_Is_ there?' says I, but I looked right straight at Christopher. If
+there wasn't no use trying to do anything with little Eph, with his
+mother out there in the kitchen, then what was the use of trying to do
+anything with Chris, with his father here in the front bedroom? Sick
+will, tainted blood, ruined body--to what were we all saving Chris?
+Maybe to misery and final defeat and some awful going out.
+
+"'I don't know,' she says, restless. 'Maybe Alex is right....'
+
+"She looked out towards the lilac bushes again, and I knew how all of a
+sudden they probably dissolved away to be the fine green in the
+conservatory at Proudfit House, and how she was seeing herself back in
+the bright room, with its summer of leaves, and before the tea wagon,
+making tea for Alex lounging in his low chair, begging her not, in
+heaven's name, to try to teach the wise old world....
+
+" ... I knew well enough how she felt. Every woman in the world knows.
+In that minute, or I missed my guess, she was finding herself clinging
+passionate and rebellious to the mere ordered quiet of the life Alex
+would make for her; to the mere outworn routine, the leisure of long
+days in pretty rooms, of guests and house parties and all the little
+happy flummery of hospitality, the doing-nothingness, or the nice tasks,
+of travelling; the joy of sinking down quiet into the easy ways to do
+and be. Something of the sheer, clear, mere self-indulgence of the
+last-notch conservative was sweeping over her, the quiet, the order, the
+plain _safety_ of the unchanging, of going along and going along and
+leaving things pretty much as they are, expecting them to work
+themselves out ... the lure of all keeping-stillness. And I knew she was
+wondering, like women do when they're tired or blue or get a big job to
+do or see a house like the Cadozas', why, after all, she shouldn't, in
+Alex's way, make herself as dainty in morals and intellect as she could
+and if she wanted to 'meddle,' to do so at arm's length, with some of
+the material that is cheap and abundant--like Chris....
+
+"'Maybe there isn't any use trying to do anything with Chris, either,' I
+says brutal. 'Mebbe Nature's way _is_ best. Mebbe she knows best when to
+let them die off.'
+
+"Robin's arms kind of shut up on the little kiddie. He looked up.
+
+"'Did you squeeze me on purpose?' he whispered.
+
+"She nodded at him.
+
+"'What for?' he asks.
+
+"'Just loving,' she answered.
+
+"After that, we sat still for a long time. Insley came back with the
+medicine, and told me what to do if the sick man came to. Then he filled
+and lit the bracket lamp that seemed to make more shadows than light,
+and then he stopped beside Robin--as gentle as a woman over a plant--and
+asked her if she wanted anything. He come through the room several
+times, and once him and her smiled, for a still greeting, almost as
+children do. After a while he come with a little basket of food that he
+had had Abagail put up to the bakery, and we tried to eat a little
+something, all of us. And all the while the man on the bed lay like he
+was locked up in some new, thick kind of silence.
+
+"When eight o'clock had gone, we heard what I had been expecting to
+hear--the first wheels and footsteps on the Plank Road directed towards
+Proudfit House. And Insley come in, and went over to Robin, and found
+Chris asleep in her arms, and he took him from her and laid him on the
+sagging Brussels couch.
+
+"'You must go now,' he says to Robin, with his kind of still authority
+that wan't ordering nor schoolmastery, nor you-do-as-I-say, but was
+just something that made you want to mind him. 'I'll wake Chris and take
+him in at the least change--but you must go back at once.'
+
+"And of course I was going to stay. Some of my minds was perfectly
+willing not to be at the party in any case, and anyhow the rest of them
+wanted to stay with Chris.
+
+"Insley picked up some little belongings of hers, seeming to know them
+without being told, and because the time was so queer, and mebbe because
+death was in the next room, and mebbe for another reason or two, I could
+guess how, all the while he was answering her friendly questions about
+the little Cadoza boy--all that while the Personal, the _Personal_, like
+a living thing, hovered just beyond his words. And at last it just
+naturally came in and possessed what he was saying.
+
+"'I can't thank you enough for coming down here,' he says. 'It's meant
+everything to Chris--and to me.'
+
+"She glanced up at him with her pretty near boyish frankness, that had
+in it that night some new element of confidence and charm and just being
+dear.
+
+"'Don't thank me,' she says, 'it was mine to do, too. And besides, I
+haven't done anything. And I'm running away!'
+
+"He looked off up the road towards where, on its hill, Proudfit House
+was a-setting, a-glowing in all its windows, a-waiting for her to come,
+and to have her engagement to another man announced in it, and then to
+belong up there for ever and ever. He started to say something--I donno
+whether he knew what or whether he didn't; but anyhow he changed his
+mind and just opened the door for her, the parlour door that I bet was
+as surprised to be used as if it had cackled.
+
+"The Proudfit motor had stood waiting at the gate all this while, and as
+they got out to it, Dr. Heron drove up, and with him was Mis'
+Hubbelthwait come to enquire. So Robin waited outside to see what Dr.
+Heron should say when he had seen Chris's father again, and I went to
+the door to speak to Mis' Hubbelthwait.
+
+"'Liquor's what ails him fast enough,' Mis' Hubbelthwait whispers--Mis'
+Hubbelthwait would of whispered in the middle of a forty-acre field if
+somebody had said either birth or death to her. 'Liquor's what ails him.
+I know 'em. I remember the nice, well-behaved gentleman that come to the
+hotel and only lived one night after. "Mr. Elder," I says to him,
+severe, "you needn't to tell me your stomach ain't one livin' pickle,
+for I know it is!" An' he proved it by dyin' that very night. If he
+didn't prove it, I don't know what he did prove. "Alcoholism," Dr. Heron
+called it, but I know it was liquor killed him. No use dressin' up
+words. An' I miss my guess if this here poor soul ain't the self-same
+river to cross.'
+
+"She would have come in, but there's no call for the whole town to nurse
+a sick-bed, I always think--and so she sort of hung around a minute,
+sympathetic and mum, and then slimpsed off with very little starch to
+her motions, like when you walk for sick folks. I looked out to where
+Robin and Insley was waiting by the big Proudfit planet that was going
+to take her on an orbit of its own; and all of a sudden, with them in
+front of me and with what was behind me, the awful _good-byness_ of
+things sort of shut down on me, and I wanted to do something or tell
+somebody something, I didn't know what, before it was too late; and I
+run right down to them two.
+
+"'Oh,' I says, scrabblin' some for my words, 'I want to tell you
+something, both of you. If it means anything to either of you to know
+that there's a little more to me, for having met both of you--then I
+want you to know it. And it's true. You both--oh, I donno,' I says,
+'what it is--but you both kind of act like life was a person, and like
+it wasn't just your dinner to be et.... And I kind of know the person,
+too....'
+
+"I knew what I meant, but meant things and said things don't often match
+close. And yet I donno but they understood me. Anyway, they both took
+hold of a hand of mine, and said some little broke-off thing that I
+didn't rightly get. But I guess that we all knew that we all knew. And
+in a minute I went back in the house, feeling like I'd got the best of
+some time when I might of wished, like we all do, that I'd let somebody
+know something while then was then.
+
+"When I got inside the door, I see right off by Dr. Heron's face that
+there'd been some change. And sure enough there was. Chris's father had
+opened his eyes and had spoke. And I done what I knew Robin would have
+wanted; I wheeled round and went to the door and told her so.
+
+"'He's come to,' I says, 'and he's just asked for Chris.'
+
+"Sharp off, Robin turned to say something to the man waiting in the
+automobile. Insley tried to stop her, but she put him by. They come back
+into the cottage together, and the Proudfit automobile started steaming
+back to Proudfit House without her.
+
+"Once again Robin roused Chris, as she had roused him on the night when
+he slept on the church porch; she just slipped her hands round his
+throat and lifted his face, and this time she kissed him.
+
+"'Come with Robin,' she said.
+
+"Chris opened his eyes and for a minute his little senses come
+struggling through his sleep, and then with them come dread. He looked
+up in Robin's face, piteous.
+
+"'Did my daddy _go out_?' he asks, shrill, 'like my mama did?'
+
+"'No, no, dear,' Robin said. 'He wants you to say good-by to him first,
+you know. Be still and brave, for Robin.'
+
+"There wasn't no way to spare him, because the poor little figure on the
+bed was saying his name, restless, to restless movements. I was in there
+by him, fixing him a little something to take.
+
+"'Where's Chris?' the sick man begged. 'Look on the church steps--'
+
+"They took Chris in the room, and Insley lifted him up to Robin's knee
+on the chair beside the bed.
+
+"'Hello--my nice daddy,' Chris says, in his little high voice, and
+smiles adorable. 'I--I--I was waitin' for you all this while.'
+
+"His father put out his hand, awful awkward, and took the child's arm
+about the elbow. I'll never forget the way the man's face looked. It
+didn't looked _used_, somehow--it looked all sort of bare and barren,
+and like it hadn't been occupied. I remember once seeing a brand-new
+house that had burned down before anybody had ever lived in it, and some
+of it stuck up in the street, nice new doors, nice hardwood stairway,
+new brick chimney, and everything else all blackened and spoiled and
+done for, before ever it had been lived in. That was what Chris's
+father's face made me think of. The outline was young, and the eyes was
+young--young and burning--but there was the man's face, all spoiled and
+done for, without ever having been used for a face at all.
+
+"'Hello, sonny,' he says, weak. 'Got a good home?'
+
+"'He's in a good home, with good people, Mr. Bartlett,' Insley told him.
+
+"'For keeps?' Chris's father asks, his eyes burning at Insley's over the
+boy's head.
+
+"'We shall look after him somehow, among us,' Robin says. 'Don't worry
+about him, Mr. Bartlett. He's all right.'
+
+"The father's look turned toward her and it sort of lingered there a
+minute. And then it lit up a little--he didn't smile or change
+expression, but his look lit up some.
+
+"'You're the kind of a one I meant,' he says. 'I wanted he should have a
+good home. I--I done pretty good for you, didn't I, Chris?' he says.
+
+"Chris leaned way over and pulled at his sleeve. 'You--you--you come in
+our house, too,' he says.
+
+"'No, sonny, no,' says the man. 'I guess mebbe I'm--goin' somewheres
+else. But I done well by you, didn't I? Your ma and I always meant you
+should hev a good home. I'm glad--if you've got it. It's nicer than
+bein' with me--ain't it? Ain't it?'
+
+"Chris, on Robin's knee, was leaning forward on the bed, his hand
+patting and pulling at his father's hand.
+
+"'If you was here, then it is,' the child says.
+
+"At that his father smiled--and that was the first real, real look that
+had come into his face. And he looked around slow to the rest of us.
+
+"'I wasn't never the kind to hev a kid,' he says. 'The drink had me--had
+me hard. I knew I'd got to find somebody to show him--about growin' up.
+I'm glad you're goin' to.'
+
+"He shut his eyes and Chris threw himself forward and patted his face.
+
+"'Daddy!' he cried, 'I wanted to tell you--I had that hot ice-cream
+an'--an'--an' tea on a litty wagon....'
+
+"Robin drew him back, hushed him, looked up questioning to Insley. And
+while we all set there, not knowing whether to leave or to stay, the man
+opened his eyes, wide and dark.
+
+"'I wish't it had been different,' he said. 'Oh--_God_....'
+
+"Chris leans right over, eager, towards him.
+
+"'Didn't he say anything back?' he says.
+
+"'I guess so,' the man says, thick. 'I guess if you're a good boy, he
+did.' Then he turned his head and looked straight at Robin. 'Don't you
+forget about his throat, will you?' he says.
+'It--gets--sore--awful--easy....'
+
+"He stopped talking, with a funny upsetting sound in his voice. It
+struck me then, like it has since, how frightful it was that neither him
+nor Chris thought of kissing each other--like neither one had brought
+the other up to know how. And yet Chris kissed all of us when we asked
+him--just like something away back in him knew how, without being
+brought up to know.
+
+"He knew how to cry, though, without no bringing up, like folks do. As
+Robin come with him out of the room, Chris hid his face in her skirts,
+crying miserable. She set down by the window with him in her arms, and
+Insley went and stood side of them, not saying anything. I see them so,
+while Dr. Heron and I was busy for a minute in the bedroom. Then we come
+out and shut the door--ain't it strange, how one minute it takes so many
+people around the bed, and next minute, there's the one that was the one
+left in there all alone, able to take care of itself.
+
+"Dr. Heron went away, and Robin still set there, holding Chris. All of a
+sudden he put up his face.
+
+"'Robin,' he says, 'did--did my daddy leave me a letter?'
+
+"'A letter?' she repeated.
+
+"'To tell me what to do,' says the child. 'Like before. On the church
+steps.'
+
+"'No--why, no, Chris,' she answers him. 'He didn't have to do that, you
+know.'
+
+"His eyes was holding hers, like he wanted so much to understand.
+
+"'Then how'll I know?' he asks, simple.
+
+"It seemed to me it was like a glass, magnifying living, had suddenly
+been laid on life. Here he was, in the world, with no 'letter' to tell
+him what to do.
+
+"All she done was just to lay her cheek right close to his cheek.
+
+"'Robin is going to tell you what to do,' she says, 'till you are big
+enough to know.'
+
+"Insley stood there looking at her, and his face was like something had
+just uncovered it. And the minute seemed real and simple and almost
+old--as if it had begun to be long, long before. It was kind of as if
+Robin's will was the will of all women, away back for ever and ever in
+time, to pour into the world their power of life and of spirit, through
+a child.
+
+
+"Insley went out in the kitchen to see Mis' Cadoza about some
+arrangements--if 'Arrangements' means funerals, it always seems like the
+word was spelt different and stiffer--and we was setting there in that
+sudden, awful idleness that comes on after, when there was the noise of
+an automobile on the Plank Road, and it stopped to the cottage and Alex
+Proudfit come springing up to the front door. He pushed it open and come
+in the room, and he seemed to put the minute in capitals, with his voice
+and his looks and his clothes. I never see clothes so black and so white
+and so just-so as Alex Proudfit's could be, and that night they was more
+just-so than usual. That night, his hands, with their thick, strange
+ring, and his dark, kind of _even_ face was like some fancy picture of a
+knight and a lover. But his face never seemed to me to be made very much
+a-purpose and just for him. It was rather like a good sample of a good
+brand, and like a good sample of any other good brand would have done
+him just as well. His face didn't fit him inevitable, like a cork to a
+bottle. It was laid on more arbitrary, like a window on a landscape, and
+you could have seen the landscape through any other window just as well,
+or better.
+
+"'Robin!' he said, 'why did you let the car come back without you? We've
+been frantic with anxiety.'
+
+"She told him in a word or two what had happened, and he received it
+with his impressions just about half-and-half: one-half relief that the
+matter was well over and one-half anxiety for her to hurry up. Everyone
+was at the house, everyone was wondering. Mrs. Emmons was anxious....
+'My poor Robin, you've overtaxed your strength,' he ends. 'You'll look
+worn and not yourself to-night. It's too bad of it. Come, for heaven's
+sake, let's be out of this. Come, Calliope....'
+
+He asked her if she had anything to bring, and he gathered up what she
+told him was hers. I got ready, too, so's to go up to Proudfit House to
+put Chris to bed and set by him awhile. And just as I was going out to
+let Insley know we was leaving, the door to the other room opened and
+there stood Mis' Cadoza. I see she'd twisted her hair over fresh and
+she'd put on a collar. I remember now the way I felt when she spoke.
+
+"'I've got the coffee pot on and some batter stirred up,' says she, kind
+of shame-faced. 'I thought mebbe some hot pan-cakes and somethin' hot to
+drink'd go good--with Mr. Insley an' all of you.'
+
+"Alex started to say something--heaven knows what--but Robin went right
+straight up to Mis' Cadoza--and afterwards I thought back to how Robin
+didn't make the mistake of being too grateful.
+
+"'How I'd like them!' she says, matter-of-fact. 'But I've got a lot of
+people waiting for me, and I oughtn't to keep them....'
+
+"Insley spoke up from where he was over on the edge of little Eph's bed,
+and I noticed Mis' Cadoza had tried to neaten up the kitchen some, and
+she'd set the table with oil-cloth and some clean dishes.
+
+"'I was afraid you'd all stay,' he says, 'and I do want all the
+pan-cakes. Hurry on--you're keeping back our supper.'
+
+"He nodded to Alex, smiled with us, and come and saw us out the door.
+Mis' Cadoza come too, and Robin and I shook hands with her for
+goodnight. And as Mis' Cadoza stood there in her own door, seeing us
+off, and going to be hostess out in her own kitchen, I wondered to
+myself if it was having a collar on, or what it was, that give her a
+kind of pretty near dignity.
+
+"I got in the front seat of the car. Chris was back in the tonneau
+between Robin and Alex, and as we started he tried to tell Alex what had
+happened.
+
+"'My--my--my daddy----' he says.
+
+"'Poor little cuss,' says Alex. 'But how extremely well for the child,
+Robin, that the beggar died. Heavens, how I hate your going in these
+ghastly places. My poor Robin, what an experience for _to-night_! For
+our to-night....'
+
+"She made a sudden move, abrupt as a bird springing free of something
+that's holding it. She spoke low, but I heard every word of it.
+
+"'Alex,' she said, 'we've made a mistake, you and I. But it isn't too
+late to mend it now.'
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+"'I hope, Calliope,' said Postmaster Silas Sykes to me, 'that you ain't
+in favour of women suffrage.'
+
+"'No, Silas,' says I, 'I ain't.'
+
+"And I felt all over me a kind of a nice wild joy at saying a thing that
+I knew a male creature would approve of.
+
+"Silas was delivering the groceries himself that day, and accepting of a
+glass of milk in my kitchen doorway. And on my kitchen stoop Letty
+Ames--that had come home in time for the Proudfit party--was a-sitting,
+a-stitching away on a violet muslin breakfast-cap. It was the next day
+after the party and my regular wash-day and I was glad to be back in my
+own house, washing quiet, with Emerel Daniel to help me.
+
+"'At school,' says Letty, 'everybody was for it.'
+
+"'I know it,' says Silas, gloomy. 'The schools is goin' to the dogs,
+hot-foot. Women suffrage, tinkerin' pupils' teeth, cremation--I don't
+know what-all their holdin' out for. In my day they stuck to 'rithmetic
+and toed the crack.'
+
+"'That isn't up to date, Mr. Sykes,' says Letty, to get Silas riled.
+
+"It done it. He waved his left arm, angular.
+
+"'Bein' up to date is bein' up to the devil,' he begun, raspish, when I
+cut in, hasty and peaceful.
+
+"'By the way, Silas,' I says, 'speaking of dates, it ain't more'n a
+_year_ past the time you aldermen was going to clear out Black Hollow,
+is it? Ain't you going to get it done _this_ spring?'
+
+"'Oh, dum it, no,' Silas says. 'They're all after us now to get to
+pavin' that new street.'
+
+"'That street off there in the marsh. I know they are,' I says innocent.
+'Your cousin's makin' the blocks, ain't he, Silas?'
+
+"Just then, in from the shed where she was doing my washing come Emerel
+Daniel--a poor little thing that looked like nothing but breath with the
+skin drawn over it--and she was crying.
+
+"'Oh, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'I guess you'll have to leave me go home. I
+left little Otie so sick--I hadn't ought to of left him--only I did want
+the fifty cents....'
+
+"'Otie!' I says. 'I thought Otie was getting better.'
+
+"'I've kept sayin' so because I was ashamed to let folks know,' Emerel
+says, 'an' me leavin' him to work. But I had to have the money--'
+
+"'Land,' I says, 'of course you did. Go on home. Silas'll take you in
+the delivery wagon, won't you, Silas? You're going right that way, ain't
+you?'
+
+"'I wasn't,' says Silas, 'but I can go round that way to oblige.' That's
+just exactly how Silas is.
+
+"'Emerel,' I says, 'when you go by the Hollow, you tell Silas what you
+was tellin' me--about the smells from there into your house. Silas,' I
+says, 'that hole could be filled up with sand-bar sand dirt cheap, now
+while the river's low, and you know it.'
+
+"'Woman--' Silas begins excitable.
+
+"'Of course you can't,' I saved him the trouble, 'not while the council
+is running pavement halfway acrost the swamp to graft off'n the Wooden
+Block folks. That's all, Silas. I know you, head and heart,' I says,
+some direct.
+
+"'You don't understand city dealin's no more'n--Who-a!' Silas yells,
+pretending his delivery horse needed him, and lit down the walk, Emerel
+following. Silas reminds me of the place in the atmosphere where a
+citizen ought to be, and ain't.
+
+"Emerel had left the clothes in the bluing water, so I stood and talked
+with Letty a minute, stitching away on her muslin breakfast-cap.
+
+"'I'd be for women voting just because Silas isn't,' she says, feminine.
+
+"'In them words,' says I to her, 'is some of why women shouldn't do it.
+The most of 'em reason,' I says, 'like rabbits!'
+
+"Letty sort of straightened up and looked at me, gentle. She just
+graduated from the Indian Mound School and, in spite of yourself, you
+notice what she says. 'You're mistaken, Miss Marsh,' says she, 'I
+believe in women voting because we're folks and mothers, and we can't
+bring up our children with men taking things away from 'em that we know
+they'd ought to have. I want to bring up my children by my votes as well
+as by my prayers,' says she.
+
+"'_Your_ children!' says I.
+
+"I donno if you've ever noticed that look come in a girl's face when she
+speaks of her children that are going to be sometime? Up to that minute
+I'd 'a' thought Letty's words was brazen. But when I see how she looked
+when she said it, I sort of turned my eyes away, kind of half reverent.
+We didn't speak so when I was a girl. The most we ever heard mentioned
+like that was when our mothers showed us our first baby dress and told
+us that was for _our_ baby--and then we always looked away, squeamish.
+
+"'That's kind of nice,' I says, slow, 'your owning up, out loud that
+way, that maybe you might possibly have--have one, sometime.'
+
+"'My mother has talked to me about it since I began to
+know--everything,' Letty said.
+
+"That struck awful near home.
+
+"'I always wisht,' I says, 'I'd talked with my mother--like that. I
+always wisht I'd had her tell me about the night I was born. I think
+everybody ought to know about that. But I remember when she begun to
+speak about it, I always kind of shied off. I should think it would of
+hurt her. But then,' I says, 'I never had any of my own. So it don't
+matter.'
+
+"'Oh, yes, you have, Miss Marsh,' says Letty.
+
+"I looked at her, blank.
+
+"'Every child that's born belongs to you,' says Letty to me, solemn.
+
+"'Go on,' says I, to draw her out. 'I wouldn't own most of the little
+jackanapesses.'
+
+"'But you _do_,' says Letty, 'and so do I! So does every woman, mother
+or not.'
+
+"She set the little violet muslin cap on her head to try it, and swept
+up and made me a little bow. Pretty as a picture she looked, and ready
+for loving.... I always wonder if things ain't sometimes arranged to
+happen in patterns, same as crystals. For why else should it be that at
+that instant minute young Elbert Sykes, Silas's son, that was home for
+the party and a little longer, come up to my door with a note from his
+mother--and see Letty in the violet cap, bowing like a rose?
+
+"While they was a-talking easy, like young folks knows how to do
+nowdays, I read the note; and it was about what had started Silas to
+talking suffrage. Mis' Sykes had opened her house to a suffrage meeting
+that evening, and Mis' Martin Lacy from the City was a-going to talk,
+and would I go over?
+
+"'Land, yes,' I says to Elbert. 'Tell her I'll come, just for something
+to do. I wonder if I can bring Letty, too?'
+
+"'Mother'd be proud, I know,' says Elbert, looking at her like words,
+and them words a-praising. They had used to play together when they was
+little, but school had come in and kind of made them over.
+
+"'_So_,' says he to Letty, bantering, 'you're in favour of women voting,
+are you?'
+
+"She broke off her thread and looked up at him.
+
+"'Of course I am,' she says, giving a cunning little kitten nod that run
+all down her shoulders.
+
+"'So you think,' says Elbert, 'that you're just as strong as I am--to
+carry things along? Mind you, I don't say as clever. You're easily that.
+But put it at just _strong_.'
+
+"She done the little nod again, nicer than the first time.
+
+"'You talk like folks voted with their muscles,' says she. 'Well, I
+guess some men do, judging by the results.'
+
+"He laughed, but he went on.
+
+"'And you think,' he says, 'that you would be just as wonderful in
+public life as you would be in your home--your very own home?'
+
+"Letty put the last stitch in her muslin cap and she set it on her
+head--all cloudy and rose-budded, and land, land, she was lovely when
+she looked up.
+
+"'Surely,' she says from under the ruffle, with a little one-cornered
+smile.
+
+"He laughed right into her eyes. 'I don't believe you think so,' he
+says, triumphant. And all of a sudden there come a-sticking up its head
+in his face the regular man look--I can't rightly name it, but every
+woman in the world knows it when she sees it--a kind of an _I'm the one
+of us two but don't let's stop pretending it's you_ look.
+
+"When she see it, what do you suppose Letty done? First she looked
+down. Then she blushed. Then she shrugged up one shoulder and laughed,
+sort of little and low and soft. _And she kept still._ She was about as
+much like the dignified woman that had just been talking to me about
+women's duty as a bow of blue ribbon is like my work apron. And as plain
+as the blue on the sky, I see that _she liked the minute when she let
+Elbert beat her--liked it_, with a sort of a glow and a quiver.
+
+"He laughed again, and, 'You stay just the the way you are,' he says,
+and he contrived to make them common words sort of flow all over her
+like petting.
+
+"That evening, when we marched into the Sykes's house to the meeting, he
+spoke to her like that again. The men was invited to the meeting, too,
+but Mis' Sykes let it be known that they needn't to come till the coffee
+and sandwiches, thus escaping the speech. Mis' Sykes ain't in favour of
+suffrage, but she does love a new thing in town, and Mis' Martin Lacy
+was so well dressed and so soft-spoken that Mis' Sykes would of left her
+preach foot-binding in her parlour if she'd wanted to. Mis' Sykes is
+like that. Letty was about the youngest there, and she was about the
+prettiest I 'most ever saw; and when he'd got them all seated, young
+Elbert Sykes, that was the only man there, just naturally gravitated
+over and set down by her, like the Lord meant. I love to see them little
+things happen, and I never smile at them, same as some. Because it's
+like I got a peek in behind the curtain and see the eternal purpose
+working away, quiet and still.
+
+"Well, Mis' Lacy, she talked, and she put things real sane and plain,
+barring I didn't believe any of what she said. And pretty soon I stopped
+trying to listen and I begun thinking about Emerel Daniel. I'd been down
+to see her just before supper, and I hadn't had her out of my head much
+of the time since. Emerel's cottage wasn't half a block from Black
+Hollow, the great low place beyond the river road that the town used as
+a dump. It was full of things without names, and take it on a day with
+the wind just right, Emerel had to keep her window shut on that side of
+her house. Water was standing in the hollow all the whole time. Flies
+and mosquitoes come from it by the flock and the herd. And when I'd held
+my nose and scud past it that afternoon to get to Emerel's, I'd almost
+run into Dr. Heron, just coming out from seeing Otie, and I burst right
+out with my thoughts all over him, and asked him if Black Hollow wasn't
+what was the matter with Otie and if it wasn't all that was the matter
+with him.
+
+"'Unquestionably,' says Dr. Heron. 'I told Mrs. Daniel six months ago
+that she must move.'
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'not having any of her other country homes open this
+year, Emerel had to stay where she was. And Otie with her. But what did
+you say to the council about filling in the hole?'
+
+"'The council,' says Dr. Heron, 'is paving the county swamp. There's a
+good crop of wooden blocks this year.'
+
+"'True enough,' says I, grim, 'and Otie is a-paying for it.'
+
+"That was exactly how the matter stood. And all the while Mis' Lacy was
+a-talking her women suffrage, I set there grieving for Emerel, and
+wondering how it was that Silas Sykes and Timothy Toplady and Jimmy
+Sturgis and even Eppleby Holcomb, that belonged to the common council,
+_could_ set by and see Otie die, and more or less of the rest of us in
+the same kind of danger.
+
+"Next I knew, Mis' Lacy, that was all silky movements and a sweet voice,
+had got through her own talk and was asking us ladies to express
+ourselves. Everybody felt kind of delicate at first, and then Libby
+Liberty starts up and spoke her mind:--
+
+"'_I_ believe all you've been a-saying,' she says, 'and I hev for
+twenty years. I never kill a hen without I realize how good the women
+can do a human being's work if they're put to it.'
+
+"'I always think of that, too,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, quick, 'about
+the hotel....' She kind of stopped, but we all knew what she meant.
+Threat is seldom if ever sober, especially on election day; but he
+votes, and she only runs the hotel and keeps them both out of the
+poorhouse.
+
+"'Well, look at me,' says Abagail Arnold, 'doin' work to oven and to
+counter, an' can't get my nose near nothin' public but my taxes.'
+
+"'Of course,' says Mis' Uppers, rocking, 'I've almost _been_ the mayor
+of Friendship Village, bein' his wife, so. An' I must say he never done
+a thing I didn't think I could do. Or less it was the junketin' trips.
+I'd 'a' been down with one o' my sick headaches on every one o' them.'
+
+"'Men _know_ more,' admitted Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'but I donno as
+they can _do_ any more than us. When the Fire Chief was alive an'
+holdin' office an' entertaining politicians, I use' often to think o'
+that, when I had their hot dinner to get.'
+
+"'I s'pose men do know more than we do,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, reflective. 'I know Eppleby is lightnin'
+at figures, an' he can tell about time-tables, an' he sees sense to fine
+print parts o' the newspapers that looks like so many doctors'
+prescriptions to me. An' yet honestly, when it comes to some questions
+of sense, I've known Eppleby not to have any.'
+
+"'Jimmy, either,' says Mis' Sturgis, confidential. 'I donno. I've
+thought about that a good deal. It seems as if, if we got the chance, us
+women might not vote brilliant at first, but we would vote with our
+sense. The sense that can pick out a pattern and split a receipt, an'
+dress the children out o' the house money. I bet there's a lot o' that
+kind o' sense among women that don't get used up, by a long shot.'
+
+"Mis' Timothy Toplady drew her shawl up her back, like she does.
+
+"'Well-a,' she says, 'Timothy's an awful good husband, but when I see
+some of the things he buys for the house, an' the way he gets took in on
+real estate, I often wonder if he's such a good citizen as he lets on.'
+
+"I kep' a-wondering why Letty didn't say something, and by and by I
+nudged her.
+
+"'Go on, speak up,' I intimated.
+
+"And, same time, I heard Elbert Sykes, on the other side, say something
+to her, low. 'I could tell them,' he says to her, 'that to look like
+you do is better than being elected!'
+
+"And Letty--what do you s'spose?--she just glanced up at him, and made a
+little kind of a commenting wrinkle with her nose, and looked down and
+kept her silence. Just like he'd set there with a little fine chain to
+her wrist.
+
+"We talked some more and asked some questions and heard Mis' Lacy read
+some, and then it was time for the men. They come in together--six or
+eight of them, and most of them, as it happened, members of the common
+council. And when Mis' Sykes had set them down on the edge of the room,
+and before anybody had thought of any remark to pass, Mis' Lacy she
+spoke up and ask' the men to join in the discussion, and called on Mis'
+Sykes, that hadn't said nothing yet, to start the ball a-rolling.
+
+"'_Well_,' says Mis' Sykes, with her little society pucker, 'I must say
+the home and bring-up my children seems far, far more womanly to me than
+the tobacco smoke and whiskey of public life.'
+
+"She glanced over to the men, kind of with a way of arching her neck and
+they all gave her a sort of a little ripple, approving. And with this
+Mis' Toplady kind of tossed her head up.
+
+"'Oh, well, I don't want the responsibility,' she says. 'Land, if I was
+a votin' woman, I should feel as if I'd got bread in the pan and cake in
+the oven and clothes in the bluin' water all the whole time.'
+
+"'He, he, he!' says Timothy, her lawful lord. And Silas and Jimmy
+Sturgis and the rest joined in, tuneful.
+
+"Then Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, she vied in, and done a small,
+careless laugh.
+
+"'Oh, well, me, too,' she says, 'I declare, as I get older an' wake up
+some mornin's I feel like life was one big breakfast to get an' me the
+hired girl. If I had to vote besides, I donno what I _would_ do.'
+
+"'An',' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'I always feel as if a politician was a
+disgrace to be, same as an actor, _unless_ you got to be a big one. An'
+can us women ever be big ones even if we want? Which I'm sure I don't
+want,' she says, sidling a look towards the men's row.
+
+"'Oh, not only that,' says Abagail Arnold, 'but you'd feel so kind of
+sheepish votin' for the President, away off there in Washington. I
+always feel terrible sheepish even prayin' for him, let alone
+votin'--an' like it _couldn't_ make no real difference.'
+
+"'Oh, an' _ladies_!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, 'really it's bad enough to
+have been the wife of a mayor. If I had to vote an' was in danger of
+coming down with a nomination for somethin' myself, I couldn't get to
+sleep nights.'
+
+"'Mercy,' said Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'a mayor is nothin' but a baby
+in public life compared to a fire chief. A mayor gets his night's rest.
+Could a woman ever chase to fires at three o'clock in the mornin'? An'
+if she votes, what's to prevent her bein' elected to some such job by
+main strength?'
+
+"'Or like enough get put on a jury settin' on a murderer, an' hev to
+look at dug-up bones an' orgins,' says Mis' Sturgis--her that's an
+invalid and gloomy by complexion.
+
+"And one and all, as they spoke, they looked sidewise to the men for
+their approval. And they got it.
+
+"'That's the ticket!' says Timothy Toplady, slapping his knee. 'I tell
+you, gentlemen, we've got a nice set of women folks here in this town.
+They don't prostitute their brains to no fool notions.'
+
+"There was a little hush, owing to that word that Timothy had used kind
+of uncalled for, and then a little quick buzz of talk to try to cover
+it. And in the buzz I heard Elbert saying to Letty:
+
+"'You _know_ you think of yourself in a home afterward--and not around
+at polls and things, Letty.'
+
+"'You don't have to board at the polls because you vote there, you
+know,' Letty said; but she says it with a way, with a way. She said it
+like a pretty woman talking to a man that's looking in her eyes and
+thinking how pretty she is, and she knows he's thinking so. And you
+can't never get much real arguing done that way.
+
+"It always kind of scares me to see myself showed up--and now it was
+like I had ripped a veil off the whole sex, and off me, too. I see us
+face to face. Why was it that before them men had come in, the women had
+all talked kind of doubtful and suffrage-leaning, and then had veered
+like the wind the minute the men had come on the scene? Mis' Toplady had
+defied Timothy time after time, both public and private; Mis'
+Hubbelthwait bosses her husband not only drunk but sober; Mis' Sturgis
+don't do a thing Jimmy wants without she happens to want it too--and so
+on. Yet at the mention of this one thing, these women that had been
+talking intelligent and wondering open-minded had all stopped being the
+way they was and had begun to say things sole to please the men. Even
+Libby Liberty had kept still--her that has a regular tongue in her head.
+And Letty, that believed in it all, and had talked to me so womanly
+that morning, she was listening and blushing for Elbert and holding her
+peace. And then I remembered, like a piece of guilt, sensing that nice,
+wild feeling I myself had felt that morning a-denying woman suffrage in
+the presence of Postmaster Silas Sykes. What in creation ailed us all?
+
+"_What in creation...._ Them words sort of steadied me. It looked to me
+like it was creation itself that ailed us yet. Creation is a thing that
+it takes most folks a good while to recover from....
+
+" ... I remembered seeing Silas's delivery boy go whistling along the
+street one night, and pass a cat. The cat wasn't doing nothing active.
+It was merely idle. But the boy brought up a big shingle he was carrying
+and swished it through the air and says 'Z-t-t-t-t,' to the cat's heels,
+to see the cat take to them--which it done--like the cat immemorial has
+done for immemorial boys, delivery and other. And once, at dusk, a big,
+strange man with a gun on his shoulder passed me on Daphne Street, and
+when he done so, he says to me 'Z-t-t-t,' under his breath, just like
+the boy to the cat, and just like the untamed man immemorial has said
+when he got the chance. It seemed to me like men was created with, so
+to say, a shingle and a gun, for the hunting, and just as there is joy
+in their hunting, so there is a palpitatin' delight in being hunted and
+flattered by being caught and bound, hand and foot and mind.
+
+"'We like it--why, I tell you, we like it,' I says to myself, 'and us
+here in Mis' Sykes's parlour are burning with the old original,
+left-over fire, breathed at creation into women's breasts!'
+
+"And it seemed like I kind of touched hands with all the women that used
+to be. And I looked over to that row of grinning, tired men, not so very
+much dressed up, and I thought:--
+
+"'Why, you're the men of this world and we're the women, and there ain't
+no more thrilling fact in this universe. And why don't we all reco'nize
+it and shut up?'
+
+"That was what I was thinking over in my mind while Mis' Martin Lacy
+said good night to us and rushed off to catch her train for the City,
+hoping she had made us see some light. That was what I was still going
+over when Mis' Sykes called me to help with the refreshments. And then,
+just as I started out to the kitchen, the outside door that was part
+open was pushed in and somebody come in the room. It was Emerel Daniel,
+in calico and no hat. And as soon as we see her face, everybody stopped
+talking and stared. She was white as the table-cloth and shaking.
+
+"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'won't one of you come down to the house?
+Otie's worse--I donno what it is. I donno what to do to take care of
+him.'
+
+"She broke down, poor, nervous little thing, and sort of swallowed her
+whole throat. And Mis' Toplady and we all rushed right over to her.
+
+"'Why, Emerel,' Mis' Toplady says, 'I thought Otie was getting ever so
+much better. Is it the real typhoid, do you s'pose?' she ask' her.
+
+"Emerel looked over to me. 'Isn't it?' she says. And then I spoke right
+up with all there is to me.
+
+"'Yes, sir,' I says, 'it is the real typhoid. And if you want to know
+what's giving it to him, ladies and gentlemen, ask the common council
+that's setting over there by the wall. Dr. Heron says that Black Hollow,
+that's a sink for the whole town, give it to him, and that nothing else
+did--piled full of diseases right in back of Emerel's house. And if you
+want to know who's responsible for his dying if he dies,' I says right
+out, 'look over in the same direction to the men that wouldn't vote to
+fill in the Black Hollow with sand because they needed the money so bad
+for paving up half the county swamp.'
+
+"It was most as still in the room as when Timothy had said 'prostitute.'
+All but me. I went right on--nothing could of kept me still then.
+
+"'Us ladies,' I says, 'has tried for two years to get the Council to
+fill in that hole. We've said and said what would happen to some of us,
+what with our pumps so near the place, and what with flies from it
+visiting our dinner-table dishes, sociable and continual. What did you
+say to us? You said women hadn't no idee of town finances. Mebbe we
+ain't--mebbe we ain't. But we have got some idea of town humanity, if I
+do say it, that share in it. And this poor little boy has gone to work
+and proved it.'
+
+"With that, Emerel, who had been holding in--her that's afraid even to
+ask for starch if you forget to give it to her--she broke right down and
+leaned her head on her arm on the clock shelf:--
+
+"'Oh,' she says, 'all the years I been giving him his victuals and his
+bath and sewing his clothes up, I never meant it to come to this--for no
+reason. If Otie dies, I guess he needn't of--that's the worst. He
+needn't of.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady put her arm right around Emerel and kind of poored her
+shoulder in that big, mother way she's got--and it was her that went
+with her, like it's always Mis' Toplady that does everything. And us
+ladies turned around and all begun to talk at once.
+
+"'Let's plan out right here about taking things in to Emerel,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I've got some fresh bread out of the oven.
+I'll carry her a couple of loaves, and another couple next baking or
+two.'
+
+"'I'll take her in a hen,' says Libby Liberty, 'so be she'll kill it
+herself.'
+
+"Somebody else said a ham, and somebody some butter, and Libby threw in
+some fresh eggs, if she got any. Mis' Hubbelthwait didn't have much to
+do with, but she said she would take turns setting up with Otie. Mis'
+Sykes give a quarter--she don't like to bake for folks, but she's real
+generous with money. And Silas pipes in:--
+
+"'Emerel can have credit to the store till Otie begins to get better,'
+he said. 'I ain't been lettin' her have it. She's looked so peaked I
+been afraid she wan't a-goin' to be able to work, an' I didn't want she
+should be all stacked up with debts.'
+
+"But me, I set there a-thinking. And all of a sudden I says out what I
+thought: 'Ladies,' I says, 'and all of you: What to Emerel is hens and
+hams and credit? They ain't,' I says, 'nothing but patches and poultices
+on what's the trouble up to her house.'
+
+"Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying much, spoke up:--
+
+"'I know,' he says, 'I know. You mean what good do they do to the boy.'
+
+"'I mean just that,' I says. 'What good is all that to Otie that's lying
+over by Black Hollow? And how does it keep the rest of the town safe?'
+
+"'Well,' says Silas, eager, 'let's us get out the zinc wagon you ladies
+bought, and let's us go to collectin' the garbage again so that won't
+all be dumped in Black Hollow. And leave the ladies keep on payin' for
+it. It's real ladies' work, I think, bein' as it's no more'n a general
+scrapin' up of ladies' kitchens.'
+
+"Then Letty Ames, that hadn't been saying anything, spoke up, to nobody
+in particular:--
+
+"'Otie's a dear little soul,' she said, 'a dear little soul!'
+
+"'Ain't he?' says Marne Holcomb. 'Eppleby 'most always has a nut or
+somethin' in his pocket to give him as he goes by. He takes it like a
+little squirrel an' like a little gentleman.'
+
+"'He's awful nice when he comes in the shop,' said Abagail. 'He looks at
+the penny-apiece kind and then buys the two-for-a-cent, so's to give
+his mother one.'
+
+"'He knows how to behave in a store,' Silas admitted. 'I 'most always
+give him a coffee-berry, just to see him thank me.'
+
+"'He come into the hotel one day,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'an' stood by
+me when I was bakin'. I give him a little wad of dough to roll.'
+
+"'I let him drive the 'bus one day, settin' on my knee,' says Jimmy
+Sturgis. 'He was a nice, careful, complete little cuss.'
+
+"Eppleby Holcomb nodded with his eyes shut.
+
+"'We don't like folks to swing on our front gate,' he says. 'He done it,
+but he marched right in and told us he'd done it. I give him a
+doughnut--an' he's kep' right on swingin' an' ownin' up an' eatin'
+doughnuts.'
+
+"'Even when he chased my chickens,' says Libby Liberty, 'he chased 'em
+like a little gentleman--_towards_ the coop an' not down the road. I
+always noticed that about him.'
+
+"'Yes,' says Letty, again, 'he's a dear little soul. _What makes us let
+him die?_'
+
+"She said it so calm that it caught even my breath--and my breath, in
+these things, ain't easy caught. But I got it right back again, and I
+says:--
+
+"'Yes, sir. He was on the way to being somebody that Friendship Village
+could have had for the right kind of an inmate. And now he'll be nothing
+but a grave, that's no good to anybody. And Sodality,' I couldn't help
+adding, 'will likely pitch right in and take care of his grave,
+tasteful.'
+
+"And when I said that, it come over me how Emerel had dressed him and
+bathed him and made his clothes, and done washings, tireless, to get the
+fifty cents--besides bringing him into the world, tedious. And now it
+was all going for nothing, all for nothing--when we could of helped it.
+And I plumped out with what I'd said that morning to Silas:--
+
+"'Why don't you fill up Black Hollow with sand-bar sand out of the
+river, now it's so low? Then, even if it's too late for Otie, mebbe we
+can keep ourselves from murderin' anybody else.'
+
+"Them half a dozen men of the common council set still a minute, looking
+down at Mis' Sykes's parlour ingrain. And I looked over at them, and my
+heart come up in my throat and both of them ached like the toothache.
+Because all of a sudden it seemed to me it wasn't just Timothy and
+Eppleby and Silas and some more of the council setting there by the
+wall--but it was like, in them few men, tired and not so very well
+dressed, was setting the lawmakers of the whole world; and there in
+front of them, wasn't only Mis' Holcomb and Libby and Letty and me, but
+Emerel Daniel, too, and all the women there is--saying to them: 'My
+land, we've dressed 'em an' bathed 'em an' sewed for 'em an' brought 'em
+into the world, tedious. Let 'em live--fix things so's they can live an'
+so's it needn't all go for nothin'.' And I sort of bubbled up and
+spilled over, as if everything we was all of us _for_ had come up in my
+throat.
+
+"'Oh, folks,' I says, 'just look what us in this room could have done
+for Otie--so be we'd begun in time.'
+
+"Right like a dash of cold water into my face, Mis' Sykes spoke up, cold
+as some kind of death:--
+
+"'Well, ladies,' she says, 'I guess we've got our eyes open now. _I_ say
+that's what we'd ought to hev been doin' instead o' talkin' women
+votin',' she says, triumphant.
+
+"Then somebody spoke again, in a soft, new, not-used-to-it little voice,
+and in her chair over beside Elbert, Letty Ames leaned forward, and her
+eyes was like the sunny places in water.
+
+"'Don't you see,' she says, 'don't you see, Mis' Sykes, that's what Mis'
+Lacy meant?'
+
+"'How so?' says Mis' Sykes, short.
+
+"I'll never forget how sweet and shy and unexpected and young Letty
+looked, but she answered, as brave as brave:--
+
+"'Otie Daniel is sick,' she said, 'and all us women can do is to carry
+him broth and bread and nurse him. It's only the men that can bring
+about the things to make him well. And they haven't done it. It's been
+the women who have been urging it--and not getting it done. Wasn't it
+our work to do, too?'
+
+"I see Elbert looking at her--like he just couldn't bear to have her
+speak so, like some men can't. And I guess he spoke out in answer before
+he meant to:--
+
+"'But let them do it womanly, Letty,' he said, 'like your mother did and
+my mother did.'
+
+"Letty turned and looked Elbert Sykes straight in the face:--
+
+"'_Womanly!_' she says. 'What is there womanly about my bathing and
+feeding a child inside four clean walls, if dirt and bad food and
+neglect are outside for him? Will you tell me if there is anything more
+womanly than my right to help make the world as decent for my children
+as I would make my own home?'
+
+"I looked at Letty, and looked; and I see with a thrill I can't tell you
+about how Letty seemed. For she seemed the way she had that morning on
+my kitchen stoop, when she spoke of her children and when I felt like
+I'd ought to turn away--the way I'd used to when my mother showed me my
+baby dress and told me who it would be for. Only now--only now, somehow,
+I didn't want to turn away. Somehow I wanted to keep right on looking at
+Letty, like Elbert was looking. And I see what he see. How Letty was
+what she'd said that morning that she was--and that I was--and that we
+all was: A mother, then and there, whether she ever had any children or
+not. And she was next door to owning up to it right there before them
+all and before Elbert. We didn't speak so when I was a girl. We didn't
+own up, out loud, that we ever thought anything about what we was for.
+But now, when I heard Letty do it....
+
+" ... Now, when I heard Letty do it, all to once, I looked into a window
+of the world. And instead of touching hands like I had with the women
+that use' to be, I looked off and off down all the time there's going to
+be, and for a minute I touched, tip-fingers, the hands of the other
+women that's coming towards me; and out of places inside of me that I
+didn't know before had eyes, I see them, mothers to the whole world,
+_inside their four walls and out_. And they wasn't coming with poultices
+and bread and broth in their hands, to patch up what had been left
+undone; nor with the keys to schoolhouses that they'd got open by
+scheming; nor with newspapers full of health that they'd had to run down
+back alleys to sell; nor national holidays that they'd got a-hold of
+through sheer accident; nor yet with nice new headstones for cemetery
+improvements on the dead and gone--no, sir, their hands wasn't occupied
+with any of these ways of serving that they'd schemed for and stole. But
+their hands--was in men's hands, closer and nearer than they'd ever been
+before. And their eyes was lit up with a look that was a new look, and
+that give new life to the old original left-over blaze. And I looked
+across to that row of tired men, not so very much dressed up, and I
+thought:--
+
+"'You're the men of this world and we're the women. And there ain't no
+more thrilling fact in this universe, save one, _save one_: And that's
+that we're all human beings. That your job and ours is to make the world
+ready for the folks that are to come, and to make the folks that come
+fit to live in that new world. And yet over there by Black Hollow one of
+our children is dying from something that was your job _and_ ours to do,
+and we didn't take hold of hands and do it!'
+
+"'Oh, Letty!' I says out. 'And Silas and all of you! Let's pretend,
+just for a minute, that we was all citizens and equal. And let's figure
+out things for Otie, just like we had the right!'
+
+
+"I'd asked Letty to spend the night with me, and Elbert walked home with
+us. And just as we got there, he says to her again:--
+
+"'Oh, Letty--you ain't _strong_ enough to help carry things along!'
+
+"'You've got more strength,' she says to him, 'and more brains. But it
+isn't so much the strength or the brains in women that is going to help
+when the time comes. It's the--mother in them.'
+
+"And I says to myself:--
+
+"'And it's the--_human beingness_ of them.' But Letty didn't know that
+yet.
+
+"Elbert answered, after a minute:--
+
+"'You may be right and you may be wrong, but, Letty, Letty, what a woman
+you are!'
+
+"And at that Letty looked up at him, just as she had looked at him that
+morning--just for a minute, and then she dipped down the brim of her big
+hat. I donno what she answered him. I didn't care. I didn't care. For
+what I see was the old wild joy of a woman in being glorified by a male
+creature. And I knew then, and I know now, that that won't never die,
+no matter what.
+
+"Elbert put out his hand.
+
+"'Good night, Letty,' he said.
+
+"She gave him hers, and he closed over it light with his other hand.
+
+"'May I see you to-morrow?' he asked her.
+
+"'Oh, I don't know,' said Letty. 'Come and see if I'll see you--will
+you?'
+
+"He laughed a little, looking in her eyes.
+
+"'At about eight,' he promised. 'Good night....'
+
+"I got the key out from under the mat to a tune inside me. Because I'd
+heard, and I knew that Letty had heard, that tone in Elbert's voice that
+is the human tone--I can't rightly name it, but every woman in the world
+knows it when she hears it--a tone that says: _If I have my way, you and
+I are going to live out our lives together_.
+
+"And I knew then, and I know now, that that tone won't ever die, either.
+And some day, away off in a new world right here on this earth, I
+believe there's going to be a wilder joy in being men and women than all
+the men and women up to now have ever lived or dared or dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+"'Miss Marsh,' says Christopher.
+
+"Mis' Emmons's living-room was like a cup of something cool, and I set
+there in the after-supper light having such a nice rested time drinking
+it in that at first I didn't hear him.
+
+"'Miss Marsh,' he says again, and pulled at my dress. I put out my hand
+to him and he took it. Sometimes I donno but hands are a race of beings
+by themselves that talk and answer and do all the work and act like
+slaves and yet really rule the world.
+
+"'Is it me telling my feet where to go or do they tell me where I go?'
+asked Christopher.
+
+"'You can have it either way you want,' I told him. 'Some does one way
+and some does the other. Which way do you like?'
+
+"He thought for a minute, twisting on one foot with the other up in his
+hand.
+
+"'I'd like 'em to know how without our sayin' so,' he announces finally.
+
+"'Well,' I says, 'I left out that way. That's really the best way of
+all.'
+
+"He looked at me eager.
+
+"'Is it a game?' he says.
+
+"'Yes,' I told him.
+
+"'What's its name?' he ask' me.
+
+"'Game of Life,' I told him again.
+
+"He thought about it, still twisting. Then he done one of his littlest
+laughs, with his head turned away.
+
+"'My feet heard you,' he says. 'Now they know how to play.'
+
+"'I hope so, Christopher,' says I, and kissed him on the back of his
+neck. That made him mad, like it usually done.
+
+"'My neck is my neck,' says he, 'and it's shut in my collar. It ain't
+home to-day.'
+
+"'Is your mouth home?' I ask' him.
+
+"And it was.
+
+"I could of set there talking with him all evening, but not on the night
+of Sodality's Annual. I'd stopped by for Mis' Emmons. She was getting
+ready, and while I waited I could hear folks passing on their way to the
+schoolhouse where the meeting was. For the town was all het up about
+what the meeting was going to do.
+
+"I'd seen half-dozen or so of us that afternoon when we was putting
+plants on the hall platform, and we'd all spoke our minds.
+
+"'I'm gaspin',' observed Mis' Sturgis, 'to take a straw vote of us on
+this amendin' business. Near as I can make out, it's going through.'
+
+"'Near as I can make out,' says Marne Holcomb, 'a good deal more than
+amending is going on here to-night. It looks to me as if Sodality was
+just going to get into its own Cemetery and be forgot, and as if
+something else was coming to meet us--something big!'
+
+"Mis' Toplady spoke up, comfortable, down on her knees putting green
+paper on the pots.
+
+"'Well, my land!' she says, 'I've noticed two-three things in my
+lifetime. And one is, that do what whoever will, things do change. And
+so whenever a new change pops up, I always think: "Oh, I guess you're
+comin' along anyway. I donno's I need to help." An' yet somethin' in me
+always prances to pitch in, too.'
+
+"Timothy was there, occupying himself with the high places us ladies
+couldn't get up to.
+
+"'Well,' says he, 'if folks stop dying, like Sodality evidently intends
+they shall if it goes out of business, maybe you'll stay home some,
+Amandy, and not always be off laying folks out.'
+
+"'I know it,' Mis' Toplady returns, 'I've laid out most everybody I
+know, and of course I'm real glad to do it. But the last dead's hair I
+done up, I caught myself thinking how much more interesting it'd be if
+they was alive an' could find fault. Doin' for the dead gets kind of
+monotonous, _I_ think.'
+
+"'_I_ don't,' says Timothy, decided. 'The minute you work for the
+living, you get all upset with being criticised. I s'pose the dead would
+find fault, if they could, over the way you cut the grass for 'em. But
+they can't an' so there's an end to it, an' we get along, peaceful. If
+they was living folks layin' there, you can bet they'd do some back
+talk.'
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'I've been sick of Sodality for years. But it was about
+the most what-you-might-call society I had, and I hated to give it up.'
+
+"'Me, either,' says Mame Holcomb.
+
+"'Me, either,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I declare I've often said I wouldn't
+know what _to_ do if folks stopped dyin' so's Sodality would have to
+close out.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes was setting watching the rest of us.
+
+"'Well,' she observes, cold, 'if I was usin' the dead to keep in
+society, I donno's I'd own it up.'
+
+"Silas Sykes had just come over from the store to see if there was
+anything he could meddle in.
+
+"'Heh!' says he, showing his teeth. 'Not many of Sodality, as I can
+see, _deserves_ to die and be done for, civilized.'
+
+"'Don't you worry yourself, Silas Sykes,' says I, 'we're going to be
+done things for before we die hereafter, and more civilized than ever
+you dreamed of, all up and down your ledger. That's where you do dream,
+ain't it, Silas?' I says. And though I said it gay, I meant it frank.
+
+"I remember I looked off down the room, and all of a sudden I see it as
+it would be that night, packed with folks. Somehow, we'd got to saying
+less about the Sodality part of the meeting, and more about the _open_
+part. Most of the town would be there. We'd got the School Board to
+leave us announce the second party for that night, following the
+meeting, and music was coming, and us ladies had froze the ice-cream,
+and the whole time reminded me of a big bud, flowered slow and bursting
+sudden.
+
+"'Land, land,' I says, fervent, 'I feel like Friendship Village was a
+person that I was going to meet to-night for the first time.'
+
+"'You express yourself so odd sometimes, Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes,
+distant--but Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, they
+both looked up and nodded, and they knew.
+
+"I set holding Christopher in Mis' Emmons's living-room, and thinking
+about this and most everything else, when I looked out and see Insley
+going along. He hadn't been back in town since Christopher's father's
+funeral, two days before, and I'd been wanting to talk over with him a
+thing or two that was likely to come up at the meeting, that of course
+he was going to be at, and that had to be handled with thimbles on every
+finger, or somebody'd get pricked. So I rapped smart on the upper sash
+and called to him through the screen, but not before I had seen the look
+on his face. I've caught that special look only once or twice in my
+life--the look of somebody passing the house that is different to them
+from all other houses in the world. The look that wants to be a look and
+won't let itself be, that tries to turn the other way and can't start,
+that thinks it's unconscious and knows it isn't, and that finally, with
+Insley, give it up and looked Mis' Emmons's house straight in the face
+for a minute, as if he might anyhow let himself have that much intimacy.
+
+"I had a little list of things I wanted to see go through that night.
+Enough of us was ready to have Sodality perform its last cemetery rite
+and bury itself so that that was pretty sure to go through, but I wanted
+more than that, and several of us ladies did; and it looked to me like
+the schoolhouse and the young folks and the milk and the meat of this
+town could be done nice things to, so be we managed the meeting right. I
+even had a wild dream that the whole new society might adopt
+Christopher. Well, I donno why that's funny. It ain't funny when a club
+makes a building or a play or a bazaar or a dinner. Why shouldn't it
+make a man?
+
+"I told some of this to Insley, and he caught fire and lit up into a
+torch and had it all thought out beforehand, better than I could of
+dreamed it. But he made me feel bad. Haunted folks--folks haunted by
+something that was and that isn't--always makes me feel bad. How is it
+possible, I see he was asking himself the old, wore-out question, to
+drive out of the world something that is the world?
+
+"While we talked, Christopher went off to sleep in my arms, and even
+while I was so interested, I was enjoying the change that comes--the
+head growing heavier and heavier on my arm, as if sleep weighed
+something.
+
+"'Poor little kiddie,' I says, stupid.
+
+"'Rich little kiddie,' Insley says, wistful.
+
+"'Dear little kiddie,' says somebody else.
+
+"In the dining room doorway Robin stood--in a doorway as we had first
+seen her.
+
+"'Put him over here on the couch, do,' she says. 'It's much too hot to
+hold him, Calliope.'
+
+"She'd called me that at Mr. Bartlett's funeral, and I recollect how my
+throat went all over me when she done so. Ain't it funny about your own
+first name? It seems so _you_ when somebody nice says it for the first
+time--more you than you ever knew you were.
+
+"Insley lifted Chris in his arms to do as she said, and then stood
+staring at her across the child.
+
+"'I've been thinking,' he said, blunt--it's like watching the sign of
+folks to watch the different kind of things that makes them blunt. 'It's
+not my affair, but do you think you ought to let Chris get so--so used
+to you? What will he do when you're--when you go away?'
+
+"At this she said nothing for a moment, then she smiled up at him.
+
+"'I meant what I told him that night his father died,' she answered.
+'I'm going to keep Chris with me, always.'
+
+"'Always?' He stared at her, saw her face mean what she said. 'How fine
+of you! How fine of Mr. Proudfit!' said Insley.
+
+"She waited just a breath, then she met his eyes, brave.
+
+"'Not fine of me,' she says--'only fine for me. And not--Mr. Proudfit
+at all. I ought to take back what I told you--since I did tell you. That
+is not going to be.'
+
+"I don't think Insley meant for a minute to show any lack of formal
+respect for Christopher's sleep. But what Insley did was simply to turn
+and sit him down, bolt upright, on my lap. Then he wheeled round, trying
+to read her face.
+
+"'Do you mean you aren't going to marry him?' he demanded, rough--it's
+like watching another sign of folks to watch for the one thing that will
+make one or another rough.
+
+"'We are not going to be married,' she said. 'I mean that.'
+
+"I suppose likely the room went away altogether then, Christopher and me
+included, and left Insley there in some place a long ways from
+everywhere, with Robin's face looking at him. And he just naturally took
+that face between his hands.
+
+"'Robin,' he said, 'don't make me wait to know.'
+
+"Insley was the suddenest thing. And land, what it done to her name to
+have him say it. Just for a minute it sounded as if her name was the
+population of the world,--but with room for everybody else, too.
+
+"I think she put up her hands to take down his hands, but when she
+touched them, I think hers must have closed over his, next door to on
+purpose.
+
+"'Dear,' she says, 'tell me afterward.'
+
+"In that minute of stillness in which any new heaven is let down on a
+suitable new earth, a little voice piped up:--
+
+"'Tell it now,' says the voice. 'Is it a story? Tell it now.'
+
+"And there was Christopher, wide awake where he had been set down rude
+on my knee, and looking up at them, patient.
+
+"'I was dreamin' my dream,' he explained, polite. 'It was about all the
+nice things there is: You and you and you and hot ice-cream and the
+house's party.... Is they any more?' he asked, anxious.
+
+"Robin put out her arms for him, and she and Insley and I smiled at one
+another over his head.
+
+"'Ever so many more,' we told him.
+
+
+"I slipped out then and found Mis' Emmons, and I guess I come as near
+shining as anything that's like me can.
+
+"'What's the matter?' she says to me. 'You look as if you'd turned up
+the wick.'
+
+"'I did. They have. I won't tell,' I says. 'Oh, Mis' Emmons, I guess
+the meeting to-night won't need to adopt Christopher.'
+
+"She looked up at me quick, and then she started shining, too.
+
+"'What a universe it is,' she says, '--what a universe it is.'
+
+"Then we went off down to the meeting together. And the village was
+wonderful to go through, like a home some of us had hollowed out of the
+hills and was living in, common. As we went walking to the schoolhouse,
+the sidewalks seemed to me no more than ways dickered up to fasten us
+together, and to fasten us to them whose feet had wore the road before
+us, and to lead us to them that was coming, coming after: Christopher
+and Eph and Spudge Cadoza and Otie Daniel, or them like these. Otie
+Daniel had died the night before. Dr. Barrows had said Eph would not be
+lame, but we see he wan't sure of the value of the boy's physical life.
+But even so, even so we had a chance with Chris, and we had a chance
+with Spudge, and we had millions more. My feet wanted to run along them
+roads to meet the millions and my fingers tingled to get things ready.
+And as we went down Daphne Street to that meeting, I see how we all
+_was_ getting things ready, and I could of sung out for what I saw:--
+
+"For Mame Holcomb, sprinkling clothes on the back porch and hurrying to
+get to the hall.
+
+"For Mis' Uppers, picking her currants before she went, so's to get an
+early start on her jam in the morning.
+
+"For Viny Liberty, setting sponge for her bread loud enough so we heard
+her clear out in the street, and for Libby, shutting up her chicken coop
+that they earned their own living with.
+
+"For Mis' Toplady, driving by with Timothy, and her in the brown silk
+she'd made herself, like she's made all she's got.
+
+"For Abagail Arnold, wiping out her window to be filled to-morrow with
+the pies of her hand.
+
+"For little Mis' Sparks, rocking her baby on the front stoop and
+couldn't come to the meeting at all, 'count of having nobody to leave
+him with.
+
+"For them that had left cloth bleaching in their side yards and was
+saving the price of buying bleached. For them that had done their day's
+work, from parlour to wood-shed, and had hurried up the supper dishes
+and changed their dress and was on their way to the schoolhouse. For
+them that had lived lives like this and had died at it. For all the
+little dog-eared, wore-out account books where every one of them women
+figured out careful what they couldn't spend. And I looked down the
+street till I couldn't see no farther, and yet Daphne Street was going
+on, round and round the world, and acrost and acrost it, full of women
+doing the same identical way. And I could see away off to the places
+that Daphne Street led past, where women has all these things done for
+them and where the factories is setting them free, like us here in the
+village ain't free just yet, and I felt a wicked envy for them that can
+set their hands to the New Work, that us here in Friendship Village is
+trying so hard to get in between whiles. And I could see away ahead to
+times when sponge and currants and clothes and coops and similar won't
+have to be mothered by women 'most as much as children are; but when
+women, Away Off Then, will be mothers and workers and general human
+beings such as yet we only know how to think about being, scrappy and
+wishful. But all the time, in their arms and in ours and nowheres else,
+lays all the rest of the world that is ever going to be. And something
+in me kind of climbed out of me and run along ahead and looked back at
+me over its shoulder and says: 'Keep up, keep up, Calliope.' And before
+I knew it, right out loud, I says: 'I will. I will.'
+
+"An hour later, up in the schoolhouse, Silas Sykes stood arguing, to
+the top of his tone, that the first work of the reorganized
+society--that was to take in the whole town--had ought to be to buy a
+bargain Cupid-and-fish fountain he knew of, for the market square.
+
+"'It's going to take years and years to do--everything,' says Mis'
+Emmons to me, low.
+
+"But that didn't seem like much of anything to either of us. 'What if it
+is,' I says. And she nodded."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mothers to Men, by Zona Gale
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53650 ***
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mothers to Men, by Zona Gale

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-Title: Mothers to Men

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-<p class="bold2">MOTHERS TO MEN</p>

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-<hr />

-

-<div class="center"><img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="logo" /></div>

-

-<p class="bold">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />

-NEW YORK &middot; BOSTON &middot; CHICAGO<br />SAN FRANCISCO<br /><br />

-MACMILLAN &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br />

-LONDON &middot; BOMBAY &middot; CALCUTTA<br />MELBOURNE<br /><br />

-THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br />TORONTO</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<h1>MOTHERS TO MEN</h1>

-

-<p class="bold space-above">BY</p>

-

-<p class="bold2">ZONA GALE</p>

-

-<p class="bold">AUTHOR OF "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE," "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE<br />

-LOVE STORIES," "THE LOVES OF PELLEAS<br />

-AND ETARRE," ETC.</p>

-

-<p class="bold space-above">New York<br />

-THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />

-1911<br />

-<br />

-<i>All Rights Reserved</i></p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1911, by The Butterick Publishing Company, The Ridgeway<br />

-Company, The Crowell Publishing Company, and The Standard<br />

-Fashion Company.</span></p>

-

-<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1911,<br /><br />

-<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.<br />&mdash;&mdash;<br />

-Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911.</p>

-

-<p class="center space-above">Norwood Press<br />

-J. S. Cushing Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith Co.<br />Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p class="bold2">MOTHERS TO MEN</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<h2><span>CONTENTS</span></h2>

-

-<table summary="CONTENTS">

-  <tr>

-    <td><span class="smaller">CHAPTER</span></td>

-    <td> &nbsp; &nbsp; <span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>MOTHERS TO MEN</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>I</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>II</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>III</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>IV</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>V</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>VI</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_130">130</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>VII</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>VIII</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>IX</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>X</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>XI</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>XII</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td>

-  </tr>

-  <tr>

-    <td>XIII</td>

-    <td><a href="#Page_314">314</a></td>

-  </tr>

-</table>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>MOTHERS TO MEN</h2>

-

-<p>"Daddy!"</p>

-

-<p>The dark was so thick with hurrying rain that the child's voice was

-drowned. So he splashed forward a few steps in the mud and puddles of

-the highway and plucked at the coat of the man tramping before. The man

-took a hand from a pocket and stooped somewhat to listen, still plodding

-ahead.</p>

-

-<p>"Daddy! It's the hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went right

-through that hole an' it chokes my toe awful."</p>

-

-<p>The man suddenly squatted in the mud, presenting a broad, scarcely

-distinguishable back.</p>

-

-<p>"Climb up," he commanded.</p>

-

-<p>The boy wavered. His body ached with weariness, his feet were sore and

-cold, something in his head was numb. But in a moment he ran on, two

-steps or three, past the man.</p>

-

-<p>"Nope," he said, "I'm seeing if I could walk all the way. I could&mdash;yet.

-I just told you 'bout my toe, daddy, 'cause I <i>had</i> to talk about it."</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p><p>The man said nothing, but he rose and groped for the child's arm and

-got it about the armpit, and, now and then as they walked, he pulled the

-shoulder awkwardly upward, trying to help.</p>

-

-<p>After a time of silence the rain subsided a little, so that the child's

-voice was less like a drowned butterfly.</p>

-

-<p>"Daddy," he said, "what's velvet?"</p>

-

-<p>"I dunno, sonny. Some kind of black cloth, I guess. Why?"</p>

-

-<p>"It came in my head," the child explained. "I was tryin' to think of

-nice things. Velvet sounds like a king's clothes&mdash;but it sounds like a

-coffin too. I didn't know if it's a nice thing."</p>

-

-<p>This, the man understood swiftly, was because <i>her</i> coffin had been

-black velvet&mdash;the coffin which he had had no money to buy for her, for

-his wife and the boy's mother, the coffin which had been bought with the

-poor fund of a church which he had never entered. "What other nice thing

-you been thinkin' of?" he asked abruptly.</p>

-

-<p>"Circus. An' angels. An' ice-cream. An' a barrel o' marbles. An' bein'

-warm an' clean stockin's an' rocked...."</p>

-

-<p>"My God!" said the man.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p><p>The child looked up expectantly.</p>

-

-<p>"Did he say anything back?" he inquired eagerly.</p>

-

-<p>"Not a word," said the man in his throat.</p>

-

-<p>"Lemme try," said the child. "God&mdash;oh, God&mdash;<i>God dear</i>!" he called into

-the night.</p>

-

-<p>From the top of the hill on the edge of the Pump pasture which in that

-minute they had reached, they suddenly saw, cheery and yellow and alive,

-the lamps of Friendship Village, shining in the valley; and away at one

-side, less in serene contemplation than in deliberate withdrawal, shone

-the lights of a house set alone on its hill.</p>

-

-<p>"Oh, daddy, daddy&mdash;look at the lights!" the child cried. "God didn't say

-nothin' with words. Maybe he talks with lights instead of 'em."</p>

-

-<p>The man quickened his steps until, to keep pace with him, the little boy

-broke into uneven running.</p>

-

-<p>"Is those lights where we're goin', daddy?" he asked.</p>

-

-<p>"That's where," said the man. He put his hand in his pocket and felt for

-the fifteen cents that lay there, wrapped in paper. The fancied odour

-and warmth of something to drink caught at him until he could hardly

-bear the longing.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p><p>But before he could get to the drink he must do something else. The man

-had been fighting away the thought of what he meant to do. But when they

-entered the village and were actually upon its main street, lonely in

-the rainy, eight o'clock summer dusk, what he meant to do had to be

-faced. So he began looking this way and that for a place to leave the

-child. There was a wagon shop. Old wagons stood under the open shed,

-their thills and tongues hanging, not expectant of journeys like those

-of new wagons, but idle, like the worn arms of beaten men. Some men, he

-thought, would leave the boy there, to sleep under a seat and be found

-in the morning; but he was no such father as that, he reflected

-complacently. He meant to leave the boy in a home, give him a fair

-start. There was a little house with a broken picket fence&mdash;someway she

-wouldn't have liked him to be there; <i>she</i> always liked things nice. He

-had never been able to give the boy much that was nice, but now, he said

-to himself, he would take nothing second rate. There was a grocery with

-a light above stairs where very likely the family lived, and there, too,

-was a dry stairway where the child could sit and wait until somebody

-came&mdash;no, not there either.... "The best ain't none too good for the

-little fellow," thought the man.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p><p>"Dad-<i>ee</i>!" cried the child suddenly.</p>

-

-<p>He had run a few steps on and stood with his nose against the misty pane

-of Abagail Arnold's Home Bakery. Covered with pink mosquito-netting were

-a plate of sugar rolls, a fruit cake, a platter of cream puffs, and a

-tall, covered jar of shelled nuts.</p>

-

-<p>"Hustle up&mdash;you!" said the man roughly, and took him by the arm again.</p>

-

-<p>"I was comin'," said the little boy.</p>

-

-<p>Why not leave the child at the bakery? No&mdash;a house. It must be a house,

-with a porch and a front stair and big upstairs rooms and a look of

-money-in-the-bank. He was giving care to the selection. It was as if he

-were exercising some natural paternal office, to be scrupulously

-discharged. Music issued from the wooden saloon building with the false

-two-story front and the coloured windows; from a protesting piano a

-dance tune was being furiously forced, and, as the door swung open, the

-tap and thud of feet, the swell of voices and laughter, the odour of the

-spirits caught at the cold and weary man. "Hurry along&mdash;hurry along!" he

-bade the boy roughly. That was where he would come back afterward, but

-first he must find the right place for the boy.</p>

-

-<p>Vaguely he was seeking for that section of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> the village which it would

-call "the residence part," with that ugly and naked appropriation of the

-term which excludes all the humbler homes from residence-hood at all.

-But when he had turned aside from the main street he came upon the First

-Church, with lights streaming from the ground-glass windows of the

-prayer-meeting room, and he stood still, staring up at it.</p>

-

-<p>She had cared a good deal about that sort of thing. Churches did

-good&mdash;it was a church that had buried her when he could not. Why not

-there? Why not leave the child there?</p>

-

-<p>He turned aside and mounted the three wooden steps and sat down, drawing

-the boy beside him. Grateful for a chance to rest, the child turned

-sidewise and dropped his head heavily on his father's arm. There was

-light enough for the father to see the thick, wet hair on the babyish

-forehead.</p>

-

-<p>"I did walked all the way, didn't I?" the child said triumphantly.</p>

-

-<p>"You bet you did," said his father absently.</p>

-

-<p>Since the boy's mother had died only three months had passed, but in

-that time had been crowded for the child a lifetime of physical misery.

-Before that time, too, there had been hunger and cold and the torture of

-the continual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> quarreling between that mother, sickly, half-fed,

-irritable, and this father, out of work and drunken. Then the mother had

-died, and the man had started out with the boy, seeking new work where

-they would not know his old vice. And in these three months, for the

-boy's sake, that old vice had been kept bound. For the boy's sake he had

-been sober and, if the chance had come, he would have been industrious.

-But, save for odd jobs, the chance never came; there seemed to be a kind

-of ineffectualness in the way he asked for work which forbade him a

-trial. Then one day, after almost three months of the struggle, he had

-waked to the old craving, to the need, the instant need, for liquor. He

-had faced the situation honestly. He knew, or thought he knew, his power

-of endurance. He knew that in a day or two he would be worsted, and that

-there would follow a period of which, afterward, he would remember

-nothing. Meanwhile, what of the boy? He had a fondness for the boy, and

-there remained to the man some shreds of decency and even of tradition.

-He would not turn him over to the "authorities." He would not cast him

-adrift in the city. He resolved to carry him to the country, to some

-near little town where, dimly it seemed to him, the people would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>

-more likely to take him in. "They have more time&mdash;an' more room&mdash;an'

-more to eat," he sought to explain it to himself. So he had walked, and

-the child had walked, from the City to Friendship Village. He must find

-a place to leave him: why not leave him here on the church steps,

-"outside the meetin'?"</p>

-

-<p>"Don't you go to sleep, kiddie," he said, and shook him lightly.</p>

-

-<p>"I was jus' restin' my eye-flaps. Eye-things. <i>What</i> are they, daddy?"</p>

-

-<p>"Eye-lids."</p>

-

-<p>"Yes. Them. They're tired, too," said the child, and smiled&mdash;the sleepy

-smile which gave his face a baby winsomeness. Then he snuggled in the

-curve of arm, like a drowsy, nosing puppy.</p>

-

-<p>The father sat looking down on him, and in his breast something pulled.

-In these three months he had first become really acquainted with the

-boy, had first performed for him little personal offices&mdash;sewed on a

-button or two, bought him shoes, bound up a hurt finger. In this time,

-too, he had first talked with him alone, tried to answer his questions.

-"Where <i>is</i> my mamma, an' will she rock somebody else?" "Are you going

-to be my daddy till you die, an' <i>then</i> who'll be?" "What is the biggest

-thing everybody knows? Can I know it too?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>... Also, in these three

-months, at night he had gone to sleep, sometimes in a bed, oftener in a

-barn, now and again under the stars, with the child breathing within his

-reach, and had waked to keep him covered with his own coat. Now he was

-going to end all this.</p>

-

-<p>"It ain't fair to the kid not to. It ain't fair to cart him around like

-this," he said over and over, defending himself before some dim

-dissenter.</p>

-

-<p>The boy suddenly swung back from his father's arm and looked up in his

-face. "Will&mdash;will there be any supper till morning?" he asked.</p>

-

-<p>You might have thought that the man did not hear, he sat so still

-looking down the wet road-ruts shining under the infrequent lamps.

-Hunger and cold, darkness and wet and ill-luck&mdash;why should he not keep

-the boy from these? It was not deserting his child; it was giving him

-into better hands. It did not occur to him that the village might not

-accept the charge. Anything would be better than what he himself had to

-give. Hunger and cold and darkness....</p>

-

-<p>"You stay still here a minute, sonny," said the man.</p>

-

-<p>"You goin' 'way?" the child demanded.</p>

-

-<p>"A minute. You stay still here&mdash;right<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> where you are," said the man, and

-went into the darkness.</p>

-

-<p>The little boy sat still. He was wide awake now that he was alone; the

-walls of the dark seemed suddenly to recede, and instead of merely the

-church steps there was the whole black, listening world to take account

-of. He sat alert, trying to warm each hand on the cold wrist of its

-fellow. Where had his father gone? To find them a place to stay? Suppose

-he came back and said that he had found them a home; and they should go

-to it; and it would have a coal stove and a bedstead, and a pantry with

-cookies and brown sugar in the jars. And a lady would come and cook

-molasses candy for him....</p>

-

-<p>All this time something was hurting him intolerably. It was the foot,

-and the biggest toe, and the hole that was "choking" <i>him</i>. He fumbled

-at his shoe laces, but they were wet and the shoes were wet and sodden,

-and he gave it up. Where had his father gone? How big the world seemed

-when he was gone, and how <i>different</i> the night was. And when the lady

-had the molasses candy cooked, like in a story, she would cool it at the

-window and they would cut it in squares....</p>

-

-<p>As suddenly as he had gone, his father reappeared from the darkness.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>"Here," he said roughly, and thrust in the child's hands a paper bag.

-And when he had opened it eagerly there were sugar rolls and cream puffs

-and a piece of fruit cake and some shelled nuts. Fifteen cents' worth of

-food, badly enough selected, in all conscience, but&mdash;fifteen cents'

-worth. The fifteen cents which the man had been carrying in his pocket,

-wrapped in paper.</p>

-

-<p>"Now set there," said his father, "an' eat 'em up. An' listen, son. Set

-there till folks come out from in there. Set there till they come out.

-An' here's somethin' I'm puttin' in your coat pocket&mdash;see? It's a paper.

-Don't you look at it. But when the folks come out from in there&mdash;an' ask

-you anything&mdash;you show 'em that. Remember. Show 'em that."</p>

-

-<p>In the prayer-meeting room the reed organ sent out some trembling,

-throaty chords, and the little group in there sang an old melody. It was

-strange to the man, as he listened&mdash;</p>

-

-<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">

-<div>"Break thou the bread of life</div>

-<div>To me, to me&mdash;"</div>

-</div></div></div>

-

-<p>but, "That's it," he thought, "that's it. Break it to him&mdash;I can't. All

-I can give him is stuff in a paper bag, an' not always that. Now you

-break it to him&mdash;"</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p><p>"Dad-<i>ee</i>!" cried the child. "You!"</p>

-

-<p>Startled, the man looked down at him. It was almost like a counter

-charge. But the child was merely holding out to him half his store. The

-man shook his head and went down the steps to the sidewalk and turned to

-look back at the child munching happily from the paper sack. "Break it

-to him&mdash;break it to him&mdash;God!" the father muttered, as he might have

-used a charm.</p>

-

-<p>Again the child looked out expectantly.</p>

-

-<p>"Did he say anything back?" he asked eagerly.</p>

-

-<p>"Not a word&mdash;not a word," said the man again. This time he laughed,

-nervously and foolishly. "But mebbe he will," he mumbled

-superstitiously. "I dunno. Now, you set there. An' then you give 'em the

-paper&mdash;an' go with anybody out o' the church that asks you. Dad may not

-get back for&mdash;quite a while...."</p>

-

-<p>The man went. The child, deep in the delight of a cream puff, wondered

-and looked after him troublously, and was vaguely comforted by the

-murmur of voices beyond the doors.</p>

-

-<p>"Why, God didn't answer back because he was to the church meeting," the

-child thought, when he heard the people moving about within.</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>I</h2>

-

-<p>"Inside the church that night," Calliope Marsh is wont to tell it, "the

-Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality was having one

-of our special meetings, with hot chocolate and ice lemonade and two

-kinds of wafers. There wasn't a very big attendance, account of the

-rain, and there was so much refreshments ready that us ladies was urgin'

-the men to have all they wanted.</p>

-

-<p>"'Drink both kinds, Timothy,' Mis Toplady says to her husband,

-persuadin'; 'it'll have to be throwed away if somebody don't drink it

-up.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Lord, Amandy,' says Timothy, testy, 'I do hate to be sicked on to my

-food like that. It takes away my appetite, same as poison would.'</p>

-

-<p>"'They always do it,' says Jimmy Sturgis, morose. 'My wife'll say to me,

-"Jimmy, eat up them cold peas. They'll spoil if you don't," and, "Jimmy,

-can't you make 'way with them cold pancakes?" Till I wish't I could

-starve.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, if you hadn't et up things,' says Mis' Sturgis, mild, 'we'd of

-been scrappin' in the poor-house by now. I dunno but I'd ruther scrap

-where I am.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p><p>"'Sure!' says Postmaster Silas Sykes, that always pours oil on troubled

-waters except when the trouble is his own; and then he churns them.</p>

-

-<p>"'I dunno what ailed me in business meeting to-night,' says Mis'

-Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I declare, I was full as nervous as a

-witch. I couldn't keep my feet still anywheres.'</p>

-

-<p>"'The fidgets,' comprehends Mis' Uppers, sympathetic. 'I get 'em in my

-feet 'long toward night sometimes. Turn an' twist an' shift&mdash;I know the

-feeling. Whenever my feet begin that, I always give right up an' take

-off my shoes an' get into my rubbers.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, I wish't I had some rubbers now,' says Mis' Mayor Uppers. 'I

-wore my best shoes out to tea an' come right from tea here, like a

-maniac. An' now look at me, in my Three Dollar-and-a-half kids an' the

-streets runnin' rivers.'</p>

-

-<p>"'You take my rubbers,' Mis' Timothy Toplady offered. 'I've set with 'em

-on all evening because I always get 'em mixed up at Sodality, an' I

-declare the water'll feel good to my poor feet.'</p>

-

-<p>"'No, no, don't you trouble,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I'll just slip my shoes

-off an' track that one block in my stocking feet. Then I'll put 'em in

-good, hot water an' go to bed. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> wouldn't of come out to-night at all

-if it hadn't of been for the professor.'</p>

-

-<p>"'For goodness' sakes,' I says, 'don't call him that. You know how he

-hates it.'</p>

-

-<p>"'But I do like to say it,' Mis' Uppers insists, wistful. 'He's the only

-professor I ever knew.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Me either,' I says&mdash;and I knew how she felt.</p>

-

-<p>"Just the same, we was getting to like Mr. Insley too much to call him

-that if he didn't want it, or even 'doctor' that was more common, though

-over to Indian Mound College, half way between us and the City, he is

-one or both, and I dunno but his name tapers off with capital letters,

-same as some.</p>

-

-<p>"'I just came over here to work,' he told us when we first see him. 'I

-don't profess anything. And "doctor" means teacher, you know, and I'm

-just learning things. Must you have a formal title for me? Won't Mr.

-do?'</p>

-

-<p>"Most of the College called him just 'Insley,' friendly and approving,

-and dating back to his foot-ball days, and except when we was speaking

-to him, we commonly got to calling him that too. A couple of months

-before he'd come over from the College with a letter of introduction

-from one of the faculty to Postmaster Silas Sykes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> that is an alderman

-and our professional leading citizen. The letter from the College said

-that we could use Mr. Insley in any local civic work we happened to be

-doing.</p>

-

-<p>"'Civic work?' Silas says to him, thoughtful. 'You mean shuttin' up

-saloons an' like that?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Not necessarily,' he told him. 'Just work with folks, you know.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well-a, settin' out bushes?' Silas asks.</p>

-

-<p>"'Whatever you're most interested in, Mr. Sykes,' says he. 'Isn't there

-some organization that's doing things here?'</p>

-

-<p>"Silas wasn't interested in so very much of anything except Silas. But

-the word 'organization' helped him out.</p>

-

-<p>"'There's the Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality,'

-says he. 'That must be the very kind of a thing you mean.'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley laughed a little, but he let Mis' Sykes, that loves new things

-and new people, bring him to our next evening meeting in the church

-parlors, and he'd been back several times, not saying much, but just

-getting acquainted. And that rainy night, when the men met with us to

-talk over some money raising for Sodality, we'd asked him to come over

-too. We all liked him. He had a kind of a used-to-things way, and you

-felt like you'd always known him or, for the time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> you hadn't, that

-you'd both missed something out; and he had a nice look too, a look that

-seemed to be saying 'good morning' and to be beginning a fine, new

-day&mdash;the best day yet.</p>

-

-<p>"He'd set there kind of broodin' the most of that evening, drinking

-whatever anybody brought him, but not putting his mind to it so very

-much; but it was a bright broodin', an' one that made you think of

-something that's going to open and not just of something that's shut up.

-You can brood both ways, but the effect is as different as a bud from a

-core.</p>

-

-<p>"'Speakin' of money raisin' for Sodality,' says Silas Sykes, kind of

-pretend hearty and pretend casual, like he does, 'why don't Sodality

-make some money off'n the Fourth of July? Everybody else is.'</p>

-

-<p>("Sodality always speaks of itself and of the Cemetery real intimate,

-without the <i>the</i>, an' everybody's got to doing it.)</p>

-

-<p>"Us ladies all set still and kept still. The Fourth of July, that was

-less than a week off, was a sore point with us, being we'd wanted a

-celebration that would <i>be</i> a celebration, and not merely a money-raiser

-for the town.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, I say canvass, house to house,' says Timothy. 'Folks would give

-you a dime to get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> you off'n the front porch that wouldn't come out to a

-dime entertainment, never.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Why not ask them that's got Dead in their own families, to pay out for

-'em, an' leave them alone that's got livin' mouths to feed?' says Threat

-Hubbelthwait, querulous. Threat ain't no relations but his wife, and he

-claims to have no Dead of his own. I always say they must be either

-living or dead, or else where's Threat come in? But he won't admit it.</p>

-

-<p>"'What you raisin' money for anyhow?' asks Eppleby Holcomb, quiet.

-Eppleby always keeps still a long time, and then lets out something

-vital.</p>

-

-<p>"As a matter of fact, Sodality didn't have no real work on hand,

-Cemetery lookin' real neat and tasty for Cemetery, and no immediate dead

-coming on as far as we could know; but we didn't have much of anything

-in the treasury, either. And when we didn't have any work on hand, we

-was in the habit of raising money, and when we'd got some money earnt,

-we was in the habit of devising some nice way to spend it. And so we

-kept Sodality real alive.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, there may not be any active dead just now,' Mis' Sykes explains

-it, 'but they are sure to die and need us. We had two country funerals

-to pay for last year. Or I might say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> one an' a half, one corpse

-contributing half enough for his own support in Cemetery.'</p>

-

-<p>"With that Insley spoke up, kind of firm and nice, with muscles in his

-tone, like he does:</p>

-

-<p>"'What's the matter with doing something with these folks before they

-die?' he asks.</p>

-

-<p>"I guess we all looked kind of blank&mdash;like when you get asked <i>why</i>

-Columbus discovered America and all you know how to answer is just the

-date he done so on.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'do what?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Mustn't there be something to do with them, living, if there's

-everything to be done for them, dead?' Insley asks.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well-a' says Mis' Sykes, 'I don't know that I understand just how you

-mean that. Perhaps the Mission Band&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'No,' says Insley. 'You. Us.'</p>

-

-<p>"I never knew a man to say so little and yet to get so much said.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'of course Sodality was formed with the idee

-of caring for Cemetery. You see that lets in the Dead only.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Gosh,' says Eppleby Holcomb, 'how exclusive.' But I don't know as

-anybody heard him but me.</p>

-

-<p>"'I know,' says Insley, slow. 'Well, at any rate, perhaps there are

-things that all of us <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>Living might do together&mdash;for the sake, say, of

-earning some money for the Dead. There'd be no objection to that, would

-there?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, no,' says Mis' Sykes. 'I'm sure nobody could take exception to

-<i>that</i>. Of course you always have to earn money out of the living.'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley looked at us all kind of shy&mdash;at one and another and another of

-us, like he thought he might find some different answer in somebody's

-eyes. I smiled at him, and so did Mis' Toplady, and so did Eppleby; and

-Mis' Eleanor Emmons, the widow-lady, lately moved in, she nodded. But

-the rest set there like their faces was on wrong side out and didn't

-show no true pattern.</p>

-

-<p>"'I mean,' he says, not quite knowing how to make us understand what he

-was driving at, 'I mean, let's get to know these folks while they are

-alive. Aren't we all more interested in folks, than we are in their

-graves?'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Folks</i>,' Timothy Toplady says over, meditative, like he'd heard of

-members, customers, clients, murderers and the like, but never of folks.</p>

-

-<p>"'I mean,' Insley says again, 'oh, any one of a dozen things. For

-instance, do something jolly that'll give your young people something to

-do evenings&mdash;get them to help earn the money for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> Cemetery, if you want

-to,' he adds, laughing a little.</p>

-

-<p>"'There's goin' to be a Vigilance Committee to see after the young folks

-of Friendship Village, nights,' says Silas Sykes, grim.</p>

-

-<p>"'You might have town parties, have the parties in schools and in the

-town hall,' Insley goes on, 'and talk over the Cemetery that belongs to

-you all, and talk over the other things besides the Cemetery that belong

-to you all. Maybe I could help,' he adds, 'though I own up to you now

-I'm really more fond of folks&mdash;speaking by and large&mdash;than I am of

-tombstones.'</p>

-

-<p>"He said a little more to us, about how folks was doing in the world

-outside the village, and he was so humorous about it that they never

-knew how something inside him was hopping with hope, like I betted it

-was, with his young, divine enthusiasm. And when he'd got done he

-waited, all grave and eager, for somebody to peep up. And it was, as it

-would be, Silas Sykes who spoke first.</p>

-

-<p>"'It's all right, it's all right,' says he, 'so long as Sodality don't

-go meddling in the village affairs&mdash;petitionin' the council and

-protestin' an' so on. That gets any community all upset.'</p>

-

-<p>"'That's so,' says Timothy, nodding. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>'Meetin', singin' songs, servin'

-lemonade an' plantin' things in the ground is all right enough. It helps

-on the fellow feelin' amazin'. But pitchin' in for reforms and things&mdash;'

-Timothy shook his head.</p>

-

-<p>"'As to reforms,' says Insley, 'give me the fellowship, and the reforms

-will take care of themselves.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Things is quite handy about takin' their course, though,' says Silas,

-'so be we don't yank open the cocoons an' buds an' others.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says Mis' Uppers, 'I can't do much more, Professor. I'm drove

-to death, as it is. I don't even get time to do my own improvin' round

-the place.' Mis' Uppers always makes that her final argument. 'Sew for

-the poor?' I've heard her say. 'Why, I can't even get my own fall sewing

-done.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Me, too,' and, 'Me, either,' went round the circle. And, 'I can't do a

-great deal myself,' says Mis' Sykes, 'not till after my niece goes

-away.'</p>

-

-<p>"I thought, 'I shouldn't think you could tend to much of anything else,

-not with Miss Beryl Sessions in the house.' That was the Sykes's niece,

-till then unknown to them, that we'd all of us heard nothing but, since

-long before she come. But of course I kept still, part because I was

-expecting an unknown niece of my own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> in a week or so, and your unknown

-relatives is quite likely to be glass houses.</p>

-

-<p>"'Another thing,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'don't let's us hold any

-doin's in this church, kicking up the new cork that the Ladies' Aid has

-just put down on the floor. It'll all be tracked up in no time, letting

-in Tom, Dick, and Harry.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Don't let's get the church mixed up in anything outside, for pity's

-sakes,' says Silas. 'The trustees'll object to our meeting here, if we

-quit working for a dignified object and go to making things mutual,

-promiscuous. Churches has got to be church-like.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, Silas,' says Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying anything,

-'I donno as some of us could bring ourselves to think of Christ as real

-Christ-like, if he come back the way he use' to be.'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley sat looking round on them all, still with his way of saying good

-morning on a good day. I wondered if he wasn't wishing that they'd hang

-on that way to something worth hanging to. For I've always thought, and

-I think now, that they's a-plenty of stick-to-itiveness in the world;

-but the trouble is, it's stuck to the wrong thing.</p>

-

-<p>"The talk broke up after that, like somebody had said something in bad

-taste; and we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>conversed around in groups, and done our best to make

-'way with the refreshments. And Insley set talking to Mis' Eleanor

-Emmons, the new widow, lately moved in.</p>

-

-<p>"About Mis' Emmons the social judgment of Friendship Village was for the

-present hanging loose. This was partly because we didn't understand her

-name.</p>

-

-<p>"'My land, was her husband a felon or a thief or what that she don't use

-his name?' everybody asked everybody. 'What's she stick her own name in

-front of his last name like that for? Sneaked out of usin' his Christian

-name as soon as his back was turned, <i>I</i> call it,' said some. 'My land,

-I'd use my dead husband's forename if it was Nebuchadnezzar. <i>My</i>

-opinion, we'd best go slow till she explains herself.'</p>

-

-<p>"But I guess Insley had more confidence.</p>

-

-<p>"'You'll help, I know?' I heard him say to Mis' Emmons.</p>

-

-<p>"'My friend,' she says back, 'whatever I can do I'll do. It's a big job

-you're talking about, you know.'</p>

-

-<p>"'It's <i>the</i> big job,' says Insley, quiet.</p>

-

-<p>"Pretty soon Mis' Toplady got up on her feet, drawing her shawl up her

-back.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' she says, 'whatever you decide, count on me&mdash;I'll always do for

-chinkin' in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> I've got to get home now and set my bread or it won't be

-up till day <i>after</i> to-morrow. Ready, Timothy? Good night all.'</p>

-

-<p>"She went towards the door, Timothy following. But before they got to

-it, it opened, and somebody come in, at the sight of who Mis' Toplady

-stopped short and the talk of the rest of us fell away. No stranger,

-much, comes to Friendship Village without our knowing it, and to have a

-stranger walk unbeknownst into the very lecture-room of the First Church

-was a thing we never heard of, without he was a book agent or a

-travelling man.</p>

-

-<p>"Here, though, was a stranger&mdash;and such a stranger. She was so

-unexpected and so dazzling that it shot through my head she was like a

-star, taking refuge from all the roughness and the rain outside&mdash;a star,

-so it come in my head, using up its leisure on a cloudy night with

-peepin' in here and there to give out brightness anyway. The rough, dark

-cheviot that the girl wore was sort of like a piece of storm-cloud

-clinging about that brightness&mdash;a brightness of wind-rosy face and blowy

-hair, all uncovered. She stood on the threshold, holding her wet

-umbrella at arm's length out in the entry.</p>

-

-<p>"'I beg your pardon. Are you ready, Aunt Eleanor?' she asked.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Eleanor Emmons turned and looked at her.</p>

-

-<p>"'Robin!' she says. 'Why, you must be wet through.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm pretty wet,' says the girl, serene, 'I'm so messy I won't come in.

-I'll just stop out here on the steps. Don't hurry.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Wait a minute,' Mis' Emmons says. 'Stay where you are then, please,

-Robin, and meet these people.'</p>

-

-<p>"The girl threw the door wide, and she stepped back into the vestibule,

-where her umbrella had been trailing little puddles; and she stood there

-against the big, black background of the night and the village, while

-Mis' Emmons presented her.</p>

-

-<p>"'This is my niece, Miss Sidney,' she told us. 'She has just come to me

-to-day&mdash;for as long as I can keep her. Will you all come to see her?'</p>

-

-<p>"It wasn't much the way Mis' Sykes had done, singing praises of Miss

-Beryl Sessions for weeks on end before she'd got there; nor the way I

-was doing, wondering secret about my unknown niece, and what she'd be

-like. Mis' Emmons introduced her niece like she'd always been one of us.

-She said our names over, and we went towards her; and Miss Sidney leaned

-a little inside the frame of the doorway and put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> out her hand to us

-all, a hand that didn't have any glove on and that in spite of the rain,

-was warm.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm so sorry,' she says, 'I'm afraid I'm disgracing Aunt Eleanor. But

-I couldn't help it. I love to walk in the rain.'</p>

-

-<p>"'That's what rain is for,' Insley says to her; and I see the two change

-smiles before Mis' Hubbelthwait's 'Well, I do hope you've got some good

-high rubbers on your feet' made the girl grave again&mdash;a sweet grave, not

-a stiff grave. You can be grave both ways, and they're as different from

-each other as soup from hot water.</p>

-

-<p>"'I have, thank you,' she says, 'big storm boots. Did you know,' she

-adds, 'that somebody else is waiting out here? Somebody's little bit of

-a beau? And I'm afraid he's gone to sleep.'</p>

-

-<p>"We looked at one another, wondering. Who was waiting for any of us?

-'Not me,' one after another says, positive. 'We've all raced home alone

-from this church since we was born,' Mis' Uppers adds, true enough.</p>

-

-<p>"We was curious, with that curiosity that it's kind of fun to have, and

-we all crowded forward into the entry. And a little to one side of the

-shining lamp path was setting a child&mdash;a little boy, with a paper bag in his arms.</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>II</h2>

-

-<p>"Who on earth was he, we wondered to ourselves, and we all jostled

-forward, trying to see down to him, us women lifting up our skirts from

-the entry wet. He was like a little wad of clothes, bunched up on the

-top step, but inside them the little fellow was all curled up, sleeping.

-And we knew he hadn't come for any of us, and he didn't look like he was

-waiting for anybody in particular.</p>

-

-<p>"Silas fixed up an explanation, ready-done:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'He must belong down on the flats,' says Silas. 'The idear of his

-sleepin' here. I said we'd oughter hev a gate acrost the vestibule.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Roust him up an' start him home,' says Timothy Toplady, adviceful.</p>

-

-<p>"'I will,' says Silas, that always thinks it's his share to do any

-unclaimed managing; and he brought down his hand towards the child's

-shoulder. But his hand didn't get that far.</p>

-

-<p>"'Let me wake him up,' says Robin Sidney.</p>

-

-<p>"She laid her umbrella in the wet of the steps and, Silas being

-surprised into giving way, she stooped over the child. She woke him up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>

-neither by speaking to him nor grasping his arm, but she just slipped

-her hands along his cheeks till her hands met under his chin, and she

-lifted up his chin, gentle.</p>

-

-<p>"'Wake up and look at me,' she says.</p>

-

-<p>"The child opened his eyes, with no starting or bewildering, and looked

-straight up into her face. There was light enough for us all to see that

-he smiled bright, like one that's real glad some waiting is done. And

-she spoke to him, not making a point of it and bringing it out like

-she'd aimed it at him, but just matter-of-fact gentle and commonplace

-tender.</p>

-

-<p>"'Whose little boy are you?' she ask' him.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm goin' with whoever wants me to go with 'em,' says the child.</p>

-

-<p>"'But who are you&mdash;where do you live?' she says to him. 'You live, don't

-you&mdash;in this town?'</p>

-

-<p>"The child shook his head positive.</p>

-

-<p>"'I lived far,' he told her, 'in that other place. I come up here with

-my daddy. He says he might not come back to-night.'</p>

-

-<p>"Robin Sidney knelt right down before him on the wet steps.</p>

-

-<p>"'Truly,' she said, 'haven't you any place to go to-night?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, yes,' says the child, 'he says I must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> go with whoever wants me to

-go with 'em. Do&mdash;do you?'</p>

-

-<p>"At that Miss Sidney looked up at us, swift, and down again. The wind

-had took hold of a strand of her hair and blew it across her eyes, and

-she was pushing it away as she got up. And by then Insley was standing

-before her, back of the little boy, that he suddenly stooped down and

-picked up in his arms.</p>

-

-<p>"'Let's get inside, shall we?' he says, commanding. 'Let's all go back

-in and see about him.'</p>

-

-<p>"We went back into the church, even Silas taking orders, though of

-course that was part curiosity; and Insley sat down with the child on

-his knee, and held out the child's feet in his hand.</p>

-

-<p>"'He's wet as a rat,' he says. 'Look at his shoes.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well-a, make him tell his name, why don't you?' says Mis' Sykes,

-sharp. '<i>I</i> think we'd ought to find out who he is. What's your name,

-Boy?' she adds, brisk.</p>

-

-<p>"Insley dropped the boy's feet and took a-hold of one of his hands.

-'Yes,' he says, hasty, 'we must try to do that.' But he looked right

-straight over Mis' Sykes's shoulder to where, beyond the others, Robin

-Sidney was standing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> 'He was your friend first,' he said to her. 'You

-found him.'</p>

-

-<p>"She come and knelt down beside the child where, on Insley's knee, he

-sat staring round, all wondering and questioning, to the rest of us. But

-she seemed to forget all about the rest of us, and I loved the way she

-was with that little strange boy. She kind of put her hands on him,

-wiping the raindrops off his face, unbuttoning his wet coat, doing a

-little something to his collar; and every touch was a kind of a little

-stroke that some women's hands give almost without their knowing it. I

-loved to watch her, because I'm always as stiff as a board with a

-child&mdash;unless I'm alone with them. Then I ain't.</p>

-

-<p>"'My name's Robin,' she says to the little fellow. 'What's yours, dear?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Christopher,' he says right off. 'First, Christopher. An' then John.

-An' then Bartlett. Have you only got one name?' he asked her.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes, I've got two,' she says. 'The rest of mine is Sidney. Where&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'Only two?' says the child. 'Why, I've got three.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Only two,' she answers. 'Where did your father go&mdash;don't you know

-that, Christopher?'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>"That seemed to make him think of something, and he looked down at his

-paper bag.</p>

-

-<p>"'First he bringed me these,' he says, and his face lighted up and he

-held out his bag to her. 'You can have one my cream-puffs,' he offers

-her, magnificent. I held my breath for fear she wouldn't take it, but

-she did. 'What fat ones!' she says admiring, and held it in her hand

-while she asked him more. It was real strange how we stood around, us

-older women and all, waiting for her to see what she could get out of

-him. But there wasn't any use. He was to go with whoever asked him to

-go&mdash;that was all he knew.</p>

-

-<p>"Silas Sykes snaps his watch. 'It's gettin' late,' he gives out, with a

-backward look at nothing in particular. 'Hadn't we best just leave him

-at the police station? Threat Hubbelthwait and me go right past there.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady, she sweeps round on him, pulling her shawl over her

-shoulders&mdash;one of them gestures of some women that makes it seem like

-even them that works hard and don't get out much of anywhere has motions

-left in them that used to be motioned in courts and castles and like

-that. 'Police station! Silas Sykes,' says she, queenly, 'you put me in

-mind of a stone wall, you're that sympathizin'.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p><p>"'Well, <i>we</i> can't take him, Amandy,' Timothy Toplady reminds her,

-hurried. 'We live too far. 'Twouldn't do to walk him 'way there.'

-Timothy will give, but he wants to give to his own selected poor that he

-knows about; an' he won't never allow himself no luxuries in givin' here

-an' there, when something just happens to come up.</p>

-

-<p>"'Land, he may of come from where there's disease&mdash;you can't tell,' says

-Mis' Uppers. 'I think we'd ought to go slow.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' says two-three others, 'we'd best go slow. Why, his father may

-be looking for him.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Eleanor Emmons spoke up serene.</p>

-

-<p>"'While we're going slow,' she says, 'I think I'll just take him home

-and get his feet dry. I live the nearest. Mr. Sykes, you might report

-him at the police station as you go by, in case someone is looking for

-him. And if nobody inquires, he can sleep on my couch beside my grate

-fire to-night. Can't he, Robin?'</p>

-

-<p>"'I'd love it,' says the girl.</p>

-

-<p>"'Excellent,' says Insley, and set the little boy on his feet.</p>

-

-<p>"But when he done that, the child suddenly swung round and caught Miss

-Sidney's arm and looked up in her face; and his little nose was screwed

-up alarming.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p><p>"'What <i>is</i> it&mdash;what's the matter, Christopher?' she ask' him. And the

-rest of us that had begun moving to go, stopped to listen. And in that

-little stillness Christopher told us:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh,' he says, 'it's that hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went

-right through that hole. And it's <i>chokin'</i> me.'</p>

-

-<p>"Just exactly as if a hand had kind of touched us all, a nice little

-stir went round among us women. And with that, Insley, who had been

-standing there so big and strong and able and willing, and waiting for a

-chance to take hold, he just simply put his hands on his knees and

-stooped over and made his back right for the little fellow to climb up

-on. The child knew what it was for, soon enough&mdash;we see somebody

-somewheres must of been doing it for him before, for he scrambled right

-up, laughing, and Miss Sidney helping him. And a kind of a little

-ripple, that wan't no true words, run round among us all. Most women and

-some men is strong on ripples of this sort, but when it comes right down

-to doing something in consequence, we ain't so handy.</p>

-

-<p>"'Leave me come along and help take care of him a little while,' I says;

-and I thought it was because I was ashamed of myself and trying to make

-up for not offering before. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> I think really what was the matter with

-me was that I just plain wanted to go along with that little boy.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm your automobile,' says Insley to the little fellow, and he laughed

-out, delighted, hanging onto his paper sack.</p>

-

-<p>"'If you'll give me the big umbrella, Aunt Eleanor,' says Miss Sidney on

-the church steps, 'I'll try to keep the rain off the automobile and the

-passenger.'</p>

-

-<p>"The rain had just about stopped when we four started down Daphne

-Street. The elms and maples along the sidewalk was dripping soft, and

-everybody's gardens was laying still, like something new had happened to

-them. It smelled good, and like everything outdoors was going to start

-all over again and be something else, sweeter.</p>

-

-<p>"When we got most to Mis' Emmon's gate, I stopped stock still, looking

-at something shining on the hill. It was Proudfit House, lit up from top

-to bottom&mdash;the big house on the hill that had stood there, blind and

-dark, for months on end.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, some of the Proudfits must of come home,' I says out loud.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Emmons answered up, all unexpected to me, for I never knew she

-knew the Proudfits.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> 'Mr. Alex Proudfit is coming on to-morrow,' she

-says. And I sort of resented her that was so near a stranger in the

-village hearing this about Alex Proudfit before I did, that had known

-him since he was in knickerbockers.</p>

-

-<p>"'Am I keeping the rain off you two people?' Miss Sidney asks as, at the

-corner, we all turned our backs on Proudfit House.</p>

-

-<p>"'Nobody,' Insley says&mdash;and his voice was always as smooth and round as

-wheels running along under his words, 'nobody ever kept the rain off as

-you are keeping it off, Miss Sidney.'</p>

-

-<p>"And, 'I did walked all that way&mdash;in that rain,' says Christopher,

-sleepy, in his automobile's collar.</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>III</h2>

-

-<p>"If it was anyways damp or chilly, Mis' Emmons always had a little blaze

-in the grate&mdash;not a heat blaze, but just a Come-here blaze. And going

-into her little what-she-called living-room at night, I always thought

-was like pushing open some door of the dark to find a sort of

-cubby-corner hollowed out from the bigger dark for tending the homey

-fire. That rainy night we went in from the street almost right onto the

-hearth. And it was as pleasant as taking the first mouthful of

-something.</p>

-

-<p>"Insley, with Christopher still on his back, stood on the rug in front

-of the door and looked round him.</p>

-

-<p>"'How jolly it always looks here, Mrs. Emmons,' he says. 'I never saw

-such a hearty place.'</p>

-

-<p>"I donno whether you've ever noticed the difference in the way women

-bustle around? Most nice women do bustle when something comes up that

-needs it. Some does it light and lifty, like fairies going around on

-missions; and some does it kind of crackling and nervous, like goblins

-on business. Mis' Emmons was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> first kind, and it was real

-contagious. You caught it yourself and begun pulling chairs around and

-seeing to windows and sort of settling away down deep into the minute.

-She begun doing that way now, seeing to the fire and the lamp-shade and

-the sofa, and wanting everybody to be dry and comfortable, instant.</p>

-

-<p>"'You are so good-natured to like my room,' she says. 'I furnished it

-for ten cents&mdash;yes, not much more. The whole effect is just colour,' she

-says. 'What I have to do without in quality I go and wheedle out of the

-spectrum. What <i>should</i> we do without the rainbow? And what in the world

-am I going to put on that child?'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley let Christopher down on the rug by the door, and there he stood,

-dripping, patient, holding his paper bag, and not looking up and around

-him, same as a child will in a strange room, but just looking hard at

-the nice, red, warm blaze. Miss Sidney come and stooped over him, with

-that same little way of touching him, like loving.</p>

-

-<p>"'Let's go and be dry now,' she says, 'and then let's see what we can

-find in the pantry.'</p>

-

-<p>"The little fellow, he just laughed out, soft and delicious, with his

-head turned away and without saying anything.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><p>"'I never said such a successful thing,' says Miss Sidney, and led him

-upstairs where we could hear Mis' Emmons bustling around cosey.</p>

-

-<p>"Mr. Insley and I sat down by the fire. I remember I looked over towards

-him and felt sort of nervous, he was so good looking and so silent. A

-good-looking <i>talking</i> man I ain't afraid of, because I can either

-admire or despise him immediate, and either way it gives me something to

-do answering back. But one that's still, it takes longer to make out,

-and it don't give you no occupation for your impressions. And Insley,

-besides being still, was so good looking that it surprised me every new

-time I see him. I always wanted to say: Have you been looking like that

-all the time since I last saw you, and how <i>do</i> you keep it up?</p>

-

-<p>"He had a face and a body that showed a good many men looking out of 'em

-at you, and all of 'em was men you'd like to of known. There was

-scholars that understood a lot, and gentlemen that acted easy, and

-outdoor men that had pioneered through hard things and had took their

-joy of the open. All of them had worked hard at him&mdash;and had give him

-his strength and his merriness and his big, broad shoulders and his

-nice, friendly boyishness, and his eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> that could see considerably

-more than was set before them. By his own care he had knit his body

-close to life, and I know he had knit his spirit close to it, too. As I

-looked over at him that night, my being nervous sort of swelled up into

-a lump in my throat and I wanted to say inside me: O God, ain't it nice,

-ain't it nice that you've got some folks like him?</p>

-

-<p>"He glanced over to me, kind of whimsical.</p>

-

-<p>"'Are you in favour of folks or tombstones?' he asks, with his eyebrows

-flickering up.</p>

-

-<p>"'Me?' I says. 'Well, I don't want to be clannish, but I do lean a good

-deal towards folks.'</p>

-

-<p>"'You knew what I meant to-night?' he says.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' I answered, 'I knew.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I thought you did,' he says grave.</p>

-

-<p>"Then he lapsed into keeping still again and so did I, me through not

-quite knowing what to say, and him&mdash;well, I wasn't sure, but I thought

-he acted a good deal as if he had something nice to think about. I've

-seen that look on people's faces sometimes, and it always makes me feel

-a little surer that I'm a human being. I wondered if it was his new work

-he was turning over, or his liking the child's being cared for, or the

-mere nice minute, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> by the grate fire. Then a door upstairs shut,

-and somebody come down and into the room, and when he got up, his look

-sort of centred in that new minute.</p>

-

-<p>"It was Miss Sidney that come in, and she set down by the fire like

-something pleased her.</p>

-

-<p>"'Aunt Eleanor is going to decorate Christopher herself,' she says. 'She

-believes that she alone can do whatever comes up in this life to be

-done, and usually she's right.'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley stood looking at her for a minute before he set down again. She

-had her big black cloak off by then, and she was wearing a

-dress-for-in-the-house that was all rosy. She wasn't anything of the

-star any longer. She was something more than a star. I always think one

-of the nicest commonplace minutes in a woman's everyday is when she

-comes back from somewheres outside the house where she's been, and sets

-down by the fire, or by a window, or just plain in the middle of the

-room. They always talk about pigeons 'homing'; I wish't they kept that

-word for women. It seems like it's so exactly what they <i>do</i> do.</p>

-

-<p>"'I love the people,' Miss Sidney went on, 'that always feel that

-way&mdash;that if something they're interested in is going to be really well

-done, then they must do it themselves.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p><p>"Insley always knew just what anybody meant&mdash;I'd noticed that about

-him. His mind never left what you'd said floating round, loose ends in

-the room, without your knowing whether it was going to be caught and

-tied; but he just nipped right onto your remark and <i>tied it in the

-right place</i>.</p>

-

-<p>"'I love them, too,' he says now. 'I love anybody who can really feel

-responsibility, from a collie with her pups up. But then I'm nothing to

-go by. I find I'm rather strong for a good many people that can't feel

-it, too&mdash;that are just folks, going along.'</p>

-

-<p>"I suppose he expected from her the nice, ladylike agreeing, same as

-most women give to this sort of thing, just like they'd admit they're

-fond of verbenas or thin soles. But instead of that, she caught fire.

-Her look jumped up the way a look will and went acrost to his. I always

-think I'd rather have folks say 'I know' to me, understanding, than to

-just pour me out information, and that was what she said to him.</p>

-

-<p>"'I know,' she says, 'on the train to-day&mdash;if you could have seen them.

-Such dreadful-looking people, and underneath&mdash;the <i>giving-up-ness</i>. I

-believe in them,' she added simple.</p>

-

-<p>"When a thing you believe gets spoke by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> somebody that believes it, too,

-it's like the earth moved round a little faster, and I donno but it

-does. Insley looked for a minute like he thought so.</p>

-

-<p>"'I believe in them,' he says; 'not the way I used to, and just because

-I thought they must be, somehow, fundamentally decent, but because it's

-true.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I know just when I first knew that,' Miss Sidney says. 'It come to me,

-of all places, in a subway train, when I was looking at a row of faces

-across the car. Nobody, <i>nobody</i> can look interesting in that row along

-the side of a subway car. And then I saw....'</p>

-

-<p>"She thought for a minute and shook her head.</p>

-

-<p>"'I can't tell you,' she says, 'it sounds so little and&mdash;no account. It

-was a little thing, just something that happened to a homely woman with

-a homely man, in a hat like a pirate's. But it almost&mdash;let me in. I can

-do it ever since&mdash;look into people, into, or through, or with ...' she

-tries to explain it. Then her eyes hurried up to his face, like she was

-afraid he might not be understanding. He just nodded, without looking at

-her, but she knew that he knew what she meant, and that he meant it,

-too.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p><p>" ... I thought it was wonderful to hear them. I felt like an old

-mountain, or anything natural and real ancient, listening to the Song of

-Believing, sung by two that's young and just beginning. We all sing it

-sometime in our lives&mdash;or Lord grieve for them that never do&mdash;and I

-might as well own up that I catch myself humming that same song a good

-deal of the time, to keep myself a-going. But I love to hear it when

-it's just begun.</p>

-

-<p>"They was still talking when Mis' Emmons come downstairs with

-Christopher. Land, land but the little chap looked dear, dragging along,

-holding up a long-skirted lounging dress of Mis' Emmons's. I never had

-one of them lounging dresses. There's a lot of common things that it

-never seems to me I can buy for myself: a nice dressing-gown, a block of

-black pins, a fancy-headed hat pin, and a lemon-squeezer. I always use a

-loose print, and common pins, and penny black-headed hat pins, and go

-around squeezing my lemons by hand. I donno why it is, I'm sure.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm&mdash;I'm&mdash;I'm&mdash;a little boy king!' Christopher stutters, all excited

-and satisfied, while Insley was a-packing him in the Morris chair.</p>

-

-<p>"'Rained on!' says Mis' Emmons, in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> kind of dismay that's as pure

-feminine as if it had on skirts. 'Water isn't a circumstance to what

-that dear child was. He was saturated&mdash;bless him. He must have been out

-for perfect hours.'</p>

-

-<p>"Christopher, thinking back into the rain, mebbe, from the pleasantness

-of that minute, smiled and took a long breath.</p>

-

-<p>"'I walked from that other place,' he explains, important.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Emmons knew he was hungry, and she took Miss Sidney and Insley off

-to the kitchen to find something to eat, and left me with the little

-fellow, me spreading out his clothes in front of the fire to dry. He set

-real still, like being dry and being with somebody was all he wanted.

-And of course that is a good deal.</p>

-

-<p>"I don't always quite know how to start talking to a child. I'm always

-crazy to talk with them, but I'm so afraid of that shy, grave,

-criticizin' look they have. I feel right off like apologizing for the

-silly question I've just asked them. I felt that way now when

-Christopher looked at me, real dignified and wondering. 'What you going

-to be when you grow up to be a man?' was what I had just asked him. And

-yet I don't know what better question I could of asked him, either.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p><p>"'I'm goin' to have a cream-puff store, an' make it all light in the

-window,' he answers ready.</p>

-

-<p>"'All light in the window?' I says puzzled.</p>

-

-<p>"'And I'm going to keep a church,' he goes on, 'and I'm going to make

-nice, black velvet for their coffings.'</p>

-

-<p>"I didn't know quite what to make of that, not being able to think back

-very far into his mind. So I kept still a few minutes.</p>

-

-<p>"'What was you doin' in the church?' he says to me, all at once.</p>

-

-<p>"'I don't really know. Waiting for you to come, I guess, Christopher,' I

-says.</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Was</i> you?' he cried, delighted. 'Pretty soon I came!' He looked in

-the fire, sort of troubled. 'Is God outdoors nights?' he says.</p>

-

-<p>"I said a little something.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' he says, 'I thought he was in the house by the bed when you say

-your prayer. An' I thought he was in church. But I don't think he stays

-in the dark, much.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Mebbe you don't,' I says, 'but you wait for him in the dark, and mebbe

-all of a sudden some night you can tell that something is there. And

-just you wait for that night to come.'</p>

-

-<p>"'That's a nice game,' says Christopher, bright. 'What game is that?'</p>

-

-<p>"'I donno,' I says. 'Game of Life, I guess.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p><p>"He liked the sound; and he set there&mdash;little waif, full of no supper,

-saying it over like a chant:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Game o' life&mdash;game o' life&mdash;game o' l-i-f-e&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"Just at that minute I was turning his little pockets wrong side out to

-dry them, and in one of them I see a piece of paper, all crumpled up and

-wrinkled. I spread it out, and I see it had writing on. And I held it up

-to the light and read it, read it through twice.</p>

-

-<p>"'Christopher,' I says then, 'where did you get this piece of paper? It

-was in your pocket.'</p>

-

-<p>"He looked at it, blank, and then he remembered.</p>

-

-<p>"'My daddy,' he says. 'My daddy told me to give it to folks. I forgot.'</p>

-

-<p>"'To folks?' I says. 'To what folks?'</p>

-

-<p>"'To whoever ask' me anything,' he answers. 'Is it a letter?' he ask'.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' I says, thoughtful, 'it's a letter.'</p>

-

-<p>"'To tell me what to do?' he ask' me.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' I says, 'but more, I guess, to tell us what to do.'</p>

-

-<p>"I talked with him a little longer, so's to get his mind off the paper;

-and then I told him to set still a minute, and I slipped out to where

-the rest was.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p><p>"The pantry had a close, spicey, foody smell of a pantry at night, when

-every tin chest and glass jar may be full up with nice things to eat

-that you'd forgot about&mdash;cocoanut and citron and cinnamon bark. In

-grown-up folks one of the things that is the last to grow up is the

-things a pantry in the evening promises. You may get over really liking

-raisins and sweet chocolate; you may get to wanting to eat in the

-evening things that you didn't use' to even know the names of and don't

-know them now, and yet it never gets over being nice and eventive to go

-out in somebody's pantry at night, especially a pantry that ain't your

-own.</p>

-

-<p>"'Put everything on a tray,' Mis' Emmons was directing them, 'and find

-the chafing-dish and let's make it in there by Christopher. Mr. Insley,

-can you make toast? Don't equivocate,' she says; '<i>can</i> you make toast?

-People fib no end over what they can make. I'm always bragging about my

-omelettes, and yet one out of every three I make goes flat, and I know

-it. And yet I brag on. Beans, buckwheat, rice&mdash;what do you want to

-cream, Robin? Well, look in the store-room. There may be something

-there. We must tell Miss Sidney about Grandma Sellers' store-room, Mr.

-Insley,' she says, and then tells it herself, laughing like a girl,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> how

-Grandma Sellers, down at the other end of Daphne Street, has got a

-store-room she keeps full of staples and won't let her son's wife use a

-thing out. 'I've been hungry,' Grandma Sellers says, 'and I ain't

-ashamed of that. But if you knew how good it feels to have a still-room

-stocked full, you wouldn't ask me to disturb a can of nothing. I want

-them all there, so if I should want them.' 'She's like me,' Mis' Emmons

-ends, 'I always want to keep my living-room table tidy, to have a place

-in case I should want to lay anything down. And if I put anything on it,

-I snatch it up, so as to have a place in case I want to lay anything

-down.'</p>

-

-<p>"They was all laughing when I went out into the kitchen, and I went up

-to Mis' Emmons with the paper.</p>

-

-<p>"'Read that,' I says.</p>

-

-<p>"She done so, out loud&mdash;the scrawlin', downhill message:&mdash;</p>

-

-<blockquote><p>"'Keep him will you,' the paper said, 'I don't chuck him to get rid

-of but hes only got me since my wifes dead and the drinks got me

-again. Ive stood it quite awhile but its got me again so keep him

-and oblidge. will send money to him to the P O here what I can

-spare I aint chuckin him but the drinks got me again.</p>

-

-<p class="right">"'resp, his father.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p><p>"'P S his name is Christopher Bartlett he is a good boy his throat

-gets sore awful easy.'</p></blockquote>

-

-<p>"When Mis' Emmons had got through reading, I remember Miss Sidney's face

-best. It was so full of a sort of a leaping-up pity and wistfulness that

-it went to your heart, like words. I knew that with her the minute

-wasn't no mere thrill nor twitter nor pucker, the way sad things is to

-some, but it was just a straight sounding of a voice from a place of

-pain. And so it was to Insley. But Mis' Emmons, she never give herself

-time to be swamped by anything without trying to climb out right while

-the swamping was going on.</p>

-

-<p>"'What'll we do?' she says, rapid. 'What in this world shall we do? Did

-you ever hear of anything&mdash;well, I wish somebody would tell me what

-we're going to do.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Let's be glad for one thing,' says Allen Insley, 'that he's here with

-you people to-night. Let's be glad of that first&mdash;that he's here with

-you.'</p>

-

-<p>"Miss Sidney looked away to the dark window.</p>

-

-<p>"'That poor man,' she says. 'That poor father....'</p>

-

-<p>"We talked about it a little, kind of loose ends and nothing to fasten

-to, like you will. Mis'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> Emmons was the first to get back inside the

-minute.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' she says, brisk, 'do let's go in and feed the child while we

-have him. Nobody knows when he's had anything to eat but those unholy

-cream-puffs. Let's heat him some broth and let's carry in the things.'</p>

-

-<p>"Back by the fire Christopher set doing nothing, but just looking in the

-blaze like his very eyesight had been chilly and damp and needed seeing

-to. He cried out jolly when he see all the pretty harness of the

-chafing-dish and the tray full of promises.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh,' he cries, '<i>Robin!</i>'</p>

-

-<p>"She went over to him, and she nestled him now like she couldn't think

-of enough to do for him nor enough things to say to keep him company. I

-see Insley watching her, and I wondered if it didn't come to him like it

-come to me, that for the pure art of doing nothing so that it seems like

-it couldn't be got along without, a woman&mdash;some women&mdash;can be commended

-by heaven to a world that always needs that kind of doing nothing.</p>

-

-<p>"'Children have a genius for getting rid of the things that don't

-count,' Miss Sidney says. 'I love his calling me "Robin." Mustn't there

-be some place where we don't build walls around our names?'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p><p>"Insley thought for a minute. 'You oughtn't to be called "Miss," and

-you oughtn't to wear a hat,' he concluded, sober. 'Both of them make

-you&mdash;too much <i>there</i>. They draw a line around you.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I don't feel like Miss to myself,' she says, grave. 'I feel like

-Robin. I believe I <i>am</i> Robin!'</p>

-

-<p>"And I made up my mind right then and there that, to myself anyway, I

-was always going to call her Robin. It's funny about first names. Some

-of them fit right down and snuggle up close to their person so that you

-can't think of them apart. And some of them slip loose and dangle along

-after their person, quite a ways back, so that you're always surprised

-when now and then they catch up and get themselves spoke by someone. But

-the name Robin just seemed to wrap Miss Sidney up in itself so that, as

-she said, she <i>was</i> Robin. I like to call her so.</p>

-

-<p>"It was her that engineered the chafing-dish. A chafing-dish is a thing

-I've always looked on a little askant. I couldn't cook with folks

-looking at me no more than I could wash my face in company. I remember

-one hot July day when there was a breeze in my front door, I took my

-ironing-board in the parlor and tried to iron there. But land, I felt

-all left-handed; and I know it would be that way if I ever tried to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>

-cook in there, on my good rug. Robin though, she done it wonderful. And

-pretty soon she put the hot cream gravy on some crumbled-up bread and

-took it to Christopher, with a cup of broth that smelled like when they

-used to say, 'Dinner's ready,' when you was twelve years old.</p>

-

-<p>"He looked up at her eager. 'Can you cut it in squares?' he asked.</p>

-

-<p>"'In what?' she asks him over.</p>

-

-<p>"'Squares. And play it's molasses candy&mdash;white molasses candy?' he says.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh,' says Robin, 'no, not in squares. But let's play it's hot

-ice-cream.'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Hot ice-cream</i>,' he says, real slow, his eyes getting wide. To play

-Little Boy King and have hot ice-cream was about as much as he could

-take care of, in joy. Sometimes I get to wondering how we ever do

-anything else except collect children together and give them nice little

-simple fairylands. But while, on the sly, we was all watching to see

-Christopher sink deep in the delight of that hot toothsome supper, he

-suddenly lays down his spoon and stares over to us with wide eyes, eyes

-that there wasn't no tears gathering in, though his little mouth was

-quivering.</p>

-

-<p>"'What is it&mdash;what, dear?' Robin asks, from her stool near his feet.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p><p>"'My daddy,' says the little boy. 'I was thinking if he could have some

-this.'</p>

-

-<p>"Robin touched her cheek down on his arm.</p>

-

-<p>"'Blessed,' she says, 'think how glad he'd be to have you have some.

-He'd want you to eat it&mdash;wouldn't he?'</p>

-

-<p>"The child nodded and took up his spoon, but he sighed some. 'I wish't

-he'd hurry,' he says, and ate, obedient.</p>

-

-<p>"Robin looked up at us&mdash;I don't think a woman is ever so lovely as when

-she's sympathizing, and it don't make much difference what it's over, a

-sore finger or a sore heart, it's equally becoming.</p>

-

-<p>"'I know,' she says to us, 'I know just the <i>place</i> where that hurts. I

-remember, when I was little, being in a house that a band passed, and

-because mother wasn't there, I ran inside and wouldn't listen. It's such

-a special kind of hurt....'</p>

-

-<p>"From the end of the settle that was some in the shadow, Insley set

-watching her, and he looked as if he was thinking just what I was

-thinking: that she was the kind that would most always know just the

-place things hurt. And I bet she'd know what to do&mdash;and a thousand kinds

-of things that she'd go and do it.</p>

-

-<p>"'O ...' Christopher says. 'I like this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> most next better than molasses

-candy, cutted in squares. I do, Robin!' He looked down at her, his spoon

-waiting. 'Is you that Robin Redbreast?' he inquired.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm any Robin you want me to be,' she told him. 'To-morrow we'll play

-that, shall we?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Am I here to-morrow? Don't I have to walk to-morrow?' he ask' her.</p>

-

-<p>"'No, you won't have to walk to-morrow,' she told him.</p>

-

-<p>"Christopher leaned back, altogether nearer to luxury than I guess he'd

-ever been.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm a little boy king, and it's hot ice-cream, and I love <i>you</i>,' he

-tops it off to Robin.</p>

-

-<p>"She smiled at him, leaning on his chair.</p>

-

-<p>"'Isn't it a miracle,' she says to us, 'the way we can call out&mdash;being

-liked? We don't do something, and people don't pay any attention and

-don't know the difference. Then some little thing happens, and there

-they are&mdash;liking us, doing a real thing.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I know it,' I says, fervent. 'Sometimes,' I says, 'it seems to me

-wonderful cosey to be alive! I'm glad I'm it.'</p>

-

-<p>"'So am I,' says Insley, and leaned forward. 'There's never been such a

-time to be alive,' he says. 'Mrs. Emmons, why don't we ask Miss Sidney

-for some plans for our plan?'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p><p>"Do you know how sometimes you'll have a number of floating ideas in

-your mind&mdash;wanting to do this, thinking that would be nice, dreaming of

-something else&mdash;and yet afraid to say much about it, because it seems

-like the ideas or the dreams is much too wild for anybody else to have,

-too? And then mebbe after a while, you'll find that somebody had the

-same idea and dreamed it out, and died with it? Or somebody else tried

-to make it go a little? Well, that was what begun to happen to me that

-night while I heard Insley talk, only I see that my floating ideas, that

-wan't properly attached to the sides of my head, was actually being

-worked out here and there, and that Insley knew about them.</p>

-

-<p>"I donno how to tell what my ideas was. I'd had them from time to time,

-and a good many of us ladies had, only we didn't know what to do with

-them. And an idea that you don't know what to do with is like a wild

-animal out of its cage: there ain't no performance till it's adjusted.

-For instance, when we'd wanted to pave Daphne Street and the whole town

-council had got up and swung its arms over its head and said that having

-an economical administration was better than paving&mdash;why, then us ladies

-had all had the same idee about that.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p><p>"'Is the town run for the sake of being the town, with money in its

-treasury, or is the town run for the folks in it?' I remember Mis'

-Toplady asking, puzzled. 'Ain't the folks the town really?' she ask'.

-'And if they are, why can't they pave themselves with their own money?

-Don't that make sense?' she ask' us, and we thought it did.</p>

-

-<p>"Us ladies had got Daphne Street paved, or at least it was through us

-they made the beginning, but there was things we hadn't done. We was all

-taking milk of Rob Henney that we knew his cow barns wasn't at all

-eatable, but he was the only milk wagon, nobody else in town delivering,

-so we kept on taking, but squeamish, squeamish. Then there was the

-grocery stores, leaving their food all over the sidewalk, dust-peppered

-and dirt-salted. But nobody liked to say anything to Silas Sykes that

-keeps the post-office store, nor to Joe Betts, that his father before

-him kept the meat market, being we all felt delicate, like at asking a

-church member to come out to church. Then us ladies had bought a zinc

-wagon and started it around to pick up the garbage to folks' doors, but

-the second summer the council wouldn't help pay for the team, because it

-was a saving council, and so the wagon was setting in a shed, with its

-hands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> folded. Then there was Black Hollow, that we'd wanted filled up

-with dirt instead of scummy water, arranging for typhoid fever and other

-things, but the council having got started paving, was engaged in paving

-the swamp out for miles, Silas Sykes's cousin being in the wooden block

-business. And, too, us ladies was just then hopping mad over the doings

-they was planning for the Fourth of July, that wasn't no more than

-making a cash register of the day to earn money into. All these things

-had been disturbing us, and more; but though we talked it over

-considerable, none of us knew what to do, or whether anything could be.

-It seemed as though every way we moved a hand, it hit out at the council

-or else went into some business man's pocket. And not having anybody to

-tell us what other towns were doing, we just set still and wished,

-passive.</p>

-

-<p>"Well, and that night, while I heard Insley talking, was the first I

-knew that other towns had thought about these things, too, and was

-beginning to stir and to stir things. Insley talked about it light

-enough, laughing, taking it all casual on the outside, but underneath

-with a splendid earnestness that was like the warp to his words. He

-talked like we could pick Friendship Village up, same as a strand if we

-wanted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> and make it fine and right for weaving in a big pattern that

-his eyes seemed to see. He talked like our village, and everybody's

-village and everybody's city wasn't just a lot of streets laid down and

-walls set up, and little families and little clubs and little separate

-groups of folks organized by themselves. But he spoke like the whole

-town was just one street and <i>no</i> walls, and like every town was a piece

-of the Big Family that lives on the same street, all around the world

-and back again. And he seemed to feel that the chief thing all of us was

-up to was thinking about this family and doing for it and being it, and

-getting it to be the way it can be when we all know how. And he seemed

-to think the things us ladies had wanted to do was some of the things

-that would help it to be the way it can.</p>

-

-<p>"When he stopped, Robin looked up at him from the hearth-rug: '"The

-world is beginning,"' she quotes to him from somewheres; "'I must go and

-help the king."'</p>

-

-<p>"He nodded, looking down at her and seeing, as he must have seen, that

-her face was all kindled into the same kind of a glory that was in his.

-It was a nice minute for them, but I was so excited I piped right up in

-the middle of it:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh,' I says, '<i>them</i> things! Was it them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> kind of things you meant

-about in Sodality to-night that we'd ought to do? Why, us ladies has

-wanted to do things like that, but we felt sort of sneaking about it and

-like we was working against the council and putting our interests before

-the town treasury&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'And of the cemetery,' he says.</p>

-

-<p>"'Is <i>that</i>,' I ask' him, 'what you're professor of, over to Indian

-Mound college?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Something like that,' he says.</p>

-

-<p>"'Nothing in a book, with long words and italics?' I ask' him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' he says, 'it's getting in books now, a little. But it doesn't

-need any long words.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Why,' I says, 'it's just being professor of human beings, then?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Trying to be, perhaps,' he says, grave.</p>

-

-<p>"'Professor of Human Beings,' I said over to myself; 'professor of being

-human....'</p>

-

-<p>"On this nice minute, the front door, without no bell or knock, opened

-to let in Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, with a shawl over her head

-and a tin can in her hand.</p>

-

-<p>"'No, I won't set any, thanks,' she says. 'I just got to

-thinking&mdash;mercy, no. Don't give me any kind of anything to eat any such

-time of night as this. I should be up till midnight taking soda. That's

-what ails folks' stomachs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> my notion&mdash;these late lunches on nobody

-knows what. No, I got to bed and I was just dropping off when I happened

-to sense how wringing wet that child was, and that I betted he'd take

-cold and have the croup in the night, and you wouldn't have no

-remedy&mdash;not having any children, so. It rousted me right up wide awake,

-and I dressed me and run over here with this. Here. Put some on a rag

-and clap it on his chest if he coughs croupy. I donno's it would hurt

-him to clap it on him, anyway, so's to be sure. No, I can't stop. It's

-'way past my bed-time....'</p>

-

-<p>"'There's lots of professors of being human, Miss Marsh,' Insley says to

-me, low.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Holcomb stood thinking a minute, brushing her lips with the fringe

-of her shawl.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mebbe somebody up to the Proudfits' would do something for him,' she

-says. 'I see they're lit up. Who's coming?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Mr. Alex Proudfit will be here to-morrow,' Mis' Emmons told her. 'He

-has some people coming to him in a day or two, for a house party over

-the Fourth.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Will he be here so soon?' says Insley. 'I've been looking forward to

-meeting him&mdash;I've a letter to him from Indian Mound.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Whatever happens,' says Mis' Holcomb,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> 'I'll get up attic first thing

-in the morning and find some old clothes for this dear child. I may be

-weak in the pocket-book, but I'm strong on old duds.'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley and I both said good night, so's to walk home with Mis' Holcomb,

-and Christopher kissed us both, simple as belonging to us.</p>

-

-<p>"'We had that hot ice-cream,' he announced to Mis' Holcomb.</p>

-

-<p>"'The lamb!' says she, and turns her back, hasty.</p>

-

-<p>"I wondered a little at Mis' Emmons not saying anything to her about the

-letter we'd found, that made us know somebody would have to do

-something. But just as we was starting out, Mis' Emmons says to me low,

-'Don't let's say anything about his father yet. I have a plan&mdash;I want to

-think it over first.' And I liked knowing that already she had a plan,

-and I betted it was a plan that would be born four-square to its own

-future.</p>

-

-<p>"Insley stood holding the door open. The rain had stopped altogether

-now, and the night was full of little things sticking their heads up in

-deep grasses and beginning to sing about it. I donno about what, but

-about something nice. And Insley was looking toward Robin, and I see

-that all the ancestors he'd ever had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> was lingering around in his face,

-like they knew about something he was just beginning to know about.

-Something nice&mdash;nicer than the little outdoor voices.</p>

-

-<p>"'Good night, Miss Sidney,' he says. 'And what a good night for

-Christopher!' And he looked as if he wanted to add: 'And for me.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Good night, Mis' Emmons,' I says. 'It's been an evening like a full meal.'</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>IV</h2>

-

-<p>"By messenger the next day noon come a letter for me that made me laugh

-a little and that made me a little bit mad, too. This was it:&mdash;</p>

-

-<blockquote><p>"'Dear Calliope:</p>

-

-<p>"'Come up and help straighten things out, do. This place breathes

-desolation. Everything is everywhere except everything which

-everyone wants, which is lost. Come at once, Calliope, pray, and

-dine with me to-night and give me as much time as you can for a

-fortnight. I'm having some people here next week&mdash;twenty or so for

-over the Fourth&mdash;and a party. A company, you know! I need you.</p>

-

-<p class="right">"'<span class="smcap">Alex Proudfit.</span>'</p></blockquote>

-

-<p>"It was so exactly like Alex to send for me just plain because he wanted

-me. Never a word about if I was able or if I wasn't putting up berries

-or didn't have company or wasn't dead. I hadn't heard a sound from him

-in the two years or more that he'd been gone, and yet now it was just

-'Come,' like a lord. And for that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> matter like he used to do when he was

-in knickerbockers and coming to my house for fresh cookies, whether I

-had any baked or not. But I remember actually baking a batch for him one

-day while he galloped his pony up and down the Plank Road waiting for

-them. And I done the same way now. I got my work out of the way and went

-right up there, like I'd always done for that family in the forty years

-I could think back to knowing them, when I was a girl. I guessed that

-Alex had lit down sudden, a day or so behind his telegram to the

-servants; and I found that was what he had done.</p>

-

-<p>"Proudfit House stands on a hill, and it looks like the hill had

-billowed up gentle from underneath and had let some of the house flow

-down the sides. It was built ambitious, of the good cream brick that

-gives to a lot of our Middle West towns their colour of natural flax in

-among the green; it had been big in the beginning, and to it had been

-added a good many afterthoughts and postscripts of conservatory and

-entrance porch and sun room and screened veranda, till the hill couldn't

-hold them all. The house was one of them that was built fifty years ago

-and that has since been pecked and patted to suit modern uses, pinched

-off here and pulled off there to fit notions refining themselves

-gradual. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> all the time the house was let to keep some nice, ugly

-things that after a while, by mere age and use-to-ness, were finally

-accepted wholesale as dignified and desirable. The great brown mansard

-roof, niched and glassed in two places for statues&mdash;and having them,

-too, inside my memory and until Mr. Alex pulled them down; the scalloped

-tower on a wing; the round red glass window on a stairway&mdash;these we all

-sort of come to agree to as qualities of the place that couldn't be

-changed no more'n the railroad track. Tapestries and water-colours and

-Persian carpets went on inside the house, but outside was all the little

-twists of a taste that had started in naked and was getting dressed up

-by degrees.</p>

-

-<p>"Since the marriage of her daughter Clementina, Madame Proudfit had

-spent a good deal of time abroad, and the house had been shut up. This

-shutting up of people's houses always surprises me. When I shut up my

-house to go away for a couple of months or so, I just make sure the

-kitchen fire is out, and I carry the bird down to Mis' Holcomb's, and I

-turn the key in the front door and start off. But land, land when

-Proudfit House is going to be shut, the servants work days on end. Rugs

-up, curtains down, furniture covered and setting around out of place,

-pictures and ornaments wrapped up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> in blue paper&mdash;I always wonder <i>why</i>.

-Closing my house is like putting it to sleep for a little while, but

-closing Proudfit House is some like seeing it through a spasm and into a

-trance. They done that to the house most every summer, and I used to

-think they acted like spring was a sort of contagion, or a

-seventeen-year locust, or something to be fumigated for. I supposed that

-was the way the house looked when Alex got home to it, and of course a

-man must hate it worse than a woman does, because he doesn't know which

-end to tell them to take hold of to unravel. So I went right up there

-when he sent for me&mdash;and then it was a little fun, too, to be on the

-inside of what was happening there, that all the village was so curious

-about.</p>

-

-<p>"He'd gone off when I got there, gone off on horseback on some business,

-but he'd left word that he'd be back in a little while, and would I help

-him out in the library. I knew what that meant. The books was all out of

-the shelves and packed in paper, and he wanted me to see that they got

-back into their right places, like I'd done many and many a time for his

-mother. So I worked there the whole afternoon, with a couple of men to

-help me, and the portrait of Linda Proudfit on the wall watching me like

-it wanted to tell me something, maybe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> about the way she went off and

-died, away from home; and a little after four o'clock a servant let

-somebody into the room.</p>

-

-<p>"I looked up expecting to see Alex, and it surprised me some to see

-Insley instead. But I guessed how it was: that Alex Proudfit being a

-logical one to talk over Friendship Village with, Insley couldn't lose a

-day in bringing him his letter.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, Miss Marsh,' says he, 'and do you live everywhere, like a good

-fairy?'</p>

-

-<p>"I thought afterwards that I might have said to him: 'No, Mr. Insley.

-And do you appear everywhere, like a god?' But at the time I didn't

-think of anything to say, and I just smiled. I'm like that,&mdash;if I like

-anybody, I can't think of a thing to say back; but to Silas Sykes I

-could talk back all day.</p>

-

-<p>"We'd got the room part in order by then, and Insley sat down and looked

-around him, enjoyable. It was a beautiful room. I always think that that

-library ain't no amateur at its regular business of being a vital part

-of the home. Some rooms are awful amateurs at it, and some ain't no more

-than apprentices, and some are downright enemies to the house they're

-in. But that library I always like to look around. It seems to me, if I

-really knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> about such things, and how they ought to be, I couldn't

-like that room any better. Colour, proportion, window, shadow&mdash;they was

-all lined up in a kind of an enjoyable professionalism of doing their

-best. The room was awake now, too&mdash;I had the windows open and I'd

-started the clock. Insley set looking around as if there was sighs

-inside him. I knew how, down in New England, his father's home sort of

-behaved itself like this home. But after college, he had had to choose

-his way, and he had faced about to the new west, the new world, where

-big ways of living seemed to him to be sweeping as a wind sweeps. He had

-chose as he had chose, and I suppose he was glad of that; but I knew the

-room he had when he was in town, at Threat Hubbelthwait's hotel, must be

-a good deal like being homesick, and that this library was like coming

-home.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mr. Proudfit had just returned and would be down at once,' the man

-come back and told him. And while he waited Insley says to me:</p>

-

-<p>"'Have you seen anything of the little boy to-day, Miss Marsh?'</p>

-

-<p>"I was dying to answer back: 'Yes, I see Miss Sidney early this

-morning,' but you can't answer back all you die to. So I told him yes,

-I'd seen all three of them and they was to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> up in the city all day to

-buy some things for Christopher. Mis' Emmons and Robin was both to come

-up to Proudfit House to Alex's house party&mdash;seems they'd met abroad

-somewheres a year or more back; and they was going to bring Christopher,

-who Mis' Emmons didn't show any sign of giving up while her plan,

-whatever it was, was getting itself thought over. So they'd whisked the

-child off to the city that day to get him the things he needed. And

-there wasn't time to say anything more, for in come Alex Proudfit.</p>

-

-<p>"He was in his riding clothes&mdash;horseback dress we always call it in the

-village, which I s'pose isn't city talk, proper. He was long and thin

-and brown, and sort of slow-moving in his motions, but quick and nervous

-in his talk; and I don't know what there was about him&mdash;his clothes, or

-his odd, old-country looking ring, or the high white thing wound twice

-around his neck, or his way of pronouncing his words&mdash;but he seemed a

-good deal like a picture of a title or a noted man. The minute you

-looked at him, you turned proud of being with him, and you pretty near

-felt distinguished yourself, in a nice way, because you was in his

-company. Alex was like that.</p>

-

-<p>"'I don't like having kept you waiting,' he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> says to Insley. 'I'm just

-in. By Jove, I've left Topping's letter somewhere&mdash;Insley, is it? thank

-you. Of course. Well, Calliope, blessings! I knew I could count on you.

-How are you&mdash;you look it. No, don't run away. Keep straight on&mdash;Mr.

-Insley will pardon us getting settled under his nose. Now what can I get

-you, Mr. Insley? If you've walked up, you're warm. No? As you will. It's

-mighty jolly getting back&mdash;for a minute, you know. I couldn't stop here.

-How the devil do you stop here all the time&mdash;or do you stop here all the

-time?...' All this he poured out in a breath. He always had talked fast,

-but now I see that he talked more than fast&mdash;he talked foreign.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm here some of the time,' says Insley; 'I hoped that you were going

-to be, too.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I?' Alex said. 'Oh, no&mdash;no. I feel like this: while I'm in the world,

-I want it at its best. I want it at its latest moment. I want to be

-living <i>now</i>. Friendship Village&mdash;why, man, it's living half a century

-ago&mdash;anyway, a quarter. It doesn't know about <span class="smaller">A.D.</span> nineteen-anything. I

-love the town, you know, for what it is. But confound it, I'm living

-<i>now</i>.'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley leaned forward. I was dusting away on an encyclop&aelig;dia, but I see

-his face and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> knew what it meant. This was just what he'd been hoping

-for. Alex Proudfit was a man who understood that the village hadn't

-caught up. So he would want to help it&mdash;naturally he would.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm amazed at the point of view,' Alex went on. 'I never saw such

-self-sufficiency as the little towns have. In England, on the continent,

-the villages know their place and keep it, look up to the towns and all

-that&mdash;play the peasant, as they are. Know their betters. Here? Bless

-you. Not a man down town here but will tell you that the village has got

-everything that is admirable. They believe it, too. Electric light,

-water, main street paved, cemetery kept up, "nice residences,"

-telephones, library open two nights a week, fresh lettuce all

-winter&mdash;fine, up-to-date little place! And, Lord, but it's a back-water.

-With all its improvements the whole <i>idea</i> of modern life somehow

-escapes it&mdash;music and art, drama, letters, manners, as integral parts of

-everyday living&mdash;what does it know of them? It thinks these things are

-luxuries, outside the scheme of real life, like monoplanes. Jove, it's

-delicious!'</p>

-

-<p>"He leaned back, laughing. Insley must have felt his charm. Alex always

-was fascinating. His eyes were gray and sort of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>hobnobbed with your

-own; his square chin just kind of threatened a dimple without breaking

-into one; his dark hair done clusters like a statue; and then there was

-a lot of just plain charm pouring off him. But of course more than with

-this, Insley was filled with his own hope: if Alex Proudfit understood

-some things about the village that ought to be made right, it looked to

-him as though they might do everything together.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why,' Insley says, 'you don't know&mdash;you don't know how glad I am to

-hear you say this. It's exactly the thing my head has been full of....'</p>

-

-<p>"'Of course your head is full of it,' says Alex. 'How can it help but be

-when you're fast here some of the time? If you don't mind&mdash;what is it

-that keeps you here at all? I don't think I read Topping's letter

-properly....'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley looked out from all over his face.</p>

-

-<p>"'I stay,' he says, 'just because all this <i>is</i> so. It needs somebody to

-stay, don't you think?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Ah, yes, I see,' says Alex, rapid and foreign. 'How do you mean,

-though? Surely you don't mean renouncing&mdash;and that sort of thing?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Renouncing&mdash;no!' says Insley. 'Getting into the game.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p><p>"He got his enthusiasm down into still places and outlined what he

-meant. It was all at the ends of his fingers&mdash;what there was to do if

-the town was to live up to itself, to find ways to express the everyday

-human fellowship that Insley see underneath everything. And Alex

-Proudfit listened, giving that nice, careful, pacifying attention of

-his. He was always so polite that his listening was like answering. When

-Insley got through, Alex's very disagreeing with him was sympathizing.</p>

-

-<p>"'My dear man,' says he&mdash;I remember every word because it was something

-I'd wondered sometimes too, only I'd done my wondering vague, like you

-do&mdash;'My dear man, but are you not, after all, anticipating? This is just

-the way Nature works&mdash;beating these things into the heads and hearts of

-generations. Aren't you trying to do it all at once?'</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm trying to help nature, to be a part of nature&mdash;exactly,' says

-Insley, 'and to do it here in Friendship Village.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Why,' says Alex, 'you'll be talking about facilitating God's plan

-next&mdash;helping him along, by Jove.'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley looks at him level. 'I mean that now,' he says, 'if you want to

-put it that way.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p><p>"'Good Lord,' says Alex, 'but how do you know what&mdash;what he wants?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Don't you?' says Insley, even.</p>

-

-<p>"Alex Proudfit turned and touched a bell. 'Look here,' he says, 'you

-stay and dine, won't you? I'm alone to-night&mdash;Calliope and I are. Stay.

-I always enjoy threshing this out.'</p>

-

-<p>"To the man-servant who just about breathed with a well-trained stoop of

-being deferential, his master give the order about the table. 'And,

-Bayless, have them hunt out some of those tea-roses they had in bloom

-the other day&mdash;you should see them, Calliope. Oh, and, Bayless, hurry

-dinner a bit. I'm as hungry as lions,' he added to us, and he made me

-think of the little boy in knickerbockers, asking me for fresh cookies.</p>

-

-<p>"He slipped back to their topic, ranking it right in with tea-roses. In

-the hour before dinner they went on 'threshing it out' there in that

-nice luxurious room, and through the dinner, too&mdash;a simple, perfect

-dinner where I didn't know which to eat, the plates or the food, they

-was both so complete. Up to Proudfit House I can hardly ever make out

-whether I'm chewing flavours or colours or shapes, but I donno as I

-care. Flavours, thank my stars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> aren't the only things in life I know

-how to digest.</p>

-

-<p>"First eager, then patient, Insley went over his ground, setting forth

-by line and by line, by vision and by vision, the faith that was in

-him&mdash;faith in human nature to come into its own, faith in the life of a

-town to work into human life at its best. And always down the same road

-they went, they come a-canterin' back with Alex Proudfit's 'Precisely.

-It is precisely what is happening. You can't force it. You mustn't force

-it. To do the best we can with ourselves and to help up an under dog or

-two&mdash;if he deserves it&mdash;that's the most Nature lets us in for. Otherwise

-she says: "Don't meddle. I'm doing this." And she's right. We'd bungle

-everything. Believe me, my dear fellow, our spurts of civic

-righteousness and national reform never get us anywhere in the long run.

-In the long run, things go along and go along. You can't stop them. If

-you're wise, you won't rush them.'</p>

-

-<p>"At this I couldn't keep still no longer. We was at the table then, and

-I looked over to Alex between the candlesticks and felt as if he was

-back in knickerbockers again, telling me God had made enough ponies so

-he could gallop his all day on the Plank Road if he wanted to.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p><p>"'You and Silas Sykes, Alex,' I says, 'have come to the same motto.

-Silas says Nature is real handy about taking her course so be you don't

-yank open cocoons and buds and like that.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Old Silas,' says Alex. 'Lord, is he still going on about everything?

-Old Silas....'</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' I says, 'he is. And so am I. Out by my woodshed I've got a

-Greening apple tree. When it was about a year old a cow I used to keep

-browst it down. It laid over on the ground, broke clean off all but one

-little side of bark that kept right on doing business with sap, like it

-didn't know its universe was sat on. I didn't get time for a week or two

-to grub it up, and when I did go to it, I see it was still living,

-through that little pinch of bark. I liked the pluck, and I straightened

-it up and tied it to the shed. I used to fuss with it some. Once in a

-storm I went out and propped a dry-goods box over it. I kept the earth

-rich and drove the bugs off. I kind of got interested in seeing what it

-would do next. What it done was to grow like all possessed. It was

-twenty years ago and more that the cow come by it, and this year I've

-had seven bushels of Greenings off that one tree. Suppose I hadn't tied

-it up?'</p>

-

-<p>"'You'd have saved yourself no end of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> trouble, dear Calliope,' says

-Alex, 'to say nothing of sparing the feelings of the cow.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I ain't so anxious any more,' says I, 'about sparing folks' feelings

-as I am about sparing folks. Nor I ain't so crazy as I used to be about

-saving myself trouble, either.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Dear Calliope,' says Alex, 'what an advocate you are. Won't you be my

-advocate?'</p>

-

-<p>"He wouldn't argue serious with me now no more than he would when he was

-in knickerbockers. But yet he was adorable. When we got back to the

-library, I went on finishing up the books and I could hear him being

-adorable. He dipped down into the past and brought up rich things&mdash;off

-down old ways of life in the village that he'd had a part in and then

-off on the new ways where his life had led him. Java&mdash;had Insley ever

-been in Java? He must show him the moonstone he got there and tell him

-the story they told him about it. But the queerest moonstone story was

-one he'd got in Lucknow&mdash;so he goes on, and sends Bayless for a cabinet,

-and from one precious stone and another he just naturally drew out

-romances and adventures, as if he was ravelling the stones out into

-them. And then he begun taking down some of his old books. And when it

-come to books, the appeal to Insley was like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> an appeal of friends, and

-he burrowed into them musty parchments abundant.</p>

-

-<p>"'By George,' Insley says once, 'I didn't dream there were such things

-in Friendship Village.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Next thing you'll forget they're in the world,' says Alex,

-significant. 'Believe me, a man like you ought not to be down here, or

-over to Indian Mound, either. It's an economic waste. Nature has fitted

-you for her glorious present and you're living along about four decades

-ago. Don't you think of that?...'</p>

-

-<p>"Then the telephone on the library table rang and he answered a call

-from the city. 'Oh, buy it in, buy it in, by all means,' he directs.

-'Yes, cable to-night and buy it in. That,' he says, as he hung up, 'just

-reminds me. There's a first night in London to-night that I've been

-promising myself to see.... What a dog's life a business man leads. By

-the way,' he goes on, 'I've about decided to put in one of our plants

-around here somewhere&mdash;a tannery, you know. I've been off to-day looking

-over sites. I wonder if you can't give me some information I'm after

-about land around Indian Mound. I'm not saying anything yet,

-naturally&mdash;they'll give other people a bonus to establish in their

-midst, but the smell of leather is too much for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> them. We always have to

-surprise them into it. But talk about the ultimate good of a town ... if

-a tannery isn't that, what is it?'</p>

-

-<p>"It was after nine o'clock when I got the books set right&mdash;I loved to

-handle them, and there was some I always looked in before I put them up

-because some of the pictures give me feelings I remembered, same as

-tasting some things will&mdash;spearmint and caraway and coriander. Insley,

-of course, walked down with me. Alex wanted to send us in the

-automobile, but I'm kind of afraid of them in the dark. I can't get it

-out of my head that every bump we go over may be bones. And then I guess

-we both sort of wanted the walk.</p>

-

-<p>"Insley was like another man from the one that had come into the library

-that afternoon, or had been talking to us at Mis' Emmons's the night

-before. Down in the village, on Mis' Emmons's hearth, with Robin sitting

-opposite, it had seemed so easy to know ways to do, and to do them.

-Everything seemed possible, as if the whole stiff-muscled universe could

-be done things to if only everybody would once say to it: <i>Our</i>

-universe. But now, after his time with Alex, I knew how everything had

-kind of <i>tightened</i>, closed in around him, shot up into high walls.

-Money, tanneries, big deals by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> cable, moonstones from Java, they almost

-made me slimpse too, and think, What's the use of believing Alex

-Proudfit and me belong to the same universe? So I guessed how Insley was

-feeling, ready to believe that he had got showed up to himself in his

-true light, as a young, emotioning creature who dreams of getting

-everybody to belong together, and yet can't find no good way. And Alex

-Proudfit's parting words must of followed him down the drive and out on

-to the Plank Road:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Take my advice. Don't spend yourself on this blessed little hole. It's

-dear to me, but it <i>is</i> a hole ... eh? You won't get any thanks for it.

-Ten to one they'll turn on you if you try to be one of them. Get out of

-here as soon as possible, and be in the real world! This is just

-make-believing&mdash;and really, you know, you're too fine a sort to throw

-yourself away like this. Old Nature will take care of the town in good

-time without you. Trust her!'</p>

-

-<p>"Sometimes something happens to make the world seem different from what

-we thought it was. Them times catch all of us&mdash;when we feel like we'd

-been let down gentle from some high foot-path where we'd been going

-along, and instead had been set to walk a hard road in a silence that

-pointed its finger at us. If we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> get really knocked down sudden from a

-high foot-path, we can most generally pick ourselves up and rally. But

-when we've been let down gentle by arguments that seem convincing, and

-by folks that seem to know the world better than we do, then's the time

-when there ain't much of any rally to us. If we're any good, I s'pose we

-can climb back without rallying. Rallying gives some spring to the

-climb, but just straight dog-climbing will get us there, too.</p>

-

-<p>"It was a lovely July night, with June not quite out of the world yet.

-There was that after-dark light in the sky that makes you feel that the

-sky is going to stay lit up behind and shining through all night, as if

-the time was so beautiful that celestial beings must be staying awake to

-watch it, and to keep the sky lit and turned down low.... We walked

-along the Plank Road pretty still, because I guessed how Insley's own

-thoughts was conversation enough for him; but when we got a ways down,

-he kind of reached out with his mind for something and me being near by,

-his mind clutched at me.</p>

-

-<p>"'What if it <i>is</i> so, Miss Marsh?' he says. 'What if the only thing for

-us to do is to tend to personal morality and an occasional lift to an

-under dog or two&mdash;"if he deserves it." What if that's all&mdash;they meant us

-to do?'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p><p>"It's awful hard giving a reason for your chief notions. It's like

-describing a rose by the tape-measure.</p>

-

-<p>"'Shucks!' I says only. 'Look up at the stars. I don't believe it.'</p>

-

-<p>"He laughed a little, and he did look up at them, but still I knew how

-he felt. And even the stars that night looked awful detached and able to

-take care of themselves. And they were a-shining down on the Plank Road

-that would get to be Daphne Street and go about its business of leading

-to private homes&mdash;<i>private</i> homes. The village, that little cluster of

-lights ahead there, seemed just shutting anybody else out, going its own

-way, kind of mocking anybody for any idea of getting really inside it.

-It was plain enough that Insley had nothing to hope for from Alex

-Proudfit. And Alex's serene sureness that Nature needed nobody to help,

-his real self-satisfied looking on at processes which no man could

-really hurry up&mdash;my, but they made you feel cheap, and too many of

-yourself, and like none of you had a license to take a-hold. For a

-second I caught myself wondering. Maybe Nature&mdash;stars and streets and

-processes&mdash;<i>could</i> work it out without us.</p>

-

-<p>"Something come against my foot. I pushed at it, and then bent over and

-touched it. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> was warm and yieldy, and I lifted it up. And it was a

-puppy that wriggled its body unbelievable and flopped on to my arm its

-inch and a quarter of tail.</p>

-

-<p>"'Look at,' I says to Insley, which, of course, he couldn't do; but I

-put the little thing over into his hands.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, little brother,' says he. 'Running away?'</p>

-

-<p>"We was just in front of the Cadozas', a tumble-down house halfway

-between Proudfit House and the village. It looked like the puppy might

-belong there, so we turned in there with it. I'd always sort of dreaded

-the house, setting in back among lilacs and locusts and never lit up.

-When I stopped to think of it, I never seemed to remember much about

-those lilacs and locusts blooming&mdash;I suppose they did, but nobody caught

-them at it often. Some houses you always think of with their lilacs and

-locusts and wisteria and hollyhocks going all the time; and some you

-never seem to connect up with being in bloom at all. Some houses you

-always seem to think of as being lit up to most of their windows, and

-some you can't call to mind as showing any way but dark. The Cadozas'

-was one of the unblossoming, dark kind, and awful ramshackle, besides.

-I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> always use' to think it looked like it was waiting for some kind of

-happening, I didn't know what. And sometimes when I come by there in the

-dark, I used to think: It ain't happened yet.</p>

-

-<p>"We went around to the back door to rap, and Mis' Cadoza opened it&mdash;a

-slovenly looking woman she is, with no teeth much, and looking like what

-hair she's got is a burden to her. I remember how she stood there

-against a background of mussy kitchen that made you feel as if you'd

-turned something away wrong side out to where it wasn't meant to be

-looked at.</p>

-

-<p>"'Is it yours, Mis' Cadoza?' I says, Insley holding out the puppy.</p>

-

-<p>"'Murder, it's Patsy,' says Mis' Cadoza. 'Give 'm here&mdash;he must of

-followed Spudge off. Oh, it's you, Miss Marsh.'</p>

-

-<p>"Over by the cook stove in the corner I see past her to something that

-made me bound to go inside a minute. It was a bed, all frowzy and

-tumbled, and in it was laying a little boy.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why,' I says, 'I heard Eph was in bed. What's the matter with him?'

-And I went right in, past his mother, like I was a born guest. She drew

-off, sort of grudging&mdash;she never liked any of us to go there, except

-when some of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> died, which they was always doing. 'Come in and see

-Eph, Mr. Insley,' I says, and introduced him.</p>

-

-<p>"The little boy wasn't above eight years old and he wasn't above six

-years big.... He was laying real still, with his arms out of bed, and

-his little thin hands flat down on the dark covers. His eyes, looking up

-at us, watching, made me think of some trapped thing.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, little brother,' says Insley, 'what's the trouble?'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Cadoza come and stood at the foot of the bed and jerked at the top

-covers.</p>

-

-<p>"'I've put him in the bed,' she says, 'because I'm wore out lifting him

-around. An' I've got the bed out here because I can't trapse back an'

-forth waitin' on him.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Is he a cripple?' asks Insley, low. I liked so much to hear his

-voice&mdash;it was as if it lifted and lowered itself in his throat without

-his bothering to tell it which kind it was time to do. And I never heard

-his voice make a mistake.</p>

-

-<p>"'Cripple?' says Mis' Cadoza, in her kind of undressed voice. 'No. He

-fell in a tub of hot water years ago, and his left leg is witherin' up.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Let me see it,' says Insley, and pulled the covers back without

-waiting.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p><p>"There ain't nothing more wonderful than a strong, capable, quick human

-hand doing something it knows how to do. Insley's hands touched over the

-poor little leg of the child until I expected to see it get well right

-there under his fingers. He felt the cords of the knee and then looked

-up at the mother.</p>

-

-<p>"'Haven't they told you,' he says, 'that if he has an operation on his

-knee, you can have a chance at saving the leg? I knew a case very like

-this where the leg was saved.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I ain't been to see nobody about it,' says Mis' Cadoza, leaving her

-mouth open afterwards, like she does. 'What's the good? I can't pay for

-no operation on him. I got all I can do to keep 'm alive.'</p>

-

-<p>"Eph moved a little, and something fell down on the floor. Mis' Cadoza

-pounced on it.</p>

-

-<p>"'Ain't I forbid you?' she says, angry, and held out to us what she'd

-picked up&mdash;a little dab of wet earth. 'He digs up all my house plants,'

-she scolds, like some sort of machinery grating down on one place

-continual, 'an' he hauls the dirt out and lays there an' makes

-<i>figgers</i>. The idear! Gettin' the sheets a sight....'</p>

-

-<p>"The child looked over at us, defiant. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> spoke for the first time, and

-I was surprised to hear how kind of grown-up his voice was.</p>

-

-<p>"'I can get 'em to look like faces,' he says. 'I don't care what <i>she</i> says.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Show us,' commands Insley.</p>

-

-<p>"He got back the bit of earth from Mis' Cadoza, and found a paper for

-the crumbs, and pillowed the boy up and sat beside him. The thin, dirty

-little hands went to work as eager as birds pecking, and on the earth

-that he packed in his palm he made, with his thumb nail and a pen handle

-from under his pillow, a face&mdash;a boy's face, that had in it something

-that looked at you. 'But I can never get 'em to look the same way two

-times,' he says to us, shy.</p>

-

-<p>"'He's most killed my Lady Washington geranium draggin' the clay out

-from under the roots,' Mis' Cadoza put in, resentful.</p>

-

-<p>"Insley sort of sweeps around and looks acrost at her, deep and gentle,

-and like he understood about her boy and her geranium considerable

-better than she did.</p>

-

-<p>"'He won't do it any more,' he says. 'He'll have something better.'</p>

-

-<p>"The boy looked up at him. 'What?' he asks.</p>

-

-<p>"'Clay,' says Insley, 'in a box. With things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> for you to make the clay

-like. Do you want that?'</p>

-

-<p>"The boy kind of curled down in his pillow and come as near to shuffling

-as he could in the bed, and he hadn't an idea what to say. But I tell

-you, his eyes, they wasn't like any trapped thing any more; they was

-regular <i>boy's</i> eyes, lit up about something.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mrs. Cadoza,' Insley says, 'will you do something for me? We're trying

-to get together a little shrubbery, over at the college. May I come in

-and get some lilac roots from you some day?'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Cadoza looked at him&mdash;and looked. I don't s'pose it had ever come

-to her before that anybody would want anything she had or anything she

-could do.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, sure,' she says, only. 'Sure, you can, Mr. What's-name.'</p>

-

-<p>"And then Insley put out his hand, and she took it, I noted special. I

-donno as I ever see anybody shake hands with her before, excep' when

-somebody was gettin' buried out of her house.</p>

-

-<p>"When we got out on the road again, I noticed that Insley went swinging

-along so's I could hardly keep up with him; and he done it sort of

-automatic, and like it was natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> to him. I didn't say anything. If

-I've learned one thing living out and in among human beings, it's that

-if you don't do your own keeping still at the right time, nobody else is

-going to do it for you. He spoke up after a minute like I thought he

-would; and he spoke up buoyant&mdash;kind of a reverent buoyant:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'I don't believe we're discharged from the universe, after all,' he

-says, and laughed a little. 'I believe we've still got our job.'</p>

-

-<p>"I looked 'way down the Plank Road, on its way to its business of being

-Daphne Street, and it come to me that neither the one nor the other

-stopped in Friendship Village. But they led on out, down past the wood

-lots and the Pump pasture and across the tracks and up the hill, and

-right off into that sky that somebody was keeping lit up and turned down

-low. And I said something that I'd thought before:</p>

-

-<p>"'Ain't it,' I says, 'like sometimes everybody in the world come and

-stood right close up beside of you, and spoke through the walls of you

-for something inside of you to come out and be there with them?'</p>

-

-<p>"'That's it,' he says, only. 'That's it.' But I see his mind nipped onto

-what mine meant, and tied it in the right place.</p>

-

-<p>"When we got to Mis' Emmons's corner, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> turned off from Daphne Street

-to go that way, because I'd told her I'd look in that night and see what

-they'd bought in town. It was late, for the village, but Mis' Emmons

-never minded that. The living-room light was showing through the

-curtains, and Insley, saying good night to me, looked towards the

-windows awful wistful. I guessed why. It was part because he felt as if

-he must see Robin Sidney and they must talk over together what Alex

-Proudfit had said to him. And part it was just plain because he wanted

-to see her again.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why don't you come in a minute,' I says, 'and ask after Christopher?

-Then you can see me home.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Wouldn't they mind it being late?' he asks.</p>

-

-<p>"I couldn't help smiling at that. Once Mis' Emmons had called us all up

-by telephone at ten o'clock at night to invite us to her house two days

-later. She explained afterwards that she hadn't looked at the clock for

-a week, but if she had, she might have called us just the same. 'For my

-life,' she says, 'I <i>can't</i> be afraid of ten o'clock. Indeed, I rather

-like it.' I told him this, while we was walking in from her gate.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mrs. Emmons,' he says, when she come to the door, 'I've come because I

-hear that you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> like ten o'clock, and so do I. I wanted to ask if you've

-ever been able to make it last?'</p>

-

-<p>"'No,' she says. 'I prefer a new one every night&mdash;and this one to-night

-is an exceptionally good one.'</p>

-

-<p>"She always answered back so pretty. I feel glad when folks can. It's

-like they had an extra brain to 'em.</p>

-

-<p>"Insley went in, and he sort of filled up the whole room, the way some

-men do. He wasn't so awful big, either. But he was pervading.

-Christopher had gone to bed, and Robin Sidney was sitting there near a

-big crock of hollyhocks&mdash;she could make the centre and life of a room a

-crock full of flowers just as you can make it a fireplace.</p>

-

-<p>"'Come in,' she says, 'and see what we bought Christopher. I wanted to

-put him in black velvet knickerbockers or silver armour, but Aunt

-Eleanor has bought chiefly khaki middies. She's such a sensible

-relative.'</p>

-

-<p>"'What are we going to do with him?' Insley asks. I loved the way he

-always said 'we' about everything. Not 'they' or 'you,' but always,

-'What are <i>we</i> going to do.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I'll keep him awhile,' Mis' Emmons says, 'and see what develops. If I

-weren't going to Europe this fall&mdash;but something may happen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> Things do.

-Calliope,' she says to me, 'did I buy what I ought to have bought?'</p>

-

-<p>"I went over to see the things spread out on the table, and Insley

-turned round to where Robin was. I don't really believe he had been very

-far away from where she was since the night before, when Christopher

-come. And he got right into what he had to say, like he was impatient

-for the sympathy in her eyes and in her voice.</p>

-

-<p>"'I must tell you,' he says. 'I could hardly wait to tell you. Isn't it

-great to be knocked down and picked up again, without having to get back

-on your own feet. I&mdash;wanted to tell you.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Tell me,' she says. And she looked at him in her nice, girl way that

-lent him her eyes in good faith for just a minute and then took them

-back again.</p>

-

-<p>"'I've been to see Alex Proudfit,' he said. 'I've dined with him.'</p>

-

-<p>"I don't think she said anything at all, but Insley went on, absorbed in

-what he was saying.</p>

-

-<p>"'I talked with him,' he says, 'about what we talked of last night&mdash;the

-things to do, here in the village. I thought he might care&mdash;I was

-foolish enough for that. Have you ever tried to open a door in a solid

-wall? When<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> I left there, I felt as if I'd tried just that. Seriously,

-have you ever tried to talk about the way things are going to be and to

-talk about it to a perfectly satisfied man?'</p>

-

-<p>"Robin leaned forward, but I guess he thought that was because of her

-sympathy. He went right on:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'I want never to speak of this to anyone else, but I can't help telling

-you. You&mdash;understand. You know what I'm driving at. Alex Proudfit is a

-good man&mdash;as men are counted good. And he's a perfect host, a

-fascinating companion. But he's a type of the most dangerous selfishness

-that walks the world&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"Robin suddenly laid her hand, just for a flash, on Insley's arm.</p>

-

-<p>"'You mustn't tell me,' she says. 'I ought to have told you before. Alex

-Proudfit&mdash;I'm going to be Alex Proudfit's wife.'</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>V</h2>

-

-<p>"In the next days things happened that none of us Friendship Village

-ladies is likely ever to forget. Some of the things was nice and some

-was exciting, and some was the kind that's nice after you've got the

-introduction wore off; but all of them was memorable. And most all of

-them was the kind that when you're on the train looking out the car

-window, or when you're home sitting in the dusk before it's time to

-light the lamp, you fall to thinking about and smiling over, and you

-have them always around with you, same as heirlooms you've got ready for

-yourself.</p>

-

-<p>"One of these was the Fourth of July that year. It fell a few days after

-Alex Proudfit come, and the last of the days was full of his guests

-arriving to the house party. The two Proudfit cars was racking back and

-forth to the station all day long, and Jimmy Sturgis, he went near crazy

-with getting the baggage up. I never see such a lot of baggage. 'Land,

-land,' says Mis' Toplady, peeking out her window at it, 'you'd think

-they was all trees and they'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> come bringing extra sets of branches,

-regular forest size.' Mis' Emmons and Robin and Christopher went up the

-night before the Fourth&mdash;Mis' Emmons was going to do the chaperoning,

-and Alex had asked me to be up there all I could to help him. He knows

-how I love to have a hand in things. However, I couldn't be there right

-at first, because getting ready for the Fourth of July was just then in

-full swing.</p>

-

-<p>"Do you know what it is to want to do over again something that you

-ain't done for years and years? I don't care what it is&mdash;whether it's

-wanting to be back sitting around the dinner table of your home when you

-was twelve, and them that was there aren't there now; or whether it's

-rocking in the cool of the day on the front porch of some old house that

-got tore down long ago; or whether it's walking along a road you use' to

-know every fence post of; or fishing from a stream that's dried up or

-damned these twenty years; or eating spice' currants or pickle' peaches

-that there aren't none put up like them now; or hearing a voice in a

-glee club that don't sing no more, or milking a dead cow that <i>wasn't</i>

-dead on the spring mornings you mean about&mdash;no, sir, I don't care what

-one of them all it happens to be, if you know what it is to want to do

-it again and can't, 'count of death and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>distance and long-ago-ness,

-then I tell you you know one of the lonesomest, hurtingest feelings the

-human heart can, sole outside of the awful things. And that was what had

-got the matter with me awhile ago.</p>

-

-<p>"It had come on me in the meeting of townspeople called by Silas Sykes a

-few weeks before, to discuss how Friendship Village should celebrate the

-Fourth. We hadn't had a Fourth in the village in years. Seeing the

-Fourth and the Cemetery was so closely connected, late years, Sodality

-had took a hand in the matter and had got fire-crackers and pistols

-voted out of town, part by having family fingers blowed off and clothes

-scorched full of holes, and part through Silas and the other dealers

-admitting they wan't no money in the stuff and they'd be glad to be

-prevented by law from having to sell it. So we shut down on it the year

-after little Spudge Cadoza bit down on a cap to see if it'd go off, and

-it done so. But we see we'd made the mistake of not hatching up

-something to take the place of the noise, because the boys and girls all

-went off to the next-town Fourths and come home blowed up and scorched

-off, anyway. And some of the towns, especially Red Barns, that we can

-see from Friendship Village when it's clear, was feeling awful touchy

-and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>chip-shouldered towards us, and their two weekly papers was saying

-we borrowed our year's supply of patriotism off the county, and sponged

-on public spirit, and like that. So the general Friendship feeling was

-that we'd ought to have a doings this year, and Postmaster Sykes, that

-ain't so much public spirited as he is professional leading

-citizen,&mdash;platform introducer of all visiting orators and so on,&mdash;he

-called a mass-meeting to decide what to do.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes, she was awful interested, too, through being a born leader

-and up in arms most of the time to do something new. And this year she

-was anxious to get up something fancy to impress her niece with&mdash;the new

-niece that was coming to visit her, and that none of us had ever see,

-and that the Sykes's themselves had only just developed. Seems she was

-looking for her family tree and she wrote to Mis' Sykes about being

-connect'. And the letter seemed so swell, and the address so

-mouth-melting and stylish that Mis' Sykes up and invited her to

-Friendship Village to look herself up in their Bible, Born and Died

-part.</p>

-

-<p>"The very night of that public mass-meeting Miss Beryl Sessions&mdash;such

-was the niece's name&mdash;come in on the Through, and Mis' Sykes, she

-snapped her up from the supper table to bring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> her to the meeting and

-show her off, all brimming with the blood-is-thicker-than-water

-sentiments due to a niece that looked like that. For I never see

-sweller. And being in the Glee Club I set where I got a good view when

-Mis' Sykes rustled into the meeting, last minute, in her best black

-cashmere, though it was an occasion when the rest of us would wear our

-serges and alapacas, and Mis' Sykes knew it. All us ladies see them both

-and took in every stitch they had on without letting on to unpack a

-glance, and we see that the niece was wearing the kind of a dress that

-was to ours what mince-pie is to dried apple, and I couldn't blame Mis'

-Sykes for showing her off, human.</p>

-

-<p>"Silas had had Dr. June open the meeting with prayer, and I can't feel

-that this was so much reverence in Silas as that he isn't real

-parliamentary nor yet real knowledgeable about what to do with his

-hands, and prayer sort of broke the ice for him. That's the way Silas

-is.</p>

-

-<p>"'Folks,' says he, 'we're here to consider the advisability of bein'

-patriotic this year. Of having a doings that'll shame the other towns

-around for their half-an'-half way of giving things. Of making the

-glorious Fourth a real business bringer. Of having a speech that'll

-bring in the country trade&mdash;the Honourable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> Thaddeus Hyslop has been

-named by some. And of getting our city put in the class of the wide

-awake and the hustlers and the up-to-date and doing. It's a grand chance

-we've passed up for years. What are we going to do for ourselves this

-year? To decide it is the purpose of this mass-meetin'. Sentiments are

-now in order.'</p>

-

-<p>"Silas set down with a kitterin' glance to his new niece that he was

-host and uncle of and pleased to be put in a good light before, first

-thing so.</p>

-

-<p>"Several men hopped up&mdash;Timothy Toplady saying that Friendship Village

-was a city in all but name and numbers, and why not prove it to the

-other towns? Jimmy Sturgis that takes tintypes, besides running the 'bus

-and was all primed for a day full of both&mdash;'A glorious Fourth,' says he,

-'would be money in our pockets.' And the farm machinery and furniture

-dealers, and Gekerjeck, that has the drug store and the ice-cream

-fountain, and others, they spoke the same. Insley had to be to the

-college that night, or I don't believe the meeting would have gone the

-way it did go. For the first line and chorus of everything that all the

-men present said never varied:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'The Fourth for a business bringer.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p><p>"It was Threat Hubbelthwait that finally made the motion, and he wasn't

-real sober, like he usually ain't, but he wound up on the key-note:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'I sold two hundred and four lunches the last Fourth we hed in

-Friendship Village,' says he, pounding his palm with his fist, 'an' I

-move you that we celebrate this comin' Fourth like the blazes.'</p>

-

-<p>"And though Silas softened it down some in putting it, still that was

-substantially the sentiment that went through at that mass-meeting, that

-was real pleased with itself because of.</p>

-

-<p>"Well, us ladies hadn't taken no part. It ain't our custom to appear

-much on our feet at public gatherings, unless to read reports of a

-year's work, and so that night we never moved a motion. But we looked at

-each other, and us ladies has got so we understand each other's

-eyebrows. And we knew, one and all, that we was ashamed of the men and

-ashamed of their sentiments. But the rest didn't like to speak out,

-'count of being married to them. And I didn't like to, 'count of not

-being.</p>

-

-<p>"But when they got to discussing ways and means of celebrating, a woman

-did get onto her feet, and a little lilt of interest run round the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> room

-like wind. It was Miss Beryl Sessions, the niece, that stood up like

-you'd unwrapped your new fashion magazine and unrolled her off'n the

-front page.</p>

-

-<p>"'I wonder,' says she&mdash;and her voice went all sweet and chirpy and

-interested, 'whether it would amuse you to know some ways we took to

-celebrate the Fourth of July last year at home ...' and while the men

-set paying attention to her appearance and thinking they was paying

-attention to her words alone, she went on to tell them how 'at home' the

-whole town had joined in a great, Fourth of July garden party on the

-village 'common,' with a band and lanterns and fireworks at night, and a

-big marquee in the middle, full of ice-cream. 'We made it,' she wound

-up, 'a real social occasion, a town party with everybody invited. And

-the business houses said that it paid them over and over.'</p>

-

-<p>"Well, of course that went with the men. Land, but men is easy tamed, so

-be the tameress is somebody they ain't used to and is gifted with a good

-dress and a kind of a 'scalloped air. But when she also has some idea of

-business they go down and don't know it. 'Why, I should think that'd

-take here like a warm meal,' says Timothy Toplady, instant&mdash;and I see

-Mis' Amanda Toplady's chin come home to place like she'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> heard Timothy

-making love to another woman. 'Novel as the dickens,' says Simon

-Gekerjeck. 'Move we adopt it.' And so they done.</p>

-

-<p>"While they was appointing committees I set up there in the Glee Club

-feeling blacker and blacker. Coming down to the meeting that night, I

-recollect I'd been extra gentle in my mind over the whole celebration

-idea. Walking along in the seven-o'clock light, with the sun shining

-east on Daphne Street and folks all streaming to the town-meeting, and

-me sensing what it was going to be for, I'd got all worked up to 'most a

-Declaration of Independence lump in my throat. When I went in the door

-to the meeting, little Spudge Cadoza and some other children was hanging

-around the steps and Silas Sykes was driving them away; and it come to

-me how deathly ridiculous that was, to be driving <i>children</i> away from a

-meeting like that, when children is what such meetings is for; and I'd

-got to thinking of all the things Insley was hoping for us, and I'd been

-real lifted up on to places for glory. And here down had come the men

-with their talk about a <i>paying</i> Fourth, and here was Miss Beryl

-Sessions showing us how to celebrate in a way that seemed to me real

-sweet but not so very patriotic. It was then that all of a sudden it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>

-seemed to me I'd die, because I wanted so much to feel the way I'd use

-to feel when it was going to be the Fourth o' July. And when they sung

-'Star Spangled Banner' to go home on and all stood up to the sentiment,

-I couldn't open my mouth. I can't go folks that stands up and carols

-national tunes and then talks about having a Fourth that'll be a real

-business bringer.</p>

-

-<p>"'What'd you think of the meeting?' says Mis' Toplady, low, to me on the

-way out.</p>

-

-<p>"'I think,' says I, frank, 'it was darn.'</p>

-

-<p>"'There's just exactly what we all think,' says Mis' Toplady, in a

-whisper.</p>

-

-<p>"But all the same, preparations was gone into head first. Most of us was

-put on to from one to five committees&mdash;I mean most of them that works.

-The rest of the town was setting by, watching it be done for them,

-serene or snarling, according to their lights. Of course us ladies

-worked, not being them that goes to a meeting an' sets with their mouths

-shut and then comes out and kicks at what the meetin' done. Yet, though

-we wan't made out of that kind of meal, we spoke our minds to each

-other, private.</p>

-

-<p>"'What under the canopy <i>is</i> a marquee?' asks Mis' Amanda Toplady, when

-we met at her house to plan about refreshments.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke right up.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, it's a finger ring,' she says. 'One of them with stones running

-the long way. The minister's wife's got a blue stone one....'</p>

-

-<p>"'Finger ring!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, scornful. 'It's a title. That's

-what it is. From England.'</p>

-

-<p>"We looked at them both, perplexish. Mis' Holcomb is always up on

-things&mdash;it was her that went into short sleeves when the rest of us was

-still crocheting cuff turnovers, unconscious as the dead. But Mis'

-Uppers had been the Mayor's wife, and though he'd run away, 'count o'

-some money matter, still a title is a title, an' we thought Mis' Uppers

-had ought to know.</p>

-

-<p>"Then Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, she spoke up timid. 'I

-see,' she says, 'in the <i>Caterer's Gazette</i> a picture called "Marquee

-Decorated for F&ecirc;te." The picture wan't nothing but a striped tent. Could

-a tent have anything to do with it?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Pity sakes, no,' says Mis' Uppers. 'This is somethin' real city done,

-Abagail.'</p>

-

-<p>"We worked on what we could, but we all felt kind of lost and left out

-of it, and like we was tinkering with tools we didn't know the names<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> of

-and a-making something we wasn't going to know how to use. And when the

-article about our Fourth flared out in the <i>Friendship Daily</i> and Red

-Barns and Indian Mound weeklies, we felt worse than we had before:

-'Garden Party.' 'All Day F&ecirc;te.' '<i>Al Fresco</i> Celebration,' the editors

-had wrote it up.</p>

-

-<p>"'All <i>what</i>?' says Mis' Uppers, listening irritable to the last one. 'I

-can't catch that word no more'n a rabbit.'</p>

-

-<p>"'It's a French word,' Mis' Holcomb told her, superior. 'Seems to me

-I've heard it means a failure. It's a funny way to put it, ain't it? I

-bet, though, that's what it'll be.'</p>

-

-<p>"But the men, my, the men thought they was doing things right. The

-Committee on Orator, with Silas for rudder, had voted itself Fifty

-Dollars to squander on the speech, and they had engaged the Honourable

-Thaddeus Hyslop, that they'd hoped to, and that was formerly in our

-legislature, to be the orator of the day; they put up a platform and

-seats on the 'common'&mdash;that wan't nothing but the market where loads of

-wood stood to be sold; they was a-going to cut evergreens and plant them

-there for the day; the Committee on Fireworks was a-going to buy set

-pieces for the evening; they was a-going to raise Ned. Somebody that was

-on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> one of the committees wanted to have some sort of historic scenes,

-but the men wouldn't hear to it, because that would take away them that

-had to do the business in the stores; no caluthumpians, no grand basket

-dinner&mdash;just the garden party, real sweet, with Miss Beryl Sessions and

-a marquee full of ice-cream that the ladies was to make.</p>

-

-<p>"'It sounds sort of sacrilegious to me,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'connectin'

-the Fourth up with society and secular doin's. When I was young, my

-understandin' of a garden party would of been somethin' worldly. Now it

-seems it's patriotic. Well, I wonder how it's believed to be in the

-sight of the Lord?'</p>

-

-<p>"But whether it was right or whether it was wrong, none of it rung like

-it had ought to of rang. They wan't no <i>glow</i> to it. We all went around

-like getting supper on wash-day, and not like getting up a meal for

-folks that meant a lot to us. It wan't going to be any such Fourth as

-I'd meant about and wanted to have come back. The day come on a pacing,

-and the nearer it come, the worse all us ladies felt. And by a few days

-before it, when our final committee meeting come off in Abagail Arnold's

-home bakery, back room, 'count of being central, we was all blue as the

-grave, and I donno but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> bluer. We set waiting for Silas that was having

-a long-distance call, and Abagail was putting in the time frosting dark

-cakes in the same room. We was most all there but the niece Miss Beryl

-Sessions. She had gone home, but she was coming back on the Fourth in an

-automobile full o' city folks.</p>

-

-<p>"'The <i>marquee's</i> come,' says Mis' Holcomb, throwing out the word

-clickish.</p>

-

-<p>"Nobody said anything. Seems it <i>was</i> a tent all along.</p>

-

-<p>"'Silas has got in an extra boy for the day,' says Mis' Sykes,

-complacent. 'It's the littlest Cadoza boy, Spudge. He's goin' to walk up

-an' down Daphne Street all day, with a Prize Coffee board on his back.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Where's Spudge's Fourth comin' in?' I couldn't help askin'.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes stared. She always could look you down, but she's got a much

-flatter, thicker stare since her niece come. 'What's them kind o' folks

-<i>for</i> but such work?' says she, puckering.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, I donno, I donno,' says I. 'I thought mebbe they was partly made

-to thank the Lord for bein' born free.'</p>

-

-<p>"'How unpractical you talk, Calliope,' she says.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p><p>"'I donno that word,' says I, reckless from being pent up. 'But it

-seems like a liberty-lovin' people had ought to hev <i>one</i> day to love

-liberty on an' not tote groceries and boards and such.'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Don't it!</i>' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, explosive.</p>

-

-<p>"'What you talking?' says Mis' Sykes, cold. 'Don't you know the Fourth

-of July can be made one of the best days of the year for your own town's

-good? What's that if it ain't patriotic?'</p>

-

-<p>"'It's Yankee shrewd,' says I, snapping some, 'that's what it is. It

-ain't Yankee spirited, by a long shot.'</p>

-

-<p>"'"<i>By a long shot</i>,"' quotes Mis' Sykes, withering. She always was

-death on wording, and she was far more death after her niece come. But I

-always thought, and I think now, that correcting your advisary's grammar

-is like telling him there's a smooch on his nose, and they ain't either

-of them parliamental <i>or</i> decent.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Uppers sighed. 'The whole thing,' says she, candid, 'sounds to me

-like Fourth o' July in Europe or somewheres. No get-up-an'-get anywheres

-to it. What do they do in Europe on the Fourth o' July, anyway?' she

-wondered. 'I donno's I ever read.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p><p>"'I donno, either,' says Mis' Holcomb, dark, 'but I bet you it's one of

-these All Frost celebrations&mdash;or whatever it is they say.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady set drying her feet by Abagail's stove, and she looked

-regular down in the mouth. 'Well, sir,' she said, 'a Fourth o' July all

-rosettes an' ribbins so don't sound to me one bit like the regular

-Fourth at all. It don't sound to me no more'n the third&mdash;or the fifth.'</p>

-

-<p>"I was getting that same homesick feeling that I'd had off and on all

-through the getting ready, that hankering for the old kinds of Fourths

-of Julys when I was a little girl. When us girls had a quarter apiece to

-spend, and father'd cover the quarter with his hands on the gate-post

-for us to guess them; and when the boys picked up scrap-iron and sold

-old rubbers to get their Fourth money. It wan't so much what we used to

-do that I wanted back as it was the <i>feeling</i>. Why, none of our spines

-use' to be laid down good and flat in our backs once all day long. And I

-wisht what I'd wisht more than once since the mass-meeting, that some of

-us ladies had of took hold of that Fourth and had run it so's 'twould of

-been like you mean 'way inside when you say 'The Fourth of July'&mdash;and

-that death and distance and long-ago-ness is awful in the way of.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p><p>"'We'd ought to of had a grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods,' I

-says, restless.</p>

-

-<p>"'An' a p'rade,' says Mis' Toplady. 'I donno nothin' that makes me feel

-more patriotic than the minute before the p'rade comes by.'</p>

-

-<p>"'An' children in the Fourth somehow,' Mis' Uppers says. 'Land, children

-is who it's for, anyhow,' she says, like I'd been thinking; 'an' all

-we've ever done for 'em about it is to leave 'em kill 'emselves with

-it.'</p>

-

-<p>"Well, it was there, just there, and before Mis' Sykes could dicker a

-reply that in come tearing her husband from his long-distance

-telephoning, and raced into the room like he hadn't a manner in his kit.</p>

-

-<p>"'We're all over with,' Silas shouts. 'It's all done for! Thaddeus

-Hyslop is smashed an' bleedin'. He can't come. We ain't got no speech.

-His automobile's turned over on top of his last speakin' place.

-Everybody else that ain't one-horse is sure to be got for somewheres

-else. Our Fourth of July is rooned. We're done for. The editor's gettin'

-it in the <i>Weekly</i> so's to warn the county. We'll be the Laughing Stock.

-Dang the luck!' says Silas; 'why don't some o' you say somethin'?'</p>

-

-<p>"But it wasn't all because Silas was doing it all that the men didn't

-talk, because when he'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> stopped, they all stood there with their mouths

-open and never said a word. Seems to me I did hear Timothy Toplady bring

-out, 'Blisterin' Benson,' but nobody offered nothing more fertile. That

-is, nobody of the men did. But 'most before I got my thoughts together I

-heard two feet of a chair come down onto the floor, and Mis' Amanda

-Toplady stood up there by Abagail's cook stove, and she took the griddle

-lifter and struck light on the side of the pipe.</p>

-

-<p>"'Hurrah!' she says. 'Now we can have a real Fourth. A Fourth that does

-as a Fourth is.'</p>

-

-<p>"'What you talkin', Amanda Toplady?' says Silas, crisp; and ''Mandy,

-what the blazes do you mean?' says Timothy, her lawful lord. But Mis'

-Toplady didn't mind them, nor mind Mis' Sykes, that was staring at her

-flat and thick.</p>

-

-<p>"'I mean,' says Mis' Toplady, reckless, 'I been sick to death of the

-idea of a Fourth with no spirit to it. I mean I been sick to death of a

-Fourth that's all starched white dresses an' company manners an' no

-hurrahs anywheres about it. An' us ladies, most all of us, feels the

-same. We didn't like to press in, bein' you men done the original

-plannin', an' so not one of us has said "P'rade," nor nothin' else to

-you. But now that your orator has fell through on himself, you men just

-leave us ladies in on this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> thing to do more'n take orders, an' you

-needn't be the Laughin' Stock o' nothin' an' nobody. I guess you'll all

-stand by me. What say, ladies?'</p>

-

-<p>"Well, sir, you'd ought to of heard us. We joined in like a patch of

-grasshoppers singing. They wasn't one of us that hadn't been dying to

-get our hands on that Fourth and make it a Fourth full of unction and

-oil of joy, like the Bible said, and must of meant what we meant.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, ladies,' I remember I says, fervent, 'I feel like we could make a

-Fourth o' July just like stirrin' up a white cake, so be we was let.'</p>

-

-<p>"'What d' you know about managin' a Fourth?' snarls Silas. 'You'll have

-us all in the hole. You'll have us shellin' out of our own pockets to

-make up&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady whirled on him. 'Would you druther have Red Barns an'

-Indian Mound a-jumpin' on you through the weekly press for bein'

-bluffers, an' callin' us cheap an' like that, or would you druther not?'

-she put it to him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Dang it,' says Silas, 'I never tried to do a thing for this town that

-it didn't lay down an' roll all over me. I wish I was dead.'</p>

-

-<p>"'You wan't tryin' to do this thing for this town,' says Mis' Toplady

-back at him, like the wind. 'You was tryin' to do it for the <i>stores</i>

-of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> this town, an' you know it. You was tryin' to ride the Fourth for a

-horse to the waterin' trough o' good business, an' you know it, Silas

-Sykes,' says she, 'an' so was Jimmy and Threat an' all of you. The hull

-country tries to get behind the Fourth of July an' make money over its

-back like a counter. It ain't what was meant, an' us ladies felt it all

-along. An' neither was it meant for a garden party day alone, though

-<i>that</i>,' says Mis' Toplady, gracious, 'is a real sweet side idea. An'

-Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Sessions had ought to go on an' run that part of it,

-bein' the&mdash;tent's here,' she could <i>not</i> bring herself to use that other

-word. 'But,' she says, 'that ain't all of a real Fourth, nor yet a

-speech ain't, though he did use to be in the legislature. Them things

-alone don't make a real flag, liberty-praisin' Fourth, to me nor to none

-of us.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says Silas, sour, 'what you goin' to <i>do</i> if the men decides to

-let you try this?'</p>

-

-<p>"'That ain't the way,' says Mis' Toplady, like a flash; 'it ain't for

-the men to <i>let us do</i> nothin'. It's for us all to do it together, yoke

-to yoke, just like everything else ought to be done by us both, an' no

-talk o' "<i>runnin</i>'" by either side.'</p>

-

-<p>"'But what's the idee&mdash;what's the idee?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> says Silas. 'Dang it all,

-somebody's got to hev an idee.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Us ladies has got 'em,' says Mis' Toplady, calm. 'An',' says she, 'one

-o' the first of 'em is that if we have anything to do with runnin' the

-Fourth of our forefathers, then after 10 <span class="smaller">A.M.</span>, all day on that day,

-every business house in town has got to shut down.'</p>

-

-<p>"'What?' says Silas, his voice slippin'. 'Gone crazy-headed, hev ye?'</p>

-

-<p>"'No, Silas,' says Mis' Toplady, 'nor yet hev we gone so graspin' that

-we can't give up a day's trade to take notice of our country.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Lord Harry,' says Silas, 'you can't get a dealer in town to do it, an'

-you know it.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, yes, you can, Silas,' says somebody, brisk. And it was Abagail,

-frosting dark cakes over by the side of the room. 'I was goin' to shut

-up shop, anyway, all day on the Fourth,' Abagail says.</p>

-

-<p>"'An' lose the country trade in lunches?' yells Silas. 'Why, woman,

-you'd be Ten Dollars out o' pocket.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I wan't never one to spend the mornin' thankin' God an' the afternoon

-dippin' oysters,' says Abagail. And Silas scrunched. He done that one

-year when his Thanksgiving oysters come late, and he knew he done it.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p><p>"Well, they went over it and over it and tried to think of some other

-way, and tried to hatch up some other speaker without eating up the

-whole Fifty Dollars in telephone tolls, and tried most other things. And

-then we told them what we'd thought of different times, amongst us as

-being features fit for a Fourth in the sight of the Lord and the sight

-of men. And they hemmed and they hawed and they give in about as

-graceful as a clothes-line winds up when you've left it out in the

-sleet, but they did give in and see reason. Timothy last&mdash;that's quite

-vain of being firm.</p>

-

-<p>"'If we come out with a one-horse doin's, seems like it'd be worse than

-sittin' down flat-foot failed,' he mourns, grieving.</p>

-

-<p>"Amanda, his wife, give him one of her looks. 'Timothy,' says she,

-'when, since you was married to me, did I ever fail to stodge up a

-company dinner or a spare bed or a shroud when it was needed sudden?

-When did any of us ladies ever fail that's here? Do you sp'ose we're any

-more scant of idees about our own nation?'</p>

-

-<p>"And Timothy had to keep his silence. He knew what she said was the Old

-Testament truth. But I think what really swung them all round was the

-thought of Red Barns and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> Indian Mound. Imagination of what them two

-weekly papers would say, so be we petered out on our speech and didn't

-offer nothing else, was too much for flesh and blood to bear. And the

-men ended by agreeing to seeing to shutting every business house in

-Friendship Village and they went off to do it,&mdash;resolved, but groaning

-some, like men will.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes, she made some excuse and went, too. 'I'll run the garden

-party part,' says she. 'My niece an' I'll do that, an' try our best to

-get some novelty into your Fourth. An' we'll preside on the marquee,

-like we'd agreed. More I don't say.'</p>

-

-<p>"But the rest of us, we stayed on there at Abagail's, and we planned

-like mad.</p>

-

-<p>"We didn't look in no journal nor on no woman's page for something new.

-We didn't rush to our City relations for novelties. We didn't try for

-this and that nor grasp at no agony whatever. We just went down deep

-into the inside of our understanding and thought what the Fourth was and

-how them that made it would of wanted it kept. No fingers blowed off nor

-clothes scorched up, no houses burned down, no ear-drums busted

-out&mdash;none of them would of been in <i>their</i> programme, and they wan't in

-ours. Some of the things that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> was in ours we'd got by hearing Insley

-tell what they was doin' other places. Some o' the things he suggested

-to us. Some o' the things we got by just going back and back down the

-years an' <i>remembering</i>&mdash;not so much what we'd done as the way we use'

-to feel, long ago, when the Fourth was the Fourth and acted like it knew

-it. Some of the things we got by just reaching forward and forward, and

-seeing what the Fourth is going to mean to them a hundred years from

-now&mdash;so be we do our part. And some of the things we got through sheer

-make-shift woman intelligence, that put its heads together and used

-everything it had, that had anything to do with the nation, or the town,

-or with really living at all the way that first Fourth of July meant

-about, 'way down inside.</p>

-

-<p>"Before it was light on the morning of the Fourth, I woke up, feeling

-all happy and like I wanted to hurry. I was up and dressed before the

-sun was up, and when I opened my front door, I declare it was just like

-the glory of the Lord was out there waiting for me. The street was

-laying all still and simple, like it was ready and waiting for the

-light. Early as it was, Mis' Holcomb was just shaking her breakfast

-table-cloth on her side stoop, and she waved it to me, big and billowy

-and white,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> like a banner. And I offs with my apron and waved it back,

-and it couldn't of meant no more to either of us if we had been shaking

-out the folds of flags. It was too early for the country wagons to be

-rattling in yet, and they wan't no other sounds&mdash;except a little bit of

-a pop now and then over to where Bennie Uppers and little Nick Toplady

-was up and out, throwing torpedoes onto the bricks; and then the birds

-that was trilling an' shouting like mad, till every tree all up and down

-Daphne Street and all up and down the town and the valley was just one

-living singing. And all over everything, like a kind of a weave to it,

-was that something that makes a Sunday morning and some holiday mornings

-better and sweeter and <i>goldener</i> than any other day. I ain't got much

-of a garden, not having any real time to fuss in it, but I walked out

-into the middle of the little patch of pinks and parsley that I have

-got, and I says 'way deep in me, deeper than thinking: 'It don't make no

-manner of differ'nce how much of a fizzle the day ends up with, this,

-here and now, is the way it had ought to start.'</p>

-

-<p>"Never, not if I live till beyond always, will I forget how us ladies'

-hearts was in our mouths when, along about 'leven o'clock, we heard the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>

-Friendship Village Stonehenge band coming fifing along, and we knew the

-parade was begun. We was all on the market square&mdash;hundreds of us, seems

-though. Red Barns and Indian Mound had turned out from side to side of

-themselves, mingling the same as though ploughshares was

-pruning-hooks&mdash;or whatever that quotation time is&mdash;both towns looking

-for flaws in the day, like enough, but both shutting up about it,

-biblical. Even the marquee, with its red and white stripes, showing

-through the trees, made me feel good. 'Land, land,' Mis' Toplady says,

-'it looks kind of homey and old-fashioned, after all, don't it? I mean

-the&mdash;tent,' she says&mdash;she would <i>not</i> say the other word; but then I

-guess it made her kind of mad seeing Mis' Sykes bobbing around in there

-in white duck an' white shoes&mdash;her that ain't a grandmother sole because

-of Nature and not at all through any lack of her own years. Everything

-was all seeming light and confident&mdash;but I tell you we didn't feel so

-confident as we'd meant to when we heard the band a-coming to the tune

-o' 'Hail, Columbia! Happy Land.' And yet now, when I look back on that

-Independence Day procession, it seems like regular floats is no more

-than toy doings beside of it.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p><p>"What do you guess us ladies had thought up for our procession,&mdash;with

-Insley back of us, letting us think we thought it up alone? Mebbe you'll

-laugh, because it wan't expensive to do; but oh; I think it was nice.

-We'd took everything in the town that done the town's work, and we'd run

-them all together. We headed off with the fire-engine, 'count of the

-glitter&mdash;and we'd loaded it down with flags and flowers, and the hook

-and ladder and hose-carts the same, wheels and sides; and flags in the

-rubber caps of the firemen up top. Then we had the two big sprinkling

-carts, wound with bunting, and five-foot flags flying from the seats.

-Then come all the city teams drawn by the city horses&mdash;nice, plump

-horses they was, and rosettes on them, and each man had decorated his

-wagon and was driving it in his best clothes. Then come the steam roller

-that Friendship Village and Red Barns and Indian Mound owns together and

-scraps over some, though that didn't appear in its appearance, puffing

-along, with posies on it. Then there was the city electric light repair

-wagon, with a big paper globe for an umbrella, and the electric men

-riding with their leggings on and their spurs, like they climb the

-poles; and behind them the telephone men was riding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>&mdash;because the town

-owns its own telephone, too&mdash;and then the four Centrals, in pretty

-shirtwaists, in a double-seated buggy loaded with flowers&mdash;the telephone

-office we'd see to it was closed down, too, to have its Fourth, like a

-human being. And marching behind them was the city waterworks men, best

-bib and tucker apiece. And then we hed out the galvanized garbage wagon

-that us ladies hed bought ourselves a year ago, and that wasn't being

-used this year count of the city pleading too poison poor; and it was

-all scrubbed up and garnished and filled with ferns and drove by its own

-driver and the boy that had use' to go along to empty the cans. And then

-of course they was more things&mdash;some of them with day fireworks shooting

-up from them&mdash;but not the hearse, though we had all we could do to keep

-Timothy Toplady from having it in, 'count of its common public office.</p>

-

-<p>"Well, and then we'd done an innovation&mdash;an' this was all Insley's idea,

-and it was him that made us believe we could do it. Coming next, in

-carriages and on foot, was the mayor and the city council and every last

-man or woman that had anything to do with running the city life. They

-was all there&mdash;city treasurer, clerk of the court, register of deeds,

-sheriffs, marshals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> night-watchmen, health officer, postmaster, janitor

-of the city hall, clerks, secretaries, stenographers, school board, city

-teachers, and every one of the rest&mdash;they was all there, just like they

-had belonged in the p'rade the way them framers of the first Fourth of

-July had meant they should fit in: Conscience and all. But some of them

-servants of the town had made money off'n its good roads, and some off'n

-its saloons, and some off'n getting ordinances repealed, and some off'n

-inspecting buildings and sidewalks that they didn't know nothing about,

-and some was making it even then by paving out into the marsh; and some

-in yet other ways that wasn't either real elbow work nor clean head

-work. What else could they do? We'd ask' them to march because they

-represented the town, and rather'n own they <i>didn't</i> represent the town,

-there they was marching; but if some of them didn't step down Daphne

-Street feeling green and sick and sore and right down schoolboy ashamed

-of themselves, then they ain't got the human thrill in them that somehow

-I <i>cannot</i> believe ever dies clear out of nobody. They was a lump in my

-throat for them that had sold themselves, and they was a lump for them

-that hadn't&mdash;but oh, the differ'nce in the lumps.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p><p>"'Land, land,' I says to Mis' Toplady, 'if we ain't done another thing,

-we've made 'em remember they're servants to Friendship Village&mdash;like

-they often forget.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Ain't we?' she says, solemn. 'Ain't we?'</p>

-

-<p>"And then next behind begun the farm things: the threshin' machines and

-reapers and binders and mowers and like that, all drawn by the farm

-horses and drove by their owners and decorated by them, jolly and gay;

-and, too, all the farm horses for miles around&mdash;we was going to give a

-donated surprise prize for the best kep' and fed amongst them. And last,

-except for the other two bands sprinkled along, come the leading

-citizens, and who do you guess <i>they</i> was? Not Silas nor Timothy nor

-Eppleby nor even Doctor June, nor our other leading business men and our

-three or four professionals&mdash;no, not them; but the real, true, leading

-citizens of Friendship Village and Indian Mound and Red Barns and other

-towns and the farms between&mdash;the <i>children</i>, over two hundred of them,

-dressed in white if they had it and in dark if they didn't, with or

-without shoes, in rags or out of them, village-tough descended or with

-pew-renting fathers, all the same and together, and carrying a flag and

-singing to the tops of their voices 'Hail, Columbia,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> that the bands

-kept a-playing, some out of plumb as to time, but all fervent and

-joyous. It was us women alone that got up that part. My, I like to think

-about it.</p>

-

-<p>"They swung the length of Daphne Street and twice around the market

-square, and they come to a halt in front of the platform. And Doctor

-June stood up before them all, and he prayed like this:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Lord God, that let us start free an' think we was equal, give us to

-help one another to be free an' to get equal, in deed an' in truth.'</p>

-

-<p>"And who do you s'pose we hed to read the Declaration of Independence?

-Little Spudge Cadoza, that Silas had been a-going to hev walk up and

-down Daphne Street with a board on his back&mdash;Insley thought of him, and

-we picked him out a-purpose. And though he didn't read it so thrilling

-as Silas would of, it made me feel the way no reading of it has ever

-made me feel before&mdash;oh, because it was kind of like we'd snapped up the

-little kid and set him free all over again, even though he wasn't it but

-one day in the year. And it sort of seemed to me that all inside the

-words he read was trumpets and horns telling how much them words was

-<i>going</i> to mean to him and his kind before he'd had time to die. And

-then the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> Glee Club struck into 'America,' and the whole crowd joined in

-without being expected, and the three bands that was laying over in the

-shade hopped up and struck in, too&mdash;and I bet they could of heard us to

-Indian Mound. Leastways to Red Barns, that we can see from Friendship

-Village when it's clear.</p>

-

-<p>"The grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods stays in my head as one

-picture, all full of veal loaf and 'scalloped potato and fruit salad and

-nut-bread and deviled eggs and bake' beans and pickle' peaches and layer

-cake and drop sponge-cake and hot coffee&mdash;the kind of a dinner that

-comes crowding to your thought whenever you think 'Dinner' at your

-hungriest. And after we'd took care of everybody's baskets and set them

-under a tree for a lunch towards six, us ladies went back to the market

-square. And over by the marquee we see the men gathered&mdash;all but Insley,

-that had slipped away as quick as we begun telling him how much of it

-was due to him. Miss Beryl Sessions had just arrived, in a automobile,

-covered with veils, and she was introducing the other men to her City

-friends. Us ladies sort of kittered around back of them, not wanting to

-press ourselves forward none, and we went up to the door of the marquee

-where, behind the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> refreshment table, Mis' Sykes was a-standing in her

-white duck.</p>

-

-<p>"'My,' says Mis' Holcomb to her, 'it's all going off nice so far, ain't

-it?'</p>

-

-<p>"'They ain't a great deal the matter with it,' says Mis' Sykes, snappy.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Uppers, grieving, 'the parade an' the

-basket dinner seemed to me both just perfect.'</p>

-

-<p>"'The parade done well enough,' says Mis' Sykes, not looking at her. 'I

-donno much about the dinner.'</p>

-

-<p>"And all of a sudden we recollected that she hadn't been over to the

-grand basket dinner at all.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Toplady, blank, 'ain't you et nothin'?'</p>

-

-<p>"'My niece,' says Mis' Sykes, dignified, 'didn't get here till now. Who

-was I to leave in the <i>tent</i>? I've et,' says she, cold, 'two dishes of

-ice-cream an' two chocolate nut-cakes.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady just swoops over towards her. 'Why, my land,' she says,

-hearty, 'they's stuff an' to spare packed over there under the trees.

-You go right on over and get your dinner. Poke right into any of our

-baskets&mdash;ours is grouped around mine that's tied with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> a red bandanna to

-the handle. And leave us tend the marquee. What say, ladies?'</p>

-

-<p>"And I don't think she even sensed she used that name.</p>

-

-<p>"When she'd gone, I stood a minute in the marquee door looking off

-acrost the market square, hearing Miss Beryl Sessions and the men

-congratulating each other on the glorious Fourth they was a-having, and

-the City folks praising them both sky high.</p>

-

-<p>"'Real nice idee it was,' says Silas, with his hands under his best coat

-tails. 'Nice, tastey, up-to-date Fourth. And cheap to do.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes, we all hung out for a good Fourth this year,' says Timothy,

-complacent.</p>

-

-<p>"'It's a simply lovely idea,' says Miss Beryl Sessions, all sweet and

-chirpy and interested, 'this making the Fourth a county party and

-getting everybody in town, so. But tell me: Whatever made you close your

-shops? I thought the Fourth could always be made to pay for itself over

-and over, if the business houses went about it right.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, well,' says Silas, lame but genial, 'we closed up to-day. We kind

-o' thought we would.'</p>

-

-<p>"But I stood looking off acrost the market square, where the children

-was playing, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> quoits was being pitched, and the ball game was going

-to commence, and the calathumpians was capering, and most of Red Barns

-and Indian Mound and Friendship Village was mingling, lion and lamb; and

-I looked on along Daphne Street, where little Spudge Cadoza wasn't

-walking with a Prize Coffee board on his back,&mdash;and all of a sudden I

-felt just the way I'd wanted to feel, in spite of all the distance and

-long-ago-ness. And I turned and says to the other women inside the

-marquee:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Seems to me,' I says, 'as if the Fourth of July <i>had</i> paid for itself,

-over and over. Oh, don't it to you?'</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>VI</h2>

-

-<p>"The new editor of the <i>Friendship Village Evening Daily</i> give a fine

-write-up of the celebration. He printed it on the night after the

-Fourth, not getting out any paper at all on the day that was the day;

-but on the night after that, the news columns of his paper fell flat and

-dead. In a village the day following a holiday is like the hush after a

-noise. The whole town seems like it was either asleep or on tiptoe. And

-in Friendship Village this hush was worse than the hush of other years.

-Other years they'd usually been accidents to keep track of, and mebbe

-even an amputation or two to report. But this Fourth there was no

-misfortunes whatever, nor nothing to make good reading for the night of July 6.</p>

-

-<p>"So the editor thought over his friends and run right down the news

-column, telling what there <i>wasn't</i>. Like this:&mdash;</p>

-

-<blockquote><p class="center">"'<span class="smcap">Supper Table Jottings</span></p>

-

-<p>"'Postmaster Silas Sykes is well.</p>

-

-<p>"'Timothy Toplady has not had a cold since before Christmas.

-Prudent Timothy.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p><p>"'Jimmy Sturgis has not broken his leg yet this year as he did

-last. Keep it up, Jimmy.</p>

-

-<p>"'Eppleby Holcomb has not been out of town for quite a while.</p>

-

-<p>"'None of the Friendship ladies has given a party all season.</p>

-

-<p>"'The First Church is not burnt down nor damaged nor repaired.

-Insurance $750.</p>

-

-<p>"'Nothing local is in much of any trouble.</p>

-

-<p>"'Nobody is dead here to-day except the usual ones.</p>

-

-<p>"'Nobody that's got a telephone in has any company at the present

-writing. Where is the old-time hospitality?</p>

-

-<p>"'Subscriptions payable in advance.</p>

-

-<p>"'Subscriptions payable in advance.</p>

-

-<p>"'Subscriptions payable in advance.'</p></blockquote>

-

-<p>"It made quite some fun for us, two or three of us happening in the

-post-office store when the paper come out&mdash;Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady

-and me. But we took it some to heart, too, because to live in a town

-where they ain't nothing active happening all the time is a kind of

-running account of everybody that's in the town. And us ladies wan't

-that kind.</p>

-

-<p>"All them locals done to Silas Sykes, though, was to set him fussing

-over nothing ever happening to him. Silas is real particular about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> his

-life, and I guess he gets to thinking how life ain't so over-particular

-about him.</p>

-

-<p>"'My dum,' he says that night, 'that's just the way with this town. I

-always calculated my life was goin' to be quite some pleasure to me. But

-I don't see as it is. If I thought I was going to get sold in my death

-like I've been in my life, I swan I'd lose my interest in dyin'.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Timothy Toplady was over in behind the counter picking out her

-butter, and she whirled around from sampling the jars, and she says to

-Mis' Sykes and me:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Ladies,' she says, 'le's us propose it to the editor that seems to

-have such a hard job, that us members of Sodality take a hold of his

-paper for a day and get it out for him and put some news in it, and sell

-it to everybody, subscribers and all, that one night, for ten cents.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Silas Sykes looks up and stopped winking and breathing, in a way

-she has when she sights some distant money for Sodality.</p>

-

-<p>"'Land, land,' she says, 'I bet they'd go like hot cakes.'</p>

-

-<p>"But Silas he snorts, scorching.</p>

-

-<p>"'Will you ladies tell me,' he says, 'where you going to <i>get</i> your news

-to put in your paper? The Fourth don't come along every day. Or less you

-commit murder and arson and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>runaways, there won't be any more in your

-paper than they is in its editor's.'</p>

-

-<p>"That hit a tender town-point, and I couldn't stand it no longer. I

-spoke right up.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, I donno, I donno, Silas,' I says. 'They's those in this town

-that's doin' the murderin' for us, neat an' nice, right along,' I told

-him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mean to say?' snapped Silas.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mean to say,' says I, 'most every grocery store in this town an' most

-every milkman an' the meat market as well is doin' their best to drag

-the health out o' people's systems for 'em. Us ladies is more or less

-well read an' knowledgeable of what is goin' on in the world outside,' I

-says to Silas that ain't, 'an' we know a thing or two about what ought

-to be clean.'</p>

-

-<p>"Since Insley come, we had talked a good deal more about these things

-and what was and what shouldn't be; and especially we had talked it in

-Sodality, on account of our town stores and social ways and such being

-so inviting to disease and death. But we hadn't talked it official,

-'count of Sodality being for Cemetery use, and talking it scattering we

-hadn't been able to make the other men even listen to us.</p>

-

-<p>"'Pack o' women!' says Silas, now, and went off to find black molasses

-for somebody.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Toplady sampled her butter, dreamy.</p>

-

-<p>"'Rob Henny's butter here,' she says, 'is made out of cow sheds that I

-can't bear to think about. An' Silas knows it. Honest,' she says, 'I'm

-gettin' so I spleen against the flowers in the fields for fear Rob

-Henny's cows'll get holt of 'em. I should think the <i>Daily</i> could write

-about that.'</p>

-

-<p>"I remember how us three women looked at each other then, like our

-brains was experimenting with our ideas. And when Mis' Toplady got her

-butter, we slipped out and spoke together for a few minutes up past the

-Town Pump. And it was there the plan come to a head and legs and arms.

-And we see that we had a way of picking purses right off of every day,

-so be the editor would leave us go ahead&mdash;and of doing other things.</p>

-

-<p>"The very next morning we three went to see the editor and get his

-consent.</p>

-

-<p>"'What's your circulation, same as City papers print to the top of the

-page?' Mis' Toplady asks him, practical.</p>

-

-<p>"'Paid circulation or got-out circulation?' says the editor.</p>

-

-<p>"'Paid,' says Mis' Toplady, in silver-dollar tones.</p>

-

-<p>"'Ah, well, <i>paid for</i> or subscribed for?' asks the editor.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p><p>"'Paid for,' says Mis' Toplady, still more financial.</p>

-

-<p>"'Six hundred and eighty paid for,' the editor says, 'an' fifty-two

-that&mdash;mean to pay.'</p>

-

-<p>"'My!' says Mis' Toplady, shuddering. 'What business is! Well, us ladies

-of the Sodality want to run your paper for one day and charge all your

-subscribers ten cents extra for that day's paper. Will you?'</p>

-

-<p>"The editor, he laughed quite a little, and then he looked thoughtful.

-He was new and from the City and young and real nervous&mdash;he used to pop

-onto his feet whenever a woman so much as come in the room.</p>

-

-<p>"'Who would collect the ten cents?' says he.</p>

-

-<p>"'Sodality,' says Mis' Toplady, firm. 'Ourself, cash an' <i>in advance</i>.'</p>

-

-<p>"The editor nodded, still smiling.</p>

-

-<p>"'Jove,' he said, 'this fits in remarkably well with the fishing I've

-been thinking about. I confess I need a day. I suppose you wouldn't want

-to do it this week?'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady looked at me with her eyebrows. But I nodded. I always

-rather hurry up than not.</p>

-

-<p>"'So be we had a couple o' hours to get the news to happenin',' says

-she, 'that had ought to do us.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p><p>"The editor looked startled.</p>

-

-<p>"'News!' said he. 'Oh, I say now, you mustn't expect too much. I ought

-to warn you that running a paper in this town is like trying to raise

-cream on a cistern.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady smiled at him motherly.</p>

-

-<p>"'You ain't ever tried pouring the cream into the cistern, I guess,' she

-says.</p>

-

-<p>"So we settled it into a bargain, except that, after we had planned it

-all out with him and just as we was going out the door, Mis' Toplady

-thought to say to him:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'You know, Sodality don't know anything about it yet, so you'd best not

-mention it out around till this afternoon when we vote to do it. We'll

-be up at eight o'clock Thursday morning, rain or shine.'</p>

-

-<p>"There wasn't ever any doubt about Sodality when it see Sixty Dollars

-ahead&mdash;which we would get if everybody bought a paper, and we was

-determined that everybody should buy. Sodality members scraps among

-themselves personal, but when it comes to raising money we unite yoke to

-yoke, and all differences forgot. It's funny sometimes at the meetings,

-funny and disgraceful, to hear how we object to each other, especially

-when we're tired, and then how we all unite together on something for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>

-the good of the town. I tell you, it makes me feel sometimes that the

-way ain't so much to try to love each other,&mdash;which other folks'

-peculiarities is awful in the way of,&mdash;but for us all to pitch in and

-love something altogether, your town or your young folks, or your

-cemetery or keeping something clean or making somethin' look nice&mdash;and

-before you know it you're loving the folks you work with, no matter how

-peculiar, or even more so. It's been so nice since we've been working

-for Cemetery. Folks that make each other mad every time they try to talk

-can sell side by side at the same bazaar and count the money mutual.

-There's quite a few disagreements in Sodality, so we have to be real

-careful who sets next to who to church suppers. But when we pitch in to

-work for something, we sew rags and 'scallop oysters in the same pan

-with our enemies. Don't it seem as if that must mean something?

-Something big?</p>

-

-<p>"Sodality voted to publish the paper, all right, and elected the

-officers for the day: Editor, Mis' Postmaster Sykes, 'count of her

-always expecting to take the lead in everything; assistant editor, me,

-'count of being well and able to work like a dog; business manager and

-circulation man, Mis' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, 'count of no dime

-ever getting away from her unexpected. And the reporters was to be most

-of the rest of the Sodality: Mis' Timothy Toplady, the three Liberty

-girls, Mis' Mayor Uppers, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, Mis' Threat

-Hubbelthwait, an' Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery. It was

-hard for Abagail to get away from her cook stove and her counter, so we

-fixed it that she was to be let off any other literary work along of her

-furnishing us our sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs that day noon. It was

-quite a little for Abagail to do, but she's always real willing, and we

-didn't ask coffee of her. Mis' Sturgis, her that is the village invalid,

-we arranged should have charge of the Woman's Column, and bring down her

-rocking chair and make her beef broth right there on the office

-wood-stove.</p>

-

-<p>"I guess we was all glad to go down early in the morning that day,

-'count of not meeting the men. One and all and with one voice the

-Friendship men had railed at us hearty.</p>

-

-<p>"'Pack o' women!' says Silas Sykes, over and over.</p>

-

-<p>"'You act like bein' a woman an' a wife was some kind o' nonsense,' says

-Mis' Sykes back at him, majestic. 'Well, I guess bein' yours is.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p><p>"'Land, Amandy,' says Timothy Toplady, 'you women earn money so

-<i>nervous</i>. Why don't you do it regular an' manly?'</p>

-

-<p>"Only Eppleby Holcomb had kept his silence. Eppleby sees things that the

-run of men don't see, or, if they did see them, they would be bound to

-stick them in their ledgers where they would never, never belong.

-Eppleby was our friend, and Sodality never had truer.</p>

-

-<p>"So though we went ahead, the men had made us real anxious. And most of

-us slipped down to the office by half past seven so's not to meet too

-many. The editor had had a column in the paper about what we was goin'

-to do&mdash;'Loyal to our Local Dead' he headed it, and of course full half

-the town was kicking at the extra ten cents, like full half of any town

-can and will kick when it's asked to pay out for its own good, dead or

-alive. But we was leaving all that to Mis' Holcomb, that knows a thing

-or two about the human in us, and similar.</p>

-

-<p>"Extra-paper morning, when we all come in, Mis' Sykes she was sitting at

-the editor's desk with her big apron on and a green shade to cover up

-her crimping kids, and her list that her and Mis' Toplady and I had made

-out, in front of her.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p><p>"'Now then, let's get right to work,' she says brisk. 'We ain't any too

-much time, I can tell you. It ain't like bakin' bread or gettin' the

-vegetables ready. We've all got to use muscles this day we ain't used to

-usin',' she says, 'an' we'd best be spry.'</p>

-

-<p>"So then she begun giving out who was to do what&mdash;assignments, the

-editor named it when he told us what to do. And I skipped back an' hung

-over the files, well knowing what was to come.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes stood up in her most society way, an'&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Anybody want to back out?' says she, gracious.</p>

-

-<p>"'Land!' says everyone in a No-I-don't tone.</p>

-

-<p>"'Very well,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Mis' Toplady, you go out to Rob Henney's

-place, an' you go through his cow sheds from one end to the other an'

-take down notes so's he sees you doin' it. You go into his kitchen an'

-don't you let a can get by you. Open his churn. Rub your finger round

-the inside of his pans. An' if he won't tell you, the neighbours will.

-Explain to him you're goin' to give him a nice, full printed description

-in to-night's <i>Daily</i>, just the way things are. If he wants it changed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>

-any, he can clean all up, an' we'll write up the clean-up like a

-compliment.'</p>

-

-<p>"Just for one second them assembled women was dumb. But it hardly took

-them that instant to sense what was what. And all of a sudden, Mame

-Holcomb, I guess it was, bursted out in a little understanding giggle,

-and after a minute everybody joined in, too. For we'd got the whole

-world of Friendship Village where we wanted it, and every one of them

-women see we had, so be we wasn't scared.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mis' Uppers,' Mis' Sykes was going on, 'you go down to Betts's meat

-market. You poke right through into the back room. An' you tell Joe

-Betts that you're goin' to do a write-up of that room an' the alley back

-of it for the paper to-night, showin' just what's what. If so be he

-wants to turn in an' red it up this mornin', tell him you'll wait till

-noon an' describe it then, <i>providin'</i> he keeps it that way. An' you

-might let him know you're goin' to run over to his slaughterhouse an'

-look around while you're waitin', an' put that in your write-up, too.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Miss Hubbelthwait,' Mis' Sykes went on, 'you go over to the Calaboose.

-They won't anybody be in the office&mdash;Dick's saloon is that. Skip right

-through in the back part, an' turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> down the blankets on both beds an'

-give a thorough look. If it's true they's no sheets an' pillow-cases on

-the calaboose beds, an' that the blankets is only washed three times a

-year so's to save launderin', we can make a real interestin' column

-about that.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Miss Merriman,' says Mis' Sykes to Mis' Fire Chief, 'I've give you a

-real hard thing because you do things so delicate. Will you take a walk

-along the residence part of town an' go into every house an' ask 'em to

-let you see their back door an' their garbage pail. Tell 'em you're

-goin' to write a couple of columns on how folks manage this. Ask 'em

-their idees on the best way. Give 'em to understand if there's a real

-good way they're thinkin' of tryin' that you'll put that in, providin'

-they begin tryin' right off. An' tell 'em they can get it carted off for

-ten cents a week if enough go in on it. An' be your most delicate, Mis'

-Fire Chief, for we don't want to offend a soul.'</p>

-

-<p>"Libby an' Viney Liberty Mis' Sykes sent round to take a straw vote in

-every business house in town to see how much they'd give towards

-starting a shelf library in the corner of the post-office store, a full

-list to be printed in order with the amount or else 'Not a cent'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> after

-each name. And the rest of Sodality she give urrants similar or even

-more so.</p>

-

-<p>"'An' all o' you,' says Mis' Sykes, 'pick up what you can on the way.

-And if anybody starts in to object, you tell 'em you have instructions

-to make an interview out of any of the interestin' things they say. And

-you might tell 'em you don't want they should be buried in a nice

-cemetery if they don't want to be.'</p>

-

-<p>"Well, sir, they started off&mdash;some scairt, but some real brave, too. And

-the way they went, we see every one of them meant business.</p>

-

-<p>"'But oh,' says Mis' Sturgis, fixing her medicine bottles outside on the

-window-sill, '<i>supposin'</i> they can't do it. <i>Supposin'</i> folks ain't nice

-to 'em. What'll we put in the paper then?'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes drew herself up like she does sometimes in society.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' she says, 'supposin'. Are we runnin' this paper or ain't we?

-There's nothin' to prevent our writin' editorials about these things, as

-I see. Our husbands can't very well sue us for libel, because they'd hev

-to pay it themselves. Nor they can't put us in prison for debt, because

-who'd get their three meals? I can't see but we're sure of an

-interestin' paper, anyway.'</p>

-

-<p>"Then she looked over at me sort of sad.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p><p>"'Go on, Calliope,' says she, 'you know what you've got to do. Do it,'

-she says, 'to the bitter end.'</p>

-

-<p>"I knew, and I started out, and I made straight for Silas Sykes, and the

-post-office store. Silas wan't in the store, it was so early; but he had

-the floor all sprinkled nice, and the vegetables set out, all uncovered,

-close to the sidewalk; and everything real tasty and according to

-grocery-store etiquette. The boy was gone that day. And Silas himself

-was in the back room, sortin' over prunes.</p>

-

-<p>"'Hello, Calliope,' s'he. 'How's literchoor?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Honest as ever,' I says. 'Same with food?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Who says I ain't honest?' says Silas, straightening up, an' holding

-all his fingers stiff 'count of being sticky.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, I donno who,' says I. 'Had anybody ought to? How's business,

-Silas?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says he, 'for us that keeps ourselves up with the modern

-business methods, it's pretty good, I guess.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Do you mean pretty good, Silas, or do you mean pretty paying?' I ask'

-him.</p>

-

-<p>"Silas put on his best official manner. 'Look at here,' s'e, 'what can I

-do for you? Did you want to buy somethin' or did you want your mail?'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p><p>"'Oh, neither,' I says. 'I want some help from you, Silas, about the

-paper to-day.'</p>

-

-<p>"My, that give Silas a nice minute. He fairly weltered in satisfaction.</p>

-

-<p>"'Huh,' he says, elegant, 'didn't I tell you you was bitin' off more'n

-you could chew? Want some assistance from me, do you, in editin' this

-paper o' yours? Well, I suppose I can help you out a little. What is it

-you want me to do for you?'</p>

-

-<p>"'We thought we'd like to write you up,' I told him.</p>

-

-<p>"Silas just swelled. For a man in public office, Silas Sykes feels about

-as presidential as anybody I ever see. If they was to come out from the

-City and put him on the front page of the morning paper, he's the kind

-that would wonder why they hadn't done it before.</p>

-

-<p>"'Sketch of my life?' s'e, genial. 'Little outline of my boyhood? Main

-points in my career?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' I says, 'no. We thought the present'd be about all we'd hev

-room for. We want to write up your business, Silas,' I says, 'in an

-advertising way.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh!' says Silas, snappy. 'You want me to pay to be wrote up, is that

-it?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' I says, 'no; not if you don't want to.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> Of course everybody'll

-be buried in the Cemetery whether they give anything towards the fund

-for keeping it kep' up or not.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Lord Heavens,' says Silas, 'I've had that Cemetery fund rammed down my

-throat till I'm sick o' the thought o' dyin'.'</p>

-

-<p>"That almost made me mad, seeing we was having the disadvantage of doing

-the work and Silas going to get all the advantages of burial.</p>

-

-<p>"'Feel the same way about some of the Ten Commandments, don't you,

-Silas?' I says, before I knew it.</p>

-

-<p>"Silas just rared.</p>

-

-<p>"'The Ten Commandments!' says he, 'the Ten Commandments! Who can show me

-one I ain't a-keepin' like an old sheep. Didn't I honour my father an'

-mother as long as I had 'em? Did they ever buy anything of me at more

-than cost? Didn't I give 'em new clothes an' send 'em boxes of oranges

-an' keep up their life insurance? Do I ever come down to the store on

-the Sabbath Day? Do I ever distribute the mail then, even if I'm

-expectin' a letter myself? The Sabbath I locked the cat in, didn't I

-send the boy down to let it out, for fear I'd be misjudged if I done it?

-Who do I ever bear false witness against unless I know they've done what

-I say they've done? I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> can't kill a fly&mdash;an' I'm that tender-hearted

-that I make the hired girl take the mice out o' the trap because I can't

-bring myself to do it. So you might go through the whole list an' just

-find me workin' at 'em an' a-keepin' 'em. What do you mean about the Ten

-Commandments?' he ends up, ready to burst.</p>

-

-<p>"'Don't ask me,' I says. 'I ain't that familiar with 'em. I didn't know

-anybody was. Go on about 'em. Take stealing&mdash;you hadn't got to that

-one.'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Stealing</i>,' says Silas, pompous. 'I don't know what it is.'</p>

-

-<p>"And with that I was up on my feet.</p>

-

-<p>"'I thought you didn't,' says I. 'Us ladies of Sodality have all thought

-it over an' over again: That you don't know stealing when you see it.

-No, nor not even when you've done it. Come here, Silas Sykes!' I says.</p>

-

-<p>"I whipped by him into the store, and he followed me, sheer through

-being dazed, and keeping still through being knocked dumb.</p>

-

-<p>"'Look here,' I says, 'here's your counter of bakery stuff&mdash;put in to

-take from Abagail, but no matter about that now. Where do you get it?

-From the City, with the label stuck on. What's the bakery like where you

-buy it? It's under a sidewalk and dust dirty, and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> happen to know you

-know it. And look at the bread&mdash;not a thing over it, flies promenadin'

-on the crust, and you counting out change on an apple-pie the other

-day&mdash;I see you do it. Look at your dates, all uncovered and dirt from

-the street sticking to them like the pattern. Look at your fly-paper,

-hugged up against your dried-fruit box that's standing wide open. Look

-at you keeping fish and preserved fruit and canned stuff that you know

-is against the law&mdash;going to start keeping the law quick as you get

-these sold out, ain't you, Silas? Look at your stuff out there in front,

-full of street dirt and flies and ready to feed folks. And you keepin'

-the Ten Commandments like an old sheep&mdash;and being a church elder, and

-you might better climb porches and bust open safes. I s'pose you wonder

-what I'm sayin' all this to you for?'</p>

-

-<p>"'No, ma'am,' says Silas, like the edge o' something, 'I don't wonder at

-your sayin' <i>anything</i> to anybody.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I've got more to say,' I says, dry. 'I've only give you a sample. An'

-the place I'm goin' to say it is <i>The Friendship Village Evening Daily</i>,

-<i>Extra</i>, to-night, in a descriptive write-up of you and your store. I

-thought it might interest you to know.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p><p>"'It's libel&mdash;it's libel!' says Silas, arms waving.</p>

-

-<p>"'All right,' says I, liberating a fly accidentally caught on a date.

-'Who you going to sue? Your wife, that's the editor? And everybody

-else's wife, that's doing the same thing to every behind-the-times

-dealer in town?'</p>

-

-<p>"Silas hung on to that straw.</p>

-

-<p>"'Be they doin' it to the others, too?' he asks.</p>

-

-<p>"Then I told him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' I says, 'Silas, only&mdash;they ain't goin' to start writing up the

-descriptions till noon. And if you&mdash;and they all&mdash;want to clean up the

-temples where you do business and make them fit for the Lord to look

-down on and a human being to come into, you've got your chance. And

-seeing your boy is gone to-day, if you'll do it, I'll stay and help you

-with it&mdash;and mebbe make room for some of the main points in your career

-as well,' says I, sly.</p>

-

-<p>"Silas looked out the door, his arms folded and his beard almost

-pointing up, he'd made his chin so firm. And just in that minute when I

-was feeling that all the law and the prophets, and the health of

-Friendship Village, and the life of people not born, was hanging around

-that man's neck&mdash;or the principle of them, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>anyway&mdash;Silas's eye and mine

-fell on a strange sight. Across the street, from out Joe Betts's meat

-market come Joe Betts, and behind him his boy. And Joe begun pointing,

-and the boy begun taking down quarters of beef hung over the sidewalk.

-Joe pointed consid'able. And then he clim' up on his meat wagon that

-stood by the door, and out of the shop I see Mis' Mayor Uppers come,

-looking ready to drop. And she clim' up to the seat beside him&mdash;he

-reaching down real gentlemanly to help her up. And he headed his horse

-around on what I guessed was a bee-line for the slaughterhouse.</p>

-

-<p>"Well, sir, at that, Silas Sykes put his hands on his knees and bent

-over and begun laughing. And he laughed like I ain't seen him since he's

-got old and begun to believe that life ain't cut after his own plan that

-he made. And I laughed a little, too, out of sheer being glad that a

-laugh can settle so many things right in the world. And when he sobered

-down a little, I says gentle:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Silas, I'll throw out the dates and the dusty lettuce. And we'll hev

-it done in no time. I'll be glad to get an early start on the write-up.

-I don't compose very ready,' I told him.</p>

-

-<p>"He was awful funny while we done the work. He was awful still, too.

-Once when I lit on a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> piece of salt pork that I knew, first look, was

-rusty, 'Them folks down on the flats buys it,' he says. 'They like it

-just as good as new-killed.' 'All right,' s'I, careless, 'I'll make a

-note of that to shine in my article. It needs humour some,' s'I. Then

-Silas swore, soft and under his breath, as an elder should, but quite

-vital. And he took the pork out to the alley barrel, an' I sprinkled

-ashes on it so's he shouldn't slip out and save it afterwards.</p>

-

-<p>"It was 'leven o'clock when we got done, me having swept out behind the

-counters myself, and Silas he mopped his face and stood hauling at his

-collar.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'll get on my white kids now,' s'e, dry. 'I can't go pourin' kerosene

-an' slicin' cheese in this place barehanded any more. Gosh,' he says, 'I

-bet when they see it, they'll want to have church in here this comin'

-Sunday.'</p>

-

-<p>"'No need to be sacrilegious, as I know of, Silas,' s'I, sharp.</p>

-

-<p>"'No need to be livin' at all, as I see,' says Silas, morbid; 'just lay

-low an' other folks'll step in an' do it for you, real capable.'</p>

-

-<p>"I give him the last word. I thought it was his man's due.</p>

-

-<p>"When I got back to the office, Libby Liberty an' Mis' Toplady was there

-before me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> They was both setting on high stools up to the file shelf,

-with their feet tucked up, an' the reason was that Viney Liberty was

-mopping the floor. She had a big pail of suds and her skirt pinned up,

-and she was just lathering them boards. Mis' Sykes at the main desk was

-still labouring over her editorials, breathing hard, the boards steaming

-soap all around her.</p>

-

-<p>"'I couldn't stand it,' Viney says. 'How a man can mould public opinion

-in a place where the floor is pot-black gets me. My land, my ash house

-is a dinin' room side of this room, an' the window was a regular gray

-frost with dust. Ain't men the funniest lot of folks?' she says.</p>

-

-<p>"'Funny,' says I, 'but awful amiable if you kind of sing their key-note

-to 'em.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes pulled my skirt.</p>

-

-<p>"'How was he?' she asks in a pale voice.</p>

-

-<p>"'He was crusty,' says I, triumphant, 'but he's beat.'</p>

-

-<p>"She never smiled. 'Calliope Marsh,' says she, cold, 'if you've sassed

-my husband, I'll never forgive you.'</p>

-

-<p>"I tell you, men may be some funny, and often are. But women is odd as

-Dick's hatband and I don't know but odder.</p>

-

-<p>"'How'd you get on?' I says to Mis' Toplady and the Libertys. The

-Libertys they handed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> out a list on two sheets, both sides with sums

-ranging from ten to fifty cents towards a shelf library for public use;

-but Mis' Toplady, the tears was near streaming down her cheeks.</p>

-

-<p>"'Rob Henney,' she says, mournful, 'gimme to understand he'd see me

-in&mdash;some place he hadn't ought to of spoke of to me, nor to no

-one&mdash;before I could get in his milk sheds.'</p>

-

-<p>"'What did you say to him?' I ask', sympathetic.</p>

-

-<p>"'I t-told him,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that lookin' for me wouldn't be the

-only reason he'd hev for goin' there. And then he said some more. He

-said he'd be in here this afternoon to stop his subscription off.'</p>

-

-<p>"'So you didn't get a thing?' I says, grieving for her, but Mis'

-Toplady, she bridled through her tears.</p>

-

-<p>"'I got a column!' she flashed out. 'I put in about the sheds, that the

-whole town knows, anyway, an' I put in what he said to me. An' I'm goin'

-to read it to him when he comes in. An' after that he can take his pick

-about havin' it published, or else cleanin' up an' allowin' Sodality to

-inspect him reg'lar.'</p>

-

-<p>"By just before twelve o'clock we was all back in the office, Mis' Fire

-Chief, Mis' Uppers, fresh from the slaughterhouse, and so on, all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> but

-Mame Holcomb that was out seeing to the circulation. And I tell you we

-set to work in earnest, some of us to the desks, and some of us working

-on their laps, and everybody hurrying hectic. The office was awful

-hot&mdash;Mis' Sturgis had built up a little light fire to heat up her beef

-broth, and she was stirring it, her shawl folded about her, in between

-writing receipts. But it made it real confusing, all of us doing our

-best so hard, and wanting to tell each other what had happened, and

-seeing about spelling and all.</p>

-

-<p>"'Land, land,' says Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'you'd ought to <i>see</i> the

-Carters' back door. They wan't nobody to home there, so I just took a

-look, anyway, bein' it was for Sodality, so. They ain't no real garbage

-pail&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'Who said, "Give me Liberty or give me Death?"' ask' Mis' Sykes,

-looking up kind o' glassy. 'Was it Daniel Webster or Daniel Boone?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Ladies,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, when we'd settled down on Daniel

-Boone, 'if I ever do a crime, I won't stop short at stealin' somebody's

-cow an' goin' to calaboose. I'll do a whole beef corner, or some real

-United States sin, an' get put in a place that's clean. Why over to the

-calaboose&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p><p>"'Ugh!' says Mis' Uppers, 'don't say "beef" when I'm where I can hear.

-I donno what I'll do without my steak, but do it I will. Ladies, the

-cleanest of us is soundin' brass an' tinklin' cannibals. Why do they

-call 'em <i>tinklin'</i> cannibals?' she wondered to us all.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh&mdash;,' wailed Mis' Sturgis in the rocking-chair, 'some of you ladies

-give me your salad dressing receipt. Mine is real good on salad, but on

-paper it don't sound fit to eat. I don't seem to have no book-style

-about me to-day.'</p>

-

-<p>"'How do you spell <i>embarrass</i>?' asked Libby Liberty. 'Is it an <i>r</i> an'

-two <i>s</i>'s or two <i>r</i>'s and an <i>s</i>?'</p>

-

-<p>"'It's two <i>s</i>'s at the end, so it must be one <i>r</i>,' volunteers Mis'

-Sykes. 'That used to mix me up some, too.'</p>

-

-<p>"Just then up come Abagail Arnold bringing the noon lunch, and she had

-the sandwiches and the eggs not only, but a pot of hot coffee thrown in,

-and a basket of doughnuts, sugared. She set them out on Mis' Sykes's

-desk, and we all laid down our pencils and drew up on our high stools

-and swing chairs, Mis' Sturgis and all, and nothing in the line of food

-had ever looked so welcoming.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, the eatableness of nice refreshments!' says Mis' Toplady, sighing.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p><p>"'This is when it ain't victuals, its viands,' says Mis' Sykes, showing

-pleased.</p>

-

-<p>"But well do I remember, we wasn't started to eat, and Abagail still

-doing the pouring, when the composing room door opened&mdash;I donno <i>why</i>

-they called it that, for we done the composing in the office, and they

-only got out the paper in there&mdash;and in come the foreman, with an apron

-of bed-ticking. He was Riddy Styles, that we all knew him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Excuse me,' he says, hesitating, 'but us fellows thought we'd ought to

-mention that we can't get no paper out by quittin' time if we don't get

-a-hold of some copy pretty quick.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Copy o' what?' says Mis' Sykes, our editor.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, copy,' says Riddy. 'Stuff for the paper.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes looked at him, majestic.</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Stuff</i>,' she says. 'You will please to speak,' she says, 'more

-respectfully than that to us ladies, Mr. Styles.'</p>

-

-<p>"'It was meant right,' says Riddy, stubborn. 'It's the word we always

-use.'</p>

-

-<p>"'It ain't the word you use, not with us,' says Mis' Sykes, womanly.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says Riddy, 'we'd ought to get to settin' up <i>somethin'</i> by

-half past twelve, if we start in on the dictionary.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p><p>"Then he went off to his dinner, and the other men with him, and Mis'

-Sykes leaned back limp.</p>

-

-<p>"'I been writin' steady,' she says, 'since half past eight o'clock this

-mornin', an' I've only got one page an' one-half composed.'</p>

-

-<p>"We ask' each other around, and none of us was no more then started, let

-be it was Mis' Toplady, that had got in first.</p>

-

-<p>"'Le's us leave our lunch,' says Mis' Sykes, then. 'Le's us leave it

-un-et. Abagail, you put it back in the basket an' pour the coffee into

-the pot. An' le's us <i>write</i>. Wouldn't we all rather hev one of our sick

-headaches,' she says, firm, 'than mebbe make ourselves the Laughing

-Stock? Ladies, I ask you.'</p>

-

-<p>"An' we woulded, one and all. Sick headaches don't last long, but

-laughed-at has regular right down eternal life.</p>

-

-<p>"Ain't it strange how slow the writing muscles and such is, that you

-don't use often? Pitting cherries, splitting squash, peeling potatoes,

-slicing apples, making change at church suppers,&mdash;us ladies is lightning

-at 'em all. But getting idees down on paper&mdash;I declare if it ain't more

-like waiting around for your bread to raise on a cold morning. Still

-when you're worried, you can press forward more than normal, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> among

-us we had quite some material ready for Riddy and the men when they came

-back. But not Mis' Sykes. She wan't getting on at all.</p>

-

-<p>"'If I could only <i>talk</i> it,' she says, grieving, 'or I donno if I could

-even do that. What I want to say is in me, rarin' around my head like

-life, an' yet I can't get it out no more'n money out of a tin bank. I

-shall disgrace Sodality,' she says, wild.</p>

-

-<p>"'Cheer up,' says Libby Liberty, soothing. 'Nobody ever reads the

-editorials, anyway. I ain't read one in years.'</p>

-

-<p>"'You tend to your article,' snaps Mis' Sykes.</p>

-

-<p>"I had got my write-up of Silas all turned in to Riddy, and I was

-looking longing at Abagail's basket, when, banging the door, in come

-somebody breathing like raging, and it was Rob Henney, that I guess we'd

-all forgot about except it was Mis' Toplady that was waiting for him.</p>

-

-<p>"Rob Henney always talks like he was long distance.</p>

-

-<p>"'I come in,' he says, blustering, 'I come in to quit off my

-subscription to this fool paper, that a lot o' fool women&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes looks up at him out from under her hand that her head was

-resting on.</p>

-

-<p>"'Go on out o' here, Mr. Henney,' she says<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> sharp to him, 'an' quit your

-subscription quiet. Can't you see you're disturbing us?' she says.</p>

-

-<p>"With that Mis' Toplady wheeled around on her high stool and looked at

-him, calm as a clock.</p>

-

-<p>"'Rob Henney,' says she, 'you come over here. I'll read you what I've

-wrote about you,' she told him.</p>

-

-<p>"The piece begun like this:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Rob Henney, our esteemed fellow-townsman and milkman, was talked with

-this morning on his cow sheds. The reporter said to same that what was

-wanting would be visiting the stables, churn, cans, pans, and like that,

-being death is milked out of most cows if they are not kept clean and

-inspected regular for signs of consumption. Mr. Henney replied as

-follows:</p>

-

-<p>"'First: That his cows had never been inspected because nothing of that

-kind had ever been necessary.</p>

-

-<p>"'Second: That he was in the milk business for a living, and did the

-town expect him to keep it in milk for its health?</p>

-

-<p>"'Third: That folks had been drinking milk since milk begun, and if the

-Lord saw fit to call them home, why not through milk, or even through

-consumption, as well as through pneumonia and others?</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p><p>"'Fourth: That he would see the reporter&mdash;a lady&mdash;in the

-lake-that-burneth-with-fire before his sheds and churn and pans and cans

-should be put in the paper.</p>

-

-<p>"'Below is how the sheds, churn, pans, and cans look to-day....' And I

-tell you, Mis' Toplady, she didn't spare no words. When she meant What,

-she said What, elaborate.</p>

-

-<p>"I didn't know for a minute but we'd hev to mop Rob up off the clean

-floor. But Mis' Toplady she never forgot who she was.</p>

-

-<p>"'Either that goes in the paper to-night,' she says, 'or you'll clean up

-your milk surroundin's&mdash;pick your choice. An' Sodality's through with

-you if you don't, besides.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Put it in print! Put it in print, if you dast!' yells Rob,

-wind-milling his arms some.</p>

-

-<p>"'No need to make an earthquake o' yourself,' Mis' Toplady points out to

-him, serene.</p>

-

-<p>"And at that Rob adds a word intending to express a cussing idee, and he

-outs and down the stairs. And Mis' Toplady starts to take her article

-right in to Riddy. But in the door she met Riddy, hurrying into the

-office again. I never see anybody before that looked both red and

-haggard, but Riddy did. He come right to the point:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Some of you ladies has got to quit handing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> in&mdash;news,' he says,

-scrabbling for a word to please Mis' Sykes. 'We're up to our eyes in

-here now. An' there ain't enough room in the paper, either, not without

-you get out eight pages or else run a supplement or else throw away the

-whole patent inside. An' those ways, we ain't got enough type even if we

-had time to burn.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes pushed back her green shade, looking just <i>chased</i>.</p>

-

-<p>"'What does he mean?' she says. 'Can't he tend to his type and things

-with us doing all the work?'</p>

-

-<p>"Riddy took this real nettlish.</p>

-

-<p>"'I mean,' s'he, clear but brutal, 'you got to cut your stuff somewheres

-to the tune of a couple o' columns.'</p>

-

-<p>"Well, it's hard to pick out which colour you'll take when you have a

-new dress only once in every so seldom; or which of your hens you'll

-kill when you know your chickens like you know your own mind; but these

-are nothing to the time we had deciding on what to omit out of the paper

-that night. And the decision hurt us even more than the deciding, for

-what we left out was Mis' Sturgis's two women's columns.</p>

-

-<p>"'We <i>can't</i> leave out meat nor milk nor cleanliness nor the library,'

-says Mis' Toplady, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>reasonable, 'because them are the things we live by.

-An' so with the other write-ups we got planned. But receipts and

-patterns an' moth balls is only kind o' decorations, seems though.

-Besides, we all know about 'em, an' it's time we stopped talkin' about

-'em, anyway.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sturgis she cried a little on the corner of her shawl.</p>

-

-<p>"'The receipts an' patterns an' moth balls is so w-womanly,' she says.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady whirled round at her.</p>

-

-<p>"'If you know anything more womanly than conquerin' dirt an' disease an'

-the-dead-that-needn't-die,' s'she, 'I'll roll up my sleeves an' be into

-it. But it won't be eyelet embroidery nor yet boiled frostin'!'</p>

-

-<p>"After that they wrote in hasty peace, though four o'clock come racing

-across the day like a runaway horse, and us not out of its way. And a

-few minutes past, when Riddy was waiting in the door for Mis' Sykes's

-last page, somebody most knocked him over, and there come Mis' Holcomb,

-our circulation editor, purple and white, like a ghost.</p>

-

-<p>"'Lock the door&mdash;lock it!' she says. 'I've bolted the one to the foot of

-the stairs. Lock both outside ones an' lay yourselves low!' s'she.</p>

-

-<p>"Riddy an' I done the locking, me well <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>knowing Mis' Holcomb couldn't

-give a false alarm no more than a map could.</p>

-

-<p>"'What is it?' we says, pressing Mis' Holcomb to speak, that couldn't

-even breathe.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, ladies,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'they've rejoined us, or whatever it

-is they do. I mean they're going to rejoin us from gettin' out

-to-night's paper. The sheriff or the coroner or whoever it is they have,

-is comin' with injunctions&mdash;<i>is</i> that like handcuffs, do you know? An'

-it's Rob Henney's doin'. Eppleby told me. An' I run down the alley an'

-beat 'em to it. They're most here. Let's us slap into print what's wrote

-an' be ready with the papers the livin' minute we can.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes had shoved her green shade onto the back of her head, and

-her crimping pins was all showing forth.</p>

-

-<p>"'What good'll it do us to get the paper <i>out</i>?' says she, in a numb

-voice. 'We can't distribute 'em around to no one with the sheriff to the

-front door with them things to put on us.'</p>

-

-<p>"Then Mis' Holcomb smiled, with her eyes shut, where she sat, breathing

-so hard it showed through.</p>

-

-<p>"'I come in the coal door, at the alley,' s'she. 'They'll never think o'

-that. Besides, the crowd'll be in front an' the carrier boys too, an'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>

-they'll want to show off out there. An' Eppleby knows&mdash;he told me to

-come in that way&mdash;an' he'll keep 'em interested out in front. Le's us

-each take the papers, an' out the coal door, an' distribute 'em around,

-ourselves, without the boys, an' collect in the money same time.'</p>

-

-<p>"And that was how we done. For when they come to the door and found it

-locked, they pounded a little to show who was who and who wan't and then

-they waited out there calm enough, thinking to stop us when the papers

-come down would be plenty time. They waited out there, calm and sure,

-while upstairs Bedlam went on, but noiseless. And after us ladies was

-done with our part, we sat huddled up in the office, soothing Mis'

-Sturgis and each other.</p>

-

-<p>"'In one sentence,' Mis' Holcomb says, 'Eppleby says Rob Henney was

-going to <i>put</i> injunctions on us. An' in the next he says he was goin'

-to <i>serve</i> 'em. What did he mean by that, do you s'pose?'</p>

-

-<p>"'I donno what he meant,' says Mis' Toplady, 'but I wouldn't have

-anything to do with <i>anything</i> Rob Henney served.'</p>

-

-<p>"That made us think of Abagail's lunch, laying un-et in the basket. They

-wasn't none of us felt like eating, but Mis' Sturgis says she bet if we

-didn't eat it, Abagail would feel she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> hadn't had no part in writing the

-paper like us, and so we broke off a little something once around; but

-food didn't have much fun for us, not then. And nothing did up to the

-minute the paper was done, and we was all ready to sly out the alley

-door.</p>

-

-<p>"With Sodality and Riddy Styles and the composing-room men we had above

-twenty carriers. Riddy and the men helped us, one and all, because of

-course the paper was a little theirs, too, and they was interested and

-liked the lark. Land, land, I ain't felt so young or so wicked as I done

-getting out that alley door. There's them I wish could see that there's

-just as much fun keeping secret about something that may be good as in

-being sly about something regular bad.</p>

-

-<p>"When we finally got outside it was suppertime and summer seeming, and

-the hour was all sweet and frank, and the whole village was buried in

-its evening fried mush and potatoes, or else sprinkling their front

-yards. I donno how it was with the others, but I know I went along the

-streets seeing through them little houses like they was glass, and

-seeing the young folks eating their suppers and growing up and getting

-ready to live and to <i>be</i>. And in us ladies' arms, in them heavy papers,

-it seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> to me we was carrying new life to them, in little ways&mdash;in

-little ways, but ways that was going to be big with meaning. And I felt

-as if something in me kind of snuggled up closer to the way things was

-meant to be.</p>

-

-<p>"Us that went west got clear the whole length of Daphne Street without

-anybody seeing what we was doing, or else believing that we was doing it

-orderly and legitimate. And away out by the Pump pasture, we started in

-distributing, and we come working down town, handing out papers to the

-residence part like mad and taking in dimes like wild. They was so many

-of us, and the <i>Evening Daily</i> office was so located, that by the time

-Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I come around the corner where the men

-and Rob Henney and the rejoiners and the carriers was loafing, waiting,

-smoking, and secure, we didn't have many papers left. And we three was

-the first ones back.</p>

-

-<p>"'Evenin' paper?' says Mis' Toplady, casual. '<i>Friendship Village

-Evenin' Daily, Extra?</i> All the news for a dime?'</p>

-

-<p>"Never have I see a man so truly flabbergasted as Rob Henney, and he did

-look like death.</p>

-

-<p>"'You're rejoined!' he yelled, or whatever it is they say&mdash;'you're

-rejoined by law from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> printin' your papers or from deestributin' the

-same.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, Rob Henney,' says Mis' Toplady, 'no call to show fight like that.

-Half the town is readin' its papers by now. They've been out for

-three-quarters of an hour,' she says.</p>

-

-<p>"Then soft and faint and acrost the street, we heard somebody laugh, and

-then kind of spat hands; and we all looked up. And there in the open

-upstairs window of the building opposite, we see leaning out Eppleby

-Holcomb and Timothy Toplady and Silas Sykes. And when we crossed eyes,

-they all made a little cheer like a theatre; and then they come clumping

-down stairs and acrost to where we was.</p>

-

-<p>"'Won out, didn't you, by heck!' says Silas, that can only see that far.</p>

-

-<p>"'Blisterin' Benson,' says Timothy, gleeful. '<i>I</i> say we ain't got no

-cause to regret our wifes' brains.'</p>

-

-<p>"But Eppleby, he never said a word. He just smiled slow and a-looking

-past us. And we knew that from the beginning he had seen our whole plan,

-face to face.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and me, seeing how Rob Henney stood

-muttering and beat, and seeing how the day had gone, and seeing what was

-what in the world and in all outside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> of it, we looked at each other,

-dead tired, and real happy, and then we just dragged along home to our

-kitchens and went to cooking supper. But oh, it wasn't our same old

-kitchens nor it wasn't our same old Friendship Village. We was in places

-newer and better and up higher, where we see how things are, and how

-life would get more particular about us if we'd get particular about

-some more of life.</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>VII</h2>

-

-<p>"Well, of course then we had Sixty Dollars or so to spend, and Sodality

-never could rest a minute when it had money to do with if it wasn't

-doing it, any more than it could rest when it had something to do and no

-money to do with. It made a nice, active circle. Wishing for dreams to

-come true, and then, when they do come true, making the true things

-sprout more dreams, is another of them circles. I always think they're

-what keeps us a-going, not only immortal but busy.</p>

-

-<p>"And then with us there's another reason for voting our money prompt. As

-soon as we've made any and the news has got out around, it's happened

-two-three times that somebody has put in an application for a headstone

-for somebody dead that can't afford one. The first time that was done

-the application was made by the wife of a harness maker that had a

-little shop in the back street and had been saving up his money for a

-good tombstone. 'I ain't had much of a position here in life,' he used

-to say. 'I never was pointed out as a leading citizen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> But I'm goin' to

-fix it so's when I'm buried and folks come to the Cemetery, nobody'll

-get by my grave without noticin' my tombstone.' And then he took sick

-with inflammatory rheumatism, and if it didn't last him three years and

-et up his whole tombstone fund. He use' to worry about it considerable

-as the rheumatism kept reducing the granite inch after inch, and he

-died, thinking he wasn't going to have nothing but markers to him. So

-his old wife come and told Sodality, crying to think he wasn't going to

-seem no real true inhabitant of Cemetery, any more than he had of the

-village. And we felt so sorry for her we took part of the Thirty Dollars

-we'd made at the rummage sale and bought him a nice cement stone, and

-put the verse on to attract attention that he'd wrote himself:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p class="center">"'<span class="smaller">STOP. LOOK. LISTEN.</span><br /><br />

-<span class="smaller">HERE LAYS ME.</span><br /><br />

-<span class="smaller">MY GRAVE IS JUST AS BIG</span><br /><br />

-<span class="smaller">AS YOURS WILL BE.</span>'</p>

-

-<p>"Some was inclined to criticise Jeb for being so ambitious in death, and

-stopping to think how good a showing he could make. But I donno, I

-always sort of understood him. He wanted to be somebody. He'd used to

-try to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> have a voice in public affairs, but somehow what he proposed

-wasn't ever practical and never could get itself adopted. His judgment

-wasn't much, and time and again he'd voted against the town's good, and

-he see it afterward. He missed being a real citizen of his town, and he

-knew it, and he hankered to be a citizen of his Cemetery. And wherever

-he is now, I bet that healthy hankering is strained and purified and

-helping him ahead.</p>

-

-<p>"But our buying that stone for Jeb's widow's husband's grave let us in

-for perpetual applications for monuments; and so when we had any money

-we always went right to work and voted it for general Cemetery

-improvement, so there wasn't ever any money in the treasury for the

-applications. Anyway, we felt we'd ought to encourage self-made graves

-and not pauperize our corpses.</p>

-

-<p>"So the very next afternoon after we got our paper out, we met at Mis'

-Sykes's; and the day being mild and gold, almost all of Sodality turned

-out, and Mis' Sykes used both her parlours. It was funny; but such times

-there fell on them that sat Front Parlour a sort of

-what-you-might-call-distinction over them that sat Back Parlour. It's

-the same to our parties. Them that are set down to the dining-room table

-always seem a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> little more company than them that are served to the

-little sewing tables around in the open rooms, and we all feel it,

-though we all pretend not, as well-bred as we know how. I donno but

-there's something to it, too. Mis' Sykes, for instance, she always gets

-put to a dining table. Nobody would ever think of setting her down to a

-small one, no more than they would a Proudfit. But me, I generally get

-tucked down to a sewing table and in a rocking-chair, if there ain't

-enough cane seats to go around. Things often divide themselves true to

-themselves in this life, after all.</p>

-

-<p>"This was the last regular meeting before our Annual. The Annual, at

-Insley's suggestion, was going to be in the schoolhouse, and it was

-going to be an open evening meeting, with the whole town invited in and

-ice-cream served after. Regular meetings Sodality gives just tea;

-special meetings we give hot chocolate or ice-lemonade, or both if the

-weather is unsettled; for entertainments we have cut-up fruit and little

-bakery cakes; but to our Annual we mount up to ice-cream and some of our

-best cake makers' layer cake. And us ladies always dress according:

-afternoon home dresses to regular meetings; second best to specials;

-Sunday silks to entertainments; and straight going-out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> clothes for the

-Annual. It makes it real nice. Nobody need to come dressed wrong, and

-nobody can go away disappointed at what they've been fed.</p>

-

-<p>"The meeting that day all ought to have gone smooth enough, it being so

-nice that our paper had sold well and all, but I guess the most of us

-was too tired out to have tried to have a meeting so soon. Anyhow, we

-didn't seem to come together slippery and light-running, like we do some

-days; but instead I see the minute we begun to collect that we was all

-inclined to be heavy and, though not cross, yet frictionish.</p>

-

-<p>"For instance: Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss had come in a new red

-waist with black raspberry buttons. And it was too much for Mis' Fire

-Chief Merriman that's been turning her black poplin ever since the Fire

-Chief died.</p>

-

-<p>"'Dear me, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'I never see anybody have more

-dressy clothes. Did you put that on just for us?'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Holcomb shut her lips tight.</p>

-

-<p>"'This is for home wear,' she says short, when she opened them.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mean to say you get a cooked supper in that rig?' says Mis' Merriman.

-'Fry meat in it, do you?'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p><p>"'We don't eat as hearty as some,' says Mame. 'We don't insist on warm

-suppers. We feel at our house we have to keep our bills down.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Merriman straightened up, real brittle.</p>

-

-<p>"'My gracious,' she says, 'I guess I live as cheap as the best does.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I see you buying <i>shelled</i> nuts, just the same,' says Mis' Holcomb,

-'when shellin' 'em with your fingers cost twenty cents off.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I ain't never had my store-buyin' criticised before,' says Mis'

-Merriman, elbows back.</p>

-

-<p>"'Nor,' says Mis' Holcomb, bitter, 'have I ever before, in my twenty-six

-years of married life, ever been called <i>dressy</i>.'</p>

-

-<p>"Then Mis' Toplady, she sort of shouldered into the minute, big and

-placid and nice-feeling.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mame,' she says, 'set over here where you can use the lead-pencil on

-my watch chain, and put down that crochet pattern I wanted, will you?'</p>

-

-<p>"Mame come over by her and took the pencil, Mis' Toplady leaning over

-so's she could use it; but before she put the crochet pattern down, Mame

-made one, experimental, on the stiff bottom of her work-bag, and Libby

-Liberty thought she'd make a little joking.</p>

-

-<p>"'S-sh-h,' says Libby, 'the authoress is takin' down notes.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Holcomb has had two-three poems in the <i>Friendship Daily</i>, and

-she's real sensitive over it.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'd be polite if I couldn't be pleasant, Libby,' says Mame, acid.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm pleasant enough to pleasant folks,' snaps Libby, up in arms in a

-minute. Nothing whatever makes anybody so mad as to have what was meant

-playful took plain.</p>

-

-<p>"'I,' says Mis' Holcomb, majestic, 'would pay some attention to my

-company manners, no matter what I was in the home.'</p>

-

-<p>"'That makes me think,' puts in Mis' Toplady, hasty, 'speaking of

-company so, who's heard anything about the evenin' company up to

-Proudfits'?'</p>

-

-<p>"It was something all our heads was full of, being half the village had

-just been invited in to the big evening affair that was to end up the

-house party, and we'd all of pitched in and talked fast anyhow to take

-our minds off the spat.</p>

-

-<p>"'Elbert's comin' home to go to it an' to stay Sunday an' as much as he

-can spare,' says Mis' Sykes. Elbert is her son and all Silas Sykes ought

-to of been, Elbert is.</p>

-

-<p>"'Letty Ames is home for the party, too,' says Libby Liberty, speaking

-up in defence of their block, that Letty lives in. She's just <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>graduated

-at Indian Mound and has been visiting up the state.</p>

-

-<p>"My niece that had come on for a few days would be gone before the party

-come off, so she didn't seem worth mentioning for real news value at a

-time when everything was centring in an evening company at Proudfit

-House. No doubt about it, Proudfit House does give distinction to

-Friendship Village, kind of like a finishing school would, or a circus

-wintering in us.</p>

-

-<p>"'I heard,' says Mis' Jimmy Sturgis, 'that the hired help set up all

-night long cleanin' the silver. I shouldn't think <i>that</i> would of been

-necessary, with any kind of management behind 'em.'</p>

-

-<p>"'You don't get much management now'-days,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait,

-sighing. 'Things slap along awful haphazard.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I know I ain't the system to myself that I use' to have,' says Abagail

-Arnold. 'Why, the other day I found my soda in one butt'ry an' my bakin'

-powder in the other.'</p>

-

-<p>"'An' I heard,' says Mame Holcomb&mdash;that's one thing about Mame, you

-can't keep her mad. She'll flare up and be a tongue of flame one minute,

-and the next she's actin' like a friendly open fire on a family hearth.

-And I always trust that kind&mdash;I can't help it&mdash;'I heard,' she said,

-'that for the party that night the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>ice-cream is coming in forms,

-calla-lilies an' dogs an' like that.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I heard,' says Mis' Uppers, 'that Emerel Daniel was invited up to help

-an' she set up nights and got her a new dress for helpin' in, and now

-little Otie's sick and she likely can't go near.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady looks over her glasses.</p>

-

-<p>"'Is Otie sick again?' says she. 'Well, if Emerel don't move out of

-Black Hollow, she'll lose him just like she done Abe. Can't she sell?'</p>

-

-<p>"Black Hollow is the town's pet breeding place for typhoid, that the

-ladies has been at the council to clean up for a year now. And nobody

-will buy there, so Emerel's had to live in her house to save rent.</p>

-

-<p>"'She's made her a nice dress an' she was so excited and pleased,' says

-Mis' Uppers, grieving. 'I do hope it was a dark shade so if bereavement

-follows&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'I suppose you'll have a new cloth, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis'

-Hubbelthwait, 'you're so up-to-date.' It's always one trouble with Mis'

-Hubbelthwait: she will flatter the flatterable. But that time it didn't

-work. Mis' Sykes was up on a chair fixing a window-shade that had flew

-up, and I guess she must have pinched her finger, she was so crispy.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p><p>"'I thought I <i>had</i> things that was full stylish enough to wear,' she

-says stiff.</p>

-

-<p>"'I didn't mean harm,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, humble.</p>

-

-<p>"Just then we all got up to see out the window, for the Proudfit

-automobile drew up to Mis' Sykes's gate. They was several folks in it,

-like they had been most of the time during the house party, with

-everybody flying hither and yon; and they was letting Mis' Emmons out.

-It was just exactly like her to remember to come right out of the midst

-of a house party to a meeting of Sodality. That woman was pure gold.

-When they was a lot of things to choose about, she always seemed to let

-the pleasant and the light and the easy-to-do slip right through her

-fingers, that would close up by and by on the big real thing that most

-folks would pretend to try to catch <i>after</i> it had slipped through, and

-yet would be awful glad to see disappearing.</p>

-

-<p>"We didn't talk clothes any more after Mis' Emmons come in. Some way her

-clothes was so professional seeming, in colour and cut, that beside of

-her the rest of us never said much about ours; though I will say Mis'

-Emmons always wore her clothes like she was no more thinking about them

-than she would be thinking about morning housework togs.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p>"'Well-said, how's the little boy, Mis' Emmons?' asks Mis' Toplady,

-hearty. 'I declare I couldn't go to sleep a night or two ago for

-thinkin' about the little soul. Heard any sound out of his folks?'</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm going to tell you about that pretty soon,' Mis' Emmons

-answered&mdash;and it made my heart beat a little with wondering if she'd got

-her plans thought out, not only four-square, but tower-high. 'He is

-well&mdash;he wanted to come to the meeting. "I like ladies," he said, "when

-they look at me like loving, but not when they touch me much." Mr.

-Insley has him out walking.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Little soul,' says Mis' Toplady, again.</p>

-

-<p>"Out in the back parlour, some of us had been talking about Christopher

-already.</p>

-

-<p>"'I heard,' Mis' Merriman says, that wasn't to the church the night

-Christopher come, 'I heard that he didn't have much of any clothes on.

-An' that nobody could understand what he said. An' that nobody could get

-him to speak a word.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Pshaw,' Mis' Sturgis puts in, 'he was a nice-dressed little boy,

-though wet; an' quite conversational.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, I think it's a great problem,' says Mis' Uppers. 'He's too young

-for the poorhouse and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> too old for the babies' home. Seems like they

-wasn't anything <i>to</i> do with him.'</p>

-

-<p>"There come a lull when Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in a ruffled lawn that

-had shrunk too short for anything but house wear, stood up by the piano

-and called the meeting to order. And when we'd got on down to new

-business, the purpose of the meeting and a hint of the pleasure was

-stated formal by Mis' Sykes herself. 'One thing why I like to preside at

-Sodality,' I heard her tell once, 'is, you do get your say whenever you

-want it, and nobody can interrupt you when you're in the chair.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Ladies,' she says, 'we've seen from the treasurer's report we've got

-some Sixty-odd Dollars on hand. The question is, where shall we vote it

-to. Let the discussion be free.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke first, with a kind of a bright

-manner of having thought it all out over her dish pan and her bread pan.

-There is this about belonging to Sodality: We just live Sodality every

-day, around our work. We don't forget it except to meetings, same as

-some.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, I just tell you what,' Mame says, 'I think now is our time to

-get a big monument for the middle of Cemetery that'll do some credit to

-the Dead. All our little local <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>headstones is quite tasty and shows our

-interest in them that's gone before; but not one of them is real

-up-to-date. Let's buy a nice monument that'll show from the railroad

-track.'</p>

-

-<p>"I spoke up short off from the back parlour, where I set 'scallopin' a

-bedspread about as big as the carpet.</p>

-

-<p>"'Who to?' I says.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, I donno's it makes much differ'nce,' Mis' Holcomb says, warming to

-her theme, 'so's it was some leadin' citizen. We might take a town vote

-on it.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sturgis set up straight, eyebrows up. I donno how it is, but Mis'

-Sturgis's pompadour always seems so much higher as soon as she gets

-interested.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, my gracious,' she says, 'we might earn quite a lot o' money that

-way. We might have a regular votin' contest on who that's dead should

-get the monument&mdash;so much a vote an' the names of the successful ones

-run every night in the <i>Daily</i>&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well-a, why do it for anybody dead?' says Libby Liberty. 'Why not get

-the monument here and have it on view an' then have folks kind of bid on

-it for their own, real votin' style. In the cities now everybody picks

-out their own monuments ahead of time. That would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> be doing for the

-Living, the way Mr. Insley said.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, there'd be hard feelin' that way,' spoke up Mis' Uppers, decided.

-'Whoever got it, an' got buried under it, never could feel it was his

-own stone. Everybody that had bought votes for themselves could come out

-walking in the Cemetery Sunday afternoons and could point out the

-monument and tell how much of a money interest they had in it. Oh, no, I

-don't think that'd do at all.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, stick to havin' it for the Dead, then,' Libby gives in. 'We've

-got to remember our constitution.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Amanda Toplady was always going down after something in the bottom

-of her pocket, set low in her full black skirt. She done this now, for a

-spool or a lozenger. And she says, meantime: 'Seems like that'd be awful

-irreverent, connectin' up the Dead with votes that way.'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>My</i> notion,' says Mis' Sykes, with her way of throwin' up one corner

-of her head, 'it ain't one-tenth part as irreverent as forgettin' all

-about 'em.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Of course it ain't,' agreed Mis' Hubbelthwait. 'Real, true irreverence

-is made up of buryin' folks and leavin' 'em go their way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> Why, I bet

-you there ain't any one of 'em that wouldn't be cheered up by bein'

-voted for.'</p>

-

-<p>"I couldn't help piping up again from the back parlour. 'What about them

-that don't get no votes?' I asks. 'What about them that is beat in death

-like they may of been in life? What's there to cheer them up? If I was

-them,' says I, 'I'd ha'nt the whole Sodality.'</p>

-

-<p>"'No need to be so sacrilegious in speakin' of the Dead as I know of,

-Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes that was in the chair and could rebuke at

-will.</p>

-

-<p>"That made me kind o' mad, and I answered back, chair or no chair: 'A

-thing is sacrilegious,' says I, 'according to which side of the fence

-you're on. But the fence it don't change none.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady looked over her glasses and out the window and like she

-see far away.</p>

-

-<p>"'Land, land,' she says, 'I'd like to take that Sixty Dollars and hire

-some place to invite the young folks into evenings, that don't have no

-place to go on earth for fun. Friendship Village,' says she, 'is about

-as lively as Cemetery is for the young folks.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, but, Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes, reprovin', 'the young folks

-is alive and able to see to themselves. They don't come in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> Sodality's

-scope. Everything we do has got to be connect' with Cemetery.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I can't help it,' Mis' Toplady answers, 'if it is. I'd like to invite

-'em in for some good safe evenin's somewheres instead of leaving 'em

-trapse the streets. And if I had to have Cemetery in it somehow, I donno

-but I'd make it a lawn party and give it in Cemetery and have done with

-it.'</p>

-

-<p>"We all laughed, but I knew that underneath, Mis' Toplady was kind of

-half-and-half in earnest.</p>

-

-<p>"'The young folks,' says Mis' Sykes, mysterious, 'is going to be took

-care of by the proper means, very, very soon.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I donno,' says Mis' Holcomb, obstinate. 'I think the monument is a

-real nice idea. Grandfather Holcomb, now, him that helped draft the

-town, or whatever it is they do, I bet he'd be real pleased to be voted

-for.'</p>

-

-<p>"But Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, seems she couldn't forget the little way

-Mame had spoke to her before, and she leaned forward and cut her way

-into the talking.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'of course your Grandfather Holcomb can

-be voted on if he wants to and if he thinks he could get it. But dead

-though he is, what he done can't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> hold a candle to what Grandfather

-Merriman done. That man just about run this town for years on end.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I heard he did,' said Mame, short. 'Those was the days before things

-was called by their true names in politics and in graft and like that.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm sure,' says Mis' Merriman, her voice slipping, 'Grandfather

-Merriman was an angel in heaven to his family. And he started the very

-Cemetery by bein' buried in it first himself, and he took a front lot&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'Ladies, ladies,' says Mis' Sykes, stern, 'we ain't votin' <i>yet</i>. Has

-anybody got anything else to offer? Let the discussion be free.'</p>

-

-<p>"'What do we get a monument for, anyway?' says Mis' Toplady, hemming

-peaceful. 'Why don't we stick the money onto the new iron fence for

-Cemetery, same as we've been trying to do for years?'</p>

-

-<p>"'That's what I was thinking,' says Abagail Arnold, smiling. 'Whenever I

-make one of my layer cakes for Sodality Annual, and frost it white and

-make mounds of frosted nuts on top, I always wish Cemetery had a fence

-around so's I could make a frosting one on the edge of the cake,

-appropriate.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, but my land, Abagail,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'can't you see the

-differ'nce between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> workin' for a dead iron fence and working for the

-real, right down Dead that once was the living? Where's your humanity,

-I'd like to know, and your loyalty to Friendship Village inhabitants

-that was, that you set the old iron fence over against 'em. What's a

-fence beside folks?'</p>

-

-<p>"All this time Mis' Emmons, there in the front parlour, had just sat

-still, stitching away on some little garment or other, but now she

-looked up quick, as if she was going to speak. She even begun to speak

-with a 'Madame President' that covered up several excited beginnings.

-But as she done so, I looked through the folding doors and see her catch

-sight of somebody out in the street. And I looked out the bay-window in

-the back parlour and I see who it was: it was a man, carefully guiding a

-little bit of a man who was walking on the flat board top of the Sykes's

-fence. So, instead of speaking formal, all Mis' Emmons done was to make

-a little motion towards the window, so that her contribution to the

-debating was nothing but&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Madame President&mdash;look.'</p>

-

-<p>"We all looked, them in the out-of-range corners of the room getting up

-and holding their work in their aprons, and peering past;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> and us in the

-back parlour tried for glimpses out the side bay-window, past Mis'

-Sykes's big sword fern. And so the most of us see Insley walking with

-Christopher, who was footing it very delicate and grave, picking out his

-places to step as if a real lot depended on it.</p>

-

-<p>"'That's Chris,' says Mis' Emmons, simple, 'that's come to us.' And

-you'd of said she hardly spoke the 'us' real conscious of herself. She

-looked round at us all. 'Let's have him in for a minute,' she says.</p>

-

-<p>"'The little soul! Let's so do,' Mis' Amanda Toplady says, hearty.</p>

-

-<p>"It was Mis' Emmons that went to the door and called them, and I guess

-Insley, when he see her, must of wondered what made her face seem like

-that. He went on up town, and the little chap come trotting up the walk.</p>

-

-<p>"When Chris come in Mis' Sykes's front parlour among all the women,

-there run round that little murmuring sound that a crowd of women uses

-to greet the coming in their midst of any child. And I s'pose it was a

-little more so than ever for Chris, that they hadn't all seen

-yet&mdash;'count of so few being out the night he come and 'count of his

-having been up to Proudfit House 'most ever since. Us in the back

-parlour went crowding in the front, and some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> come down to the hall door

-to be the nearer. Mis' Amanda Toplady, hunting in her deep pocket, this

-time for a lozenger, says fervent above the rest:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'The little soul.'</p>

-

-<p>"And he did resemble one, standing there so shy and manly in his new

-little brown clothes.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Emmons's eyes was bright, and I thought I see a kind of challenge

-in her way of drawing the child towards her.</p>

-

-<p>"'Chris,' she says, 'tell them what you had in your paper bag when you

-came to the church the other night.'</p>

-

-<p>"Chris remembered: Sugar rolls and cream-puffs and fruit-cake, he

-recites it grand. 'My supper,' he adds, no less grand. 'But that was

-'cause I didn't have my dinner nor my breakfast,' he explains, so's we

-wouldn't think he'd had too much at once.</p>

-

-<p>"'What was the matter with your foot?' Mis' Emmons goes on.</p>

-

-<p>"Christopher had a little smile that just about won you&mdash;a sort of

-abashed little smile, that begun over by one side of his mouth, and when

-he was going to smile that way he always started in by turning away his

-head. He done this now; but we could all hear what he said. It was:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p><p>"'My biggest toe went right through a hole, an' it choked me awful.'</p>

-

-<p>"About a child's foot hurting, or a little sore heel, there is something

-that makes mothers out of everybody, for a minute or two. The women all

-twittered into a little ripple of understanding. Probably to every woman

-there come the picture of the little cold, wet foot and the choked toe.

-I know I could see it, and I can see it yet.</p>

-

-<p>"'Lambin',' says Mis' Toplady, in more than two syllables, 'come here

-for a peppermint.'</p>

-

-<p>"Chris went right over to her. 'I been thirsty for a drink of water

-since all day,' he says confidential. 'Have you got one?'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady went with the child, and then Mis' Emmons took something

-from her bag and held it up. It was Christopher's father's letter that

-he'd brought with him that night.</p>

-

-<p>"She read the letter out loud, in everybody's perfectly breathless

-silence that was broken only by Christopher laughing out in the kitchen.

-'My friends,' Mis' Emmons says when she'd got through, 'doesn't it seem

-to you as if our work had come to us? And that if it isn't Chris

-himself, at least it ought to be people, live people&mdash;and not an iron

-fence or even a monument that will show from the railroad track?'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p><p>"And with that, standing in the doorway with my arms full of bedspread,

-I piped right up, just like I'd been longing to pipe up ever since that

-night at Mis' Emmons's when I'd talked with Insley:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes, sir,' I says emphatic, 'it does. Without meaning to be

-sacrilegious in the least,' I says toward Mis' Sykes, 'I believe that

-the Dead is a lot better prepared to take care of themselves than a good

-many of the Living is.'</p>

-

-<p>"There was a kind of a little pause at this, all but Mis' Sykes. Mis'

-Sykes don't pause easy. She spoke right back, sort of elevating one

-temple:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'The object of this meeting as the chair understands it,' says she, 'is

-to discuss money spending, <i>not</i> idees.'</p>

-

-<p>"But I didn't pay no more attention than as if I'd been a speaker in

-public life. And Mis' Toplady and Christopher, coming back to the room

-just then, I spoke to him and took a-hold of his little shoulder.</p>

-

-<p>"'Chris,' I says, 'tell 'em what you're going to be when you grow up.'</p>

-

-<p>"The little boy stood up with his back against the door-casing, and he

-spoke back between peppermints:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p><p>"'I'm going to drive the loads of hay,' he declares himself.</p>

-

-<p>"'A little bit ago,' I says to 'em, 'he was going to be a cream-puff

-man, and keep a church and manufacture black velvet for people's

-coffins. Think of all them futures&mdash;not to spend time on other

-possibilities. Don't it seem like we'd ought to keep him around here

-somewheres and help him decide? Don't it seem like what he's going to be

-is resting with us?'</p>

-

-<p>"But now Mis' Sykes spoke out in her most presidential tone.</p>

-

-<p>"'It would be perfectly impossible,' she says, 'for Sodality to spend

-its money on the child or on anybody else that's living. Our

-constitution says we shall work for Cemetery.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says I, rebellish, 'then let's rip up our old constitution and

-buy ourselves a new pattern.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes was getting to verge on mad.</p>

-

-<p>"'But Sodality ain't an orphan asylum, Calliope,' says she, 'nor none of

-us is that.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Ain't we&mdash;ain't we, Mis' Sykes?' I says. 'Sometimes I donno what we're

-for if we ain't that.'</p>

-

-<p>"And then I just clear forgot myself, in one of them times that don't

-let you get to sleep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> that night for thinking about, and that when you

-wake up is right there by the bed waiting for you, and that makes you

-feel sore when you think of afterwards&mdash;sore, but glad, too.</p>

-

-<p>"'That's it,' I says, 'that's it. I've been thinking about that a good

-deal lately. I s'pose it's because I ain't any children of my own to be

-so busy for that I can't think about their real good. Seems to me there

-ain't a child living no matter how saucy or soiled or similar, but could

-look us each one in the face and say, "What you doing for me and the

-rest of us?" And what could we say to them? We could say: "I'm buying

-some of you ginghams that won't shrink nor fade. Some of you I'm cooking

-food for, and some of you I'm letting go without it. And some of you I'm

-buying school books and playthings and some of you I'm leaving without

-'em. I'm making up some of your beds and teaching you your manners and

-I'm loving you&mdash;some of you. And the rest of you I'm leaving walk in

-town after dark with a hole in your stocking." <i>Where's the

-line&mdash;where's the line?</i> How do we know which is the ones to do for? I

-tell you I'm the orphan asylum to the whole lot of 'em. And so are you.

-And I move the Cemetery Improvement Sodality do something for this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>

-little boy. We'd adopt him if he was dead&mdash;an' keep his grave as nice

-and neat as wax. Let's us adopt him instead of his grave!'</p>

-

-<p>"My bedspread had slipped down onto the floor, but I never knew when nor

-did I see it go. All I see was that some of them agreed with me&mdash;Mis'

-Emmons and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Hubbelthwait and Libby and even Mame

-that had proposed the monument. But some of the others was waiting as

-usual to see how Mis' Sykes was going to believe, and Mis' Sykes she was

-just standing there by the piano, her cheeks getting pinker and pinker

-up high on her face.</p>

-

-<p>"'Calliope,' she said, making a gesture. 'Ladies! this is every bit of

-it out of order. This ain't the subject that we come together to

-discuss.'</p>

-

-<p>"'It kind of seems to me,' says I, 'that it's a subject we was born to

-discuss.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady sort of rolled over in her chair and looked across her

-glasses to Mis' Sykes.</p>

-

-<p>"'Madame President,' says she, 'as I understand it this fits in all

-right. What we're proposing is to spend Sodality's money on this little

-boy just the same as though he was dead. I move we do so.'</p>

-

-<p>"Two-three of 'em seconded it, but scairt and scattering.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p><p>"'Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Ladies! This is a good deal too

-headlong. A committee'd ought&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'Question&mdash;question,' demands Mis' Emmons, serene, and she met my eye

-and smiled some, in that little <i>we</i>-understand look that can pierce

-through a roomful of people like the wind.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mis' Emmons,' says Mis' Sykes, wildish. 'Ladies! Sodality has been

-organized over twenty years, doing the same thing. You can't change so

-offhand&mdash;' You can't help admiring Mis' Sykes, for she simply don't know

-when she's beat. But this time she had a point with her, too. 'If we

-want to vote to amend the constitution,' she said, 'you've got to lay

-down your wishes on the table for one week.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I daresay you have,' says Mis' Emmons, looking grave. 'Well, I move

-that we amend the constitution of this society, and I move that we do it

-next week at the open annual meeting of the Sodality.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Second the motion,' says I, with my feet on my white bedspread.</p>

-

-<p>"And somehow the phrase caught Christopher's ear, like a tune might to

-march by.</p>

-

-<p>"'Second a motion&mdash;second a motion!' he chants to himself, standing by

-Mis' Toplady's knee.</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>VIII</h2>

-

-<p>"I had promised Insley to run in the Cadozas' after the meeting, and see

-the little boy; and Mis' Emmons having to go home before she started

-back to the Proudfits', Christopher walked along with me. When we got

-out to the end of Daphne Street, Insley overtook us on his way out to

-the Cadozas', too.</p>

-

-<p>"His shoes were some muddy, and I guessed that he had been where of late

-he'd spent as much time as he could spare, both when he was in the

-village and when he was over to Indian Mound. Without digging down into

-his eyes, the same as some do to folks that's in trouble, I had sensed

-that there had come down on him everybody's hour of cutting something

-out of life, which is as elemental a thing to do as dying is, and I

-donno but it's the same kind as dying is besides. And he had been taking

-his hour in the elemental way, wanting to be alone and to kind of get

-near to the earth. I mean tramping the hills, ploughing along the narrow

-paths close to the barb' wire fences, plunging into the little groves.

-The little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> groves have such an' I-know look of understanding all about

-any difficulty till you walk inside of them, when all to once they stop

-seeming to know about your special trouble and begin another kind of

-slow soothing, same as summing things up will soothe you, now and then.</p>

-

-<p>"Chris chattered to him, lovable.</p>

-

-<p>"'I had some peppermenges,' he says, 'and I like hot ice-cream, too.

-Don't you? Can you make that?' he inquires, slipping his hand in

-Insley's.</p>

-

-<p>"Of course this made a pang&mdash;when you're hurt, 'most everything makes a

-pang. And this must of brought back that one evening with Robin that he

-would have to remember, and all the little stupid jokes they'd had that

-night must of rose up and hit at him, with the awful power of the little

-things that don't matter one bit and yet that matter everything.</p>

-

-<p>"'What can <i>you</i> make, Chris?' Insley says to him. 'Can you make candy?

-And pull it&mdash;like this?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Once a lady stirred me some an' cut it up in squares,' Chris

-explained, 'but I never did make any. My mama couldn't make candy, I

-guess, but she could make all other things&mdash;pancakes an' mittens an'

-nice stove fires my mama could make. The bag we got the salt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> in&mdash;she

-made me two handkerchiefs out of that bag,' he ended proudly.</p>

-

-<p>"'Did she&mdash;did she?' Insley tempted him on.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' Chris went on, hopping beside him, 'but now I've got to hurry

-an' be a man, 'cause litty boys ain't very good things. Can you make

-po'try?' he wound up.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, Chris&mdash;can you?' Insley asked.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, when I was comin' along with my daddy that night I made one,'

-the child says. And when Insley questions him a little he got this much

-more out of him. 'It started, "Look at the trees so green an' fair,"' he

-says, 'but I forget the rest.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Do you want to be a poet when you grow up?' Insley ask' him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes, I do,' the child says ready. 'I think I'll be that first an' then

-I'll be the President, too. But what I'd rather be is the sprinkler-cart

-man, wouldn't you?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Conceivably,' Insley says, and by the look on his face I bet his hand

-tightened up on the child's hand.</p>

-

-<p>"'At Sodality,' I says, 'he just told them he was going to drive loads

-of hay. He's made several selections.'</p>

-

-<p>"He looked at me over the child's head, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> I guess we was both

-thinking the same thing: Trust nature to work this out alone?

-'Conceivably,' again. But all of a sudden I know we both burned to help

-to do it. And as Insley talked to the child, I think some touch of his

-enterprise come back and breathed on him. In them few last days I

-shouldn't wonder if his work hadn't stopped soaring to the meaning of

-spirit and sunk down again to be just body drudgery. He couldn't ever

-help having his old possessing love of men, and his man's strong

-resolution to keep a-going, but I shouldn't wonder if the wings of the

-thing he meant to do had got folded up. And Christopher, here, was sort

-of releasing them out again.</p>

-

-<p>"'How's the little Cadoza boy?' I ask' him pretty soon.</p>

-

-<p>"'He's getting on,' he says. 'Dr. Barrows was down yesterday&mdash;he wants

-him for a fortnight or so at the hospital in town, where he can have

-good care and food. His mother doesn't want him to go. I hoped you'd

-talk with her.'</p>

-

-<p>"Before we got to the Cadoza house Insley looked over to me, enigmatish.

-'Want to see something?' he says, and he handed me a letter. I read it,

-and some of it I knew what it meant and some of it I didn't. It was

-from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> Alex Proudfit, asking him up to Proudfit House to the house party.</p>

-

-<p>" ... Ain't it astonishing how awful festive the word 'house party'

-sounds. 'Party' sounds festive, though not much more so than 'company'

-or 'gathering' that we use more common. 'Ball,' of course, is real

-glittering, and paints the inside of your head into pictures,

-instantaneous. But a house party&mdash;maybe it's because I never was to one;

-maybe it's because I never heard of one till late in life; maybe it's

-because nobody ever had one before in Friendship Village&mdash;but that word

-give me all the sensation that 'her golden coach' and 'his silver

-armour' and 'good fairy' used to have for me when I was a little girl.

-'House party!' Anything shiny might happen to one of them. It's like

-you'd took something vanishin', like a party, and just seized onto it

-and made it stay longer than Time and the World ever intended. It's like

-making a business of the short-lived.</p>

-

-<p>"Well, some of Alex's letter went about like this:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Join us for the whole time, do,' it says, and it went on about there

-being rather an interesting group,&mdash;'a jolly individualist,' I recollect

-he says, 'for your special benefit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> He'll convert you where I couldn't,

-because he's kept his love for men and I haven't. And of course I've

-some women&mdash;pretty, bless them, and thank the Lord not one of them

-troubling whether she loves mankind or not, so long as men love her. And

-there you have Nature uncovered at her task! I shall expect you for

-every moment that you can spare....' I remember the wording because it

-struck me it was all so like Alex that I could pretty near talk to it

-and have it answer back.</p>

-

-<p>"'Tell me,' Insley says, when I handed the letter back to him, 'you

-know&mdash;him. Alex Proudfit. Does he put all that on? Is it his mask? Does

-he feel differently and do differently when folks don't know?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' I says, slow, 'I donno. He gives the Cadozas their rent, but

-when Mis' Cadoza went to thank him, once, he sent down word for her to

-go and see his agent.'</p>

-

-<p>"He nodded, and I'd never heard him speak bitter before. 'That's it,' he

-says, 'that's it. That's the way we bungle things....'</p>

-

-<p>"We'd got almost to the Cadozas' when we heard an automobile coming

-behind us, and as we stood aside to let it go by, Robin's face flashed

-past us at the window. Mis' Emmons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> was with her, that Robin had come

-down after. Right off the car stopped and Robin jumped out and come

-hurrying back towards us. I'll never forget the minute. We met right in

-front of the old tumble-down Cadoza house with the lilacs so high in the

-front yard that the place looked pretty near nice, like the rest of the

-world. It was a splendid afternoon, one that had got it's gold persuaded

-to burst through a gray morning, like colour from a bunch of silver

-buds; and now the air was all full of lovely things, light and little

-wind and late sun and I donno but things we didn't know about. And

-everyone of them seemed in Robin's face as she came towards us, and

-more, too, that we couldn't name or place.</p>

-

-<p>"I think the mere exquisite girlishness of her come home to Insley as

-even her strength and her womanliness, that night he talked with her,

-had not moved him. I donno but in the big field of his man's dream, he

-had pretty near forgot how obvious her charm was. I'm pretty sure that

-in those days when he was tramping the hills alone, the thing that he

-was fighting with was that he was going to lose her companioning in the

-life they both dreamed. But now her hurrying so and her little faint

-agitation made her appeal a new thing, fifty times as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> lovely, fifty

-times as feminine, and sort of filling in the picture of herself with

-all the different kinds of women she was in one.</p>

-

-<p>"So now, as he stood there with her, looking down in her face, touching

-her friendly hand, I think that was the first real, overhauling minute

-when he was just swept by the understanding that his loss was so many

-times what he'd thought it was going to be. For it was her that he

-wanted, it was her that he would miss for herself and not for any dear

-plans of work-fellowship alone. She understood his dream, but there was

-other things she understood about, too. A man can love a woman for a

-whole collection of little dear things&mdash;and he can lose her and grieve;

-he can love her for her big way of looking at things, and he can lose

-her and grieve; he can love her because she is his work-fellow, and he

-can lose her and grieve. But if, on top of one of these, he loves her

-because she is she, the woman that knows about life and is capable of

-sharing all of life with him and of being tender about it, why then if

-he loses her, his grieving is going to be something that there ain't

-rightly no name for. And I think it was that minute there in the road

-that it first come to Insley that Robin was Robin, that of all the many

-women that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> was, first and most she was the woman that was capable

-of sharing with him all sides of living.</p>

-

-<p>"'I wanted ...' she says to him, uncertain. 'Oh, I wish very much that

-you would accept the invitation to some of the house party. I wanted to

-tell you.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I can't do that,' he answers, short and almost gruff. 'Really I can't

-do that.'</p>

-

-<p>"But it seemed there was even a sort of nice childishness about her that

-you wouldn't have guessed. I always think it's a wonderful moment when a

-woman knows a man well enough to show some of her childishness to him.

-But a woman that shows right off, close on the heels of an introduction,

-how childish she can be, it always sort o' makes me mad&mdash;like she'd told

-her first name without being asked about it.</p>

-

-<p>"'Please,' Robin says, 'I'm asking it because I wish it very much. I

-want those people up there to know you. I want&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"He shook his head, looking at her, eyes, mouth, and fresh cheeks, like

-he wished he was able to look at her face <i>all at once</i>.</p>

-

-<p>"'At least, at least,' she says to him rapid, then, 'you must come to

-the party at the end. You know I want to keep you for my friend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>&mdash;I want

-to make you our friend. That night Aunt Eleanor is going to announce my

-engagement, and I want my friends to be there.'</p>

-

-<p>"That surprised me as much as it did him. Nobody in the village knew

-about the engagement yet except us two that knew it from that night at

-Mis' Emmons's. I wondered what on earth Insley was going to say and I

-remember how I hoped, pretty near fierce, that he wasn't going to smile

-and bow and wish her happiness and do the thing the world would have

-wanted of him. It may make things run smoother to do that way, but

-smoothness isn't the only thing the love of folks for folks knows about.

-I do like a man that now and then speaks out with the breath in his

-lungs and not just with the breath of his nostrils. And that's what

-Insley done&mdash;that's what he done, only I'm bound to say that I do think

-he spoke out before he knew he was going to.</p>

-

-<p>"'That would be precisely why I couldn't come,' he said. 'Thank you, you

-know&mdash;but please don't ask me.'</p>

-

-<p>"As for Robin, at this her eyes widened, and beautiful colour swept her

-face. And she didn't at once turn away from him, but I see how she stood

-looking at him with a kind of a sharp intentness, less of wonder than of

-stopping short.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p><p>"Christopher had run to the automobile and now he come a-hopping back.</p>

-

-<p>"'Robin!' he called. 'Aunt Eleanor says you haf to be in a dress by

-dinner, and it's <i>now</i>.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Do come for dinner, Mr. Insley,' Mis' Emmons calls, as Robin and

-Christopher went to join him. 'We've got up a tableau or two for

-afterward. Come and help me be a tableau.'</p>

-

-<p>"He smiled and shook his head and answered her. And that reminded me

-that I'd got to hurry like wild, as usual. It was most six o'clock

-then,&mdash;it always <i>is</i> either most six o'clock or most noon when I get

-nearest to being interested,&mdash;and that night great things was going to

-be going on. Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and the School Board and I was

-going to have a tableau of our own.</p>

-

-<p>"But for all that I couldn't help standing still a minute and looking

-after the automobile. It seemed as bad as some kind of a planet,

-carrying Robin off for forever and ever. And I wasn't so clear that I

-fancied its orbit.</p>

-

-<p>"'I've got a whole string of minds not to go to that party myself,' I

-says, meditative.</p>

-

-<p>"But Insley never answered. He just come on around the Cadozas' house.</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>IX</h2>

-

-<p>"I never speak much about my relations, because I haven't got many. If I

-did have, I suppose I should be telling about how peculiar they take

-their tea and coffee, and what they died of, and showing samples of

-their clothes and acting like my own immediate family made up life, just

-like most folks does. But I haven't got much of any relatives, nor no

-ancestors to brag about. 'Nothing for kin but the world,' I always say.</p>

-

-<p>"But back in the middle of June I had got a letter from a cousin, like a

-bow from the blue. And the morning I got it, and with it yet unopened in

-my hand, Silas Sykes come out from behind the post-office window and

-tapped me on the arm.</p>

-

-<p>"'Calliope,' he says, 'we've about made up our minds&mdash;the School Board

-an' some o' the leadin' citizens has&mdash;to appoint a Women's Evenin'

-Vigilance Committee, secret. An' we want you an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis'

-Sykes should be it.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p><p>"'Vigilance,' I says, thoughtful. 'I recollect missin' on the meanin'

-of that word in school. I recollect I called it "viligance" an' said it

-meant a 'bus. I donno if I rightly know what it means now, Silas.'</p>

-

-<p>"Silas cleared his throat an' whispered hoarse, in a way he's got:

-'Women don't have no call, much for the word,' he says. 'It means when

-you sic your notice onto some one thing. We want a committee of you

-women should do it.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Notice <i>what</i>?' I says, some mystified. 'What the men had ought to be

-up to an' ain't?'</p>

-

-<p>"But customers come streaming into the post-office store then, and some

-folks for their mail, and Silas set a time a couple o' days later in the

-afternoon for Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and me to come down to the

-store and talk it over.</p>

-

-<p>"'An' you be here,' says Silas, beatin' it off with his finger. 'It's

-somethin' we got to do to protect our own public decency.'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Public</i> decency,' I says over, thoughtful, and went out fingerin' my

-letter that was in a strange handwriting and that I was dying to read.</p>

-

-<p>"It was a couple of days later that I what-you-might-say finished that

-letter, and between times I had it on the clock-shelf and give every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>

-spare minute to making it out. Minerva Beach the letter was from&mdash;my

-cousin Minnie Beach's girl. Minnie had died awhile before, and Minerva,

-her daughter, was on her way West to look for a position, and should she

-spend a few days with me? That was what I made out, though I donno how I

-done it, for her writing was so big and so up-and-down that every letter

-looked like it had on corsets and high heels. I never see such a mess!

-It was like picking out a crochet pattern to try to read it.</p>

-

-<p>"I recollect that I was just finishing composing my letter telling her

-to come along, and hurrying so's to take it to mail as I went down to

-the Vigilance Committee meeting, when the new photographer in town come

-to my door, with his horse and buggy tied to the gate. J. Horace Myers

-was his name, and he said he was a friend of the Topladys, and he was

-staying with them while he made choice art photographs of the whole

-section; and he wanted to take a picture of my house. He was a dapper

-little man, but awful tired-seeming, so I told him to take the picture

-and welcome, and I put the stone dog on the front porch and looped the

-parlour curtains over again and started off for the meeting.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p><p>"'I'll be up to show you the proofs in a few days,' he says as I was

-leaving. He was fixing the black cloth over his head, kind of listless

-and patient.</p>

-

-<p>"'Land!' I says, before I knew it, 'don't you get awful sick of takin'

-pictures of humbly houses you don't care nothin' about?'</p>

-

-<p>"He peeked out from under the black cloth sort of grateful. 'I do,' he

-says, simple,&mdash;'sick enough to bust the camera.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, I should think you would,' I says hearty; and I went down Daphne

-Street with the afternoon kind of feeling tarnished. I was wondering how

-on earth folks go on at all that dislikes their work like that. There

-was Abe Luck, just fixing the Sykes's eaves-trough&mdash;what was there to

-<i>like</i> about fixing eaves-troughs and about the whole hardware business?

-Jimmy Sturgis coming driving the 'bus, Eppleby Holcomb over there

-registering deeds, Mis' Sykes's girl Em'ly washing windows,&mdash;what was

-there about any of it to <i>like</i> doing? I looked at Mis' Sykes's Em'ly

-real pitying, polishing panes outside, when Abe Luck come climbing down

-the ladder from the roof; and all of a sudden I see Abe stick his head

-through the rungs, and quick as a flash kiss Mis' Sykes's Em'ly.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p><p>"'My land!' I started to think, 'Mis' Sykes had ought to discharge&mdash;'

-and then I just stopped short off, sudden. Her hating windows, and him

-hating eaves-troughs, and what else did either of them have? Nothing. I

-could sense their lives like I could sense my own&mdash;level and even and

-<i>darn</i>. And all at once I had all I could do to keep from being glad

-that Abe Luck had kissed Em'ly. And I walked like lightning to keep back

-the feeling.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady was to the post-office store before me. It

-was a slack time of day, and Silas set down on a mail-bag and begun

-outlining the situation that he meant about.</p>

-

-<p>"'The School Board,' says Silas, important, 'has got some women's work

-they want done. It's a thing,' s'he, 'that women can do the best&mdash;I mean

-it's the girls an' boys, hangin' round evenin's&mdash;you know we've all

-talked about it. But somebody's got to get after 'em in earnest, an' see

-they don't disgrace us with their carryin' on in the streets, evenin's.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Why don't the men do it?' I ask' him, wonderin', 'or is it 'count of

-offending some?'</p>

-

-<p>"'No such thing!' says Silas, touchy. 'Where's your delicate feelin's,

-Calliope? Women can do these things better than men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> This is somethin'

-delicate, that had ought to be seen to quiet. It ain't a matter for the

-authorities. It's women's work,' says he. 'It's women that's the

-mothers&mdash;it ain't the men,' says Silas, convincing.</p>

-

-<p>"But still I looked at him, real meditative. 'What started you men off

-on that tack at this time?' I ask' him, blunt&mdash;because young folks had

-been flooding the streets evenings since I could remember, and no

-Friendship Village man had ever acted like this about it.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says Silas, 'don't you women tell it out around. But the thing

-that's got us desperate is the schoolhouse. The entry to it&mdash;they've

-used it shameful. Peanut shucks, down-trod popcorn, paper bags, fruit

-peelin's&mdash;every mornin' the stone to the top o' the steps, under the

-archway, is full of 'em. An' last week the Board went up there early

-mornin' to do a little tinkerin', an' there set three beer bottles, all

-empty. So we've figgered on puttin' some iron gates up to the

-schoolhouse entry an' appointin' you women a Vigilance Committee to help

-us out.'</p>

-

-<p>"We felt real indignant about the schoolhouse. It stands up a little

-slope, and you can see it from 'most anywheres daytimes, and we all felt

-kind of an interest&mdash;though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> of course the School Board seemed to own it

-special.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady looked warm and worried. 'But what is it you want we

-should do, Silas?' she ask', some irritable. 'I've got my hands so full

-o' my own family it don't seem as if I could vigilance for nobody.'</p>

-

-<p>"'S-h-h, Mis' Toplady. <i>I</i> think it's a great trust,' says Mis' Silas

-Sykes.</p>

-

-<p>"'It is a great trust,' says Silas, warm, 'to get these young folks to

-stop gallivantin' an' set home where they belong.'</p>

-

-<p>"'How you going to get them to set home, Silas?' I ask', some puzzled.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says Silas, 'that's where they ought to be, ain't it?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Why,' I says thoughtful, 'I donno's they had.'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>What?</i>' says Silas, with horns on the word. 'What say, Calliope?'</p>

-

-<p>"'How much settin' home evenings did you do when you was young, Silas?'

-I says.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'd 'a' been a long sight better off if I'd 'a' done more of it,' says

-Silas.</p>

-

-<p>"'However that is, you <i>didn't</i> set home,' I says back at him. 'Neither

-will young folks set there now, I don't believe.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says Silas, '<i>anyhow</i>, they've got to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> get off'n the streets.

-We've made up our minds to that. They can't set on steps nor in

-stairways down town, nor in entries, nor to the schoolhouse. We've got

-to look out for public decency.'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Public</i> decency,' says I, again. 'They can do what they like, so's

-public decency ain't injured, I s'pose, Silas?'</p>

-

-<p>"'No such thing!' shouts Silas. 'Calliope, take shame! Ain't we doin'

-our best to start 'em right?'</p>

-

-<p>"'That's what I donno,' I answers him, troubled. 'Driving folks around

-don't never seem to me to be a real good start towards nowheres.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Amanda Toplady hitched forward in her chair and spoke for the

-first time&mdash;ponderous and decided, but real sweet, too. 'What I think is

-this,' she says. 'They won't set home, as Calliope says. And when we've

-vigilanced 'em off the streets, where are we goin' to vigilance 'em

-<i>to</i>?'</p>

-

-<p>"'That ain't our lookout,' says Silas.</p>

-

-<p>"'Ain't it?' says Mis' Toplady. '<i>Ain't it?</i>' She set thinking for a

-minute and then her face smoothed. 'Anyhow,' she says, comfortable, 'us

-ladies'll vigilance awhile. It ain't clear in my mind yet what to do.

-But we'll do it, I guess.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p><p>"We made up that we three should come down town one night that week and

-look around and see what we see. We all knew&mdash;every woman in Friendship

-Village knew&mdash;how evenings, the streets was full of young folks, loud

-talking and loud laughing and carrying on. We'd all said to each other,

-helpless, that we <i>wisht</i> something could be done, but that was as far

-as anybody'd got. So we made it up that we three should be down town in

-a night or two, so's to get our ideas started, and Silas was to have

-Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb, that's on the School Board, down to

-the store so we could all talk it over together afterwards. But still I

-guess we all felt sort of vague as to what we was to drive <i>at</i>.</p>

-

-<p>"'It seems like Silas wanted us to unwind a ball o' string from the

-middle out,' says Mis' Toplady, uneasy, when we'd left the store.</p>

-

-<p>"A few days after that Minerva come. I went down to the depot to meet

-her, and I would of reco'nized her anywheres, she looked so much like

-her handwriting. She was dressed sort of tawdry swell. She had on a good

-deal. But out from under her big hat with its cheap plume that was goin'

-to shed itself all over the house, I see her face was little and young

-and some pretty and excited. Excited about life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> and new things and

-moving around. I liked her right off. 'Land!' thinks I, 'you'll try me

-to death. But, you poor, nice little thing, you can if you want to.'</p>

-

-<p>"I took her home to supper. She talked along natural enough, and seemed

-to like everything she et, and then she wiped the dishes for me, and

-looked at herself in the clock looking-glass all the while she was doing

-it. Then, when I'd put out the milk bottles, we locked up the back part

-of the house and went and set in the parlour.</p>

-

-<p>"I'd always thought pretty well of my parlour. It hasn't anything but a

-plush four-piece set and an ingrain and Nottinghams, but it's the

-<i>parlour</i>, and I'd liked it. But when we'd been setting there a little

-while, and I'd asked her about everybody, and showed her their pictures

-in the album, all of a sudden it seemed as if they wasn't anything to

-<i>do</i> in the parlour. Setting there and talking was nice, but I missed

-something. And I thought of this first when Minerva got up and walked

-kind of aimless to the window.</p>

-

-<p>"'How big is Friendship Village?' she ask'.</p>

-

-<p>"I told her, real proud.</p>

-

-<p>"'They can't be a great deal goin' on here, is they?' she says.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p><p>"'Land, yes!' I says. 'We're so busy we're nearly dead. Ladies' Aid,

-Ladies' Missionary, Cemetery Improvement Sodality, the rummage sale

-coming on, the bazaar, and I donno what all.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh,' she says, vague. 'Well&mdash;is they many young people?'</p>

-

-<p>"And when I'd told her, 'Quite a few,' she didn't say anything more&mdash;but

-just stood looking down the street. And pretty soon I says, 'Land! the

-parlour's kind o' stuffy to-night. Let's go out in the yard.' And when

-we'd walked around out there a minute, smelling in my pinks, I thought,

-'Land! it's kind o' dreary doin' this,' an' I says to her all of a

-sudden, 'Let's go in the house and make some candy.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, <i>let's</i>,' she says, like a little girl.</p>

-

-<p>"We went back in and lit the kitchen fire, and made butter-scotch&mdash;she

-done it, being real handy at it. She livened up and flew around and

-joked some, and the kitchen looked nice and messy and <i>used</i>, and we had

-a real good time. And right in the midst of it there come a rap at the

-side door and there stood the dapper, tired-looking little photograph

-man, J. Horace Myers, seeming as discouraged as he could.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p><p>"We spread out the proofs of the pictures of my house and spent some

-time deciding. And while we was deciding, he showed us some more

-pictures that he'd made of the town, and talked a little about them. He

-was a real pleasant, soft-spoken man, and he knew how to laugh and when

-to do it. He see the funny in things&mdash;he see that the post-office looked

-like a rabbit with its ears up; he see that the engine-house looked like

-it was lifting its eyebrows; and he see the pretty in things, too&mdash;he

-showed us a view or two he'd took around Friendship Village just for the

-fun of it. One was Daphne Street, by the turn, and he says: 'It looks

-like a deep tunnel, don't it? An' like you wanted to go down it?' He was

-a wonderful nice, neutral little man, and I enjoyed looking at his

-pictures.</p>

-

-<p>"But Minerva&mdash;I couldn't help watching her. She wasn't so interested in

-the pictures, and she wasn't so quick at seeing the funny in things, nor

-the pretty, either; but even the candy making hadn't livened her up the

-way that little talking done. She acted real easy and told some little

-jokes; and when the candy was cool, she passed him some; and I thought

-it was all right to do. And he sort of spruced up and took notice and

-quit being so down-in-the-mouth. And I thought, 'Land! ain't it funny

-how just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> being together makes human beings, be they agent or be they

-cousin, more themselves than they was before!'</p>

-

-<p>"Her liking company made me all the more sorry to leave Minerva alone

-that next evening, that was the night Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I

-was due to a tableau of our own in the post-office store. It was the

-night when the Vigilance Committee was to have its first real meeting

-with the School Board. But I lit the lamp for Minerva in the parlour,

-and give her the day's paper, and she had her sewing, and when Mis'

-Toplady and Mis' Sykes come for me, I went off and left her setting by

-the table. My parlour had been swept that day, and it was real tidy and

-quiet and lamp-lit; and yet when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and I

-stepped out into the night, all smelling of pinks and a new moon

-happening, and us going on that mission we wasn't none of us sure what

-it was, the dark and the excitement sort of picked me up and I felt like

-I never felt in my parlour in my life&mdash;all kind of young and free and

-springy.</p>

-

-<p>"'Let's us walk right down through town first,' says Mis' Toplady.

-'That's where the young folks gets to, seems though.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well-a, I don't see the necessity of that,' says Mis' Sykes. 'We've

-all three done that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> again and again. We know how it is down there

-evenings.'</p>

-

-<p>"'But,' says Mis' Toplady, in her nice, stubborn way, 'let's us, anyway.

-I know, when I walk through town nights, I'm 'most always hurrying to

-get my yeast before the store shuts, an' I never half look around.

-To-night let's <i>look</i>.'</p>

-

-<p>"Well, we looked. Along by the library windows in some low stone ledges.

-In front of a store or two they was some more. Around the corner was a

-place where they was some new tombstones piled up, waiting for their

-folks. And half a block down was the canal bridge. And ledges and bridge

-and tombstones and streets was alive with girls and boys&mdash;little young

-things, the girls with their heads tied in bright veils and pretty

-ribbons on them, and their laughs just shrilling and thrilling with the

-sheer fun of <i>hanging around</i> on a spring night.</p>

-

-<p>"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, '<i>what</i> is their mothers thinkin' of?'</p>

-

-<p>"But something else was coming home to me.</p>

-

-<p>"'I dunno,' I says, kind of scairt at the way I felt, 'if I had the

-invite, this spring night, all pinks and new moons, I donno but I'd go

-and hang over a tombstone with 'em!'</p>

-

-<p>"'Calliope!' says Mis' Sykes, sharp. But Mis'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> Toplady, she kind of

-chuckled. And the crowd jostled us&mdash;more young folks, talking and

-laughing and calling each other by nicknames, and we didn't say no more

-till we got up in the next block.</p>

-

-<p>"There's a vacant store there up towards the wagon shop, and a house or

-two, and that's where the open stairways was that Silas meant about.

-Everything had been shut up at six o'clock, and there, sure as the

-world, 'most every set of steps and every stairway had its couple,

-sitting and laughing and talking, like the place was differ'nt sofas in

-a big drawing-room, or rocks on a seashore, or like that.</p>

-

-<p>"'Mercy!' says Mis' Sykes. 'Such goin'-ons! Such bringin'-ups!'</p>

-

-<p>"Just then I recollect I heard a girl laugh out, pretty and pleased, and

-I thought I recognized Mis' Sykes's Em'ly's voice, and I thought I knew

-Abe Luck's answering&mdash;but I never said a word to Mis' Sykes, because I

-betted she wouldn't get a step farther than discharging Em'ly, and I was

-after more steps than that. And besides, same minute, I got the scent of

-the Bouncing Bet growing by the wagon shop; and right out of thin air,

-and acrost more years than I like to talk about, come the quick little

-feeling that made me know the fun, the sheer <i>fun</i>, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> Em'ly thought

-she was having and that she had the right to.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, well, whoever it is, maybe they're engaged,' says Mis' Toplady,

-soothin'.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, but the bad taste!' says Mis' Sykes, shuddering. Mis' Sykes is a

-good cook and a good enough mother, and a fair-to-middling housekeeper,

-but she looks hard on the fringes and the borders of this life, and to

-her 'good taste' is both of them.</p>

-

-<p>"They wasn't nobody on the wagon shop steps, for a wonder, and we set

-down there for a minute to talk it over. And while Mis' Toplady and Mis'

-Sykes was having it out between them, I set there a-thinking. And all of

-a sudden the night sort of stretched out and up, and I almost felt us

-little humans crawling around on the bottom of it. And one little bunch

-of us was Friendship Village, and in Friendship Village some of us was

-young. I kind of saw the whole throng of them&mdash;the <i>young</i> humans that

-would some day be the village. There they was, bottled up in school all

-day, or else boxed in a store or a factory or somebody's kitchen, and

-when night come, and summer come, and the moon come&mdash;land, land! they

-<i>wanted</i> something, all of them, and they didn't know what they wanted.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p><p>"And what had they got? There was the streets stretching out in every

-direction, each house with its parlour&mdash;four-piece plush set, mebbe, and

-ingrain and Nottinghams, and mebbe not even that, and mebbe the rest of

-the family flooding the room, anyway. And what was the parlour, even

-with somebody to set and talk to them&mdash;what was the parlour, compared to

-the <i>magic</i> they was craving and couldn't name? The feeling young and

-free and springy, and the wanting somehow to express it? Something to

-do, somewheres to go, something to see, somebody to be with and laugh

-with&mdash;no wonder they swept out into the dark in numbers, no wonder they

-took the night as they could find it. They didn't have no hotel piazza

-of their own, no boat-rides, no seashore, no fine parties, no

-automobiles&mdash;no nothing but the big, exciting dark that belongs to us

-all together. No wonder they took it for their own.</p>

-

-<p>"Why, Friendship Village was no more than a great big ball-room with

-these young folks leaving the main floor and setting in the alcoves, to

-unseen music. If the alcoves had been all palms and expense and

-dressed-up chaperons on the edges, everything would of seemed right. As

-it was, it was all a danger that made my heart ache for them, and for us

-all. And yet it come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> from their same longing for fun, for joy&mdash;and

-where was they to get it?</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, ladies!' I says, out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, 'if

-only we had some place to invite 'em to!'</p>

-

-<p>"'They wouldn't come if we had,' says Mis' Sykes, final.</p>

-

-<p>"'Not come!' I says. 'With candy making and pictures and music and mebbe

-dancin'? Not come!'</p>

-

-<p>"'Dancin'!' says Mis' Toplady, low. 'Oh, Calliope, I donno as I'd go

-that far.'</p>

-

-<p>"'We've went farther than that long ago,' I says, reckless. 'We've went

-so far that the dangers of dancin' would be safe beside the dangers of

-what is.'</p>

-

-<p>"'But we ain't responsible for that,' says Mis' Sykes.</p>

-

-<p>"'Ain't we&mdash;<i>ain't we?</i>' I says, like Mis' Toplady had. 'Mis' Sykes, how

-much does Silas rent the post-office hall for, a night?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Ten dollars, if he makes something; and five dollars at cost,' she

-says.</p>

-

-<p>"'That's it,' I says, groaning. 'We never could afford that, even to ask

-them in once a week. Oh, we'd ought to have some place open every night

-for them, and us ladies take turns doing the refreshments; but they

-ain't no place in town that belongs to young folks&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>"And all of a sudden I stopped, like an idee had took me from all four

-sides of my head at once.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, ladies,' I says, 'look at the schoolhouse, doing nothing every

-night out of the year and <i>built</i> for the young folks!'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, well,' says Mis' Sykes, superior, 'you know the Board'd never

-allow 'em to use the schoolhouse <i>that</i> way. The Board wouldn't think of

-it!'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Whose</i> Board?' says I, stern. 'Ain't they our Board? Yours and mine

-and Friendship Village's? Come on&mdash;come on and put it to 'em,' I says,

-kind o' wild.</p>

-

-<p>"I was climbing down the steps while I spoke. And we all went down, me

-talking on, and Mis' Toplady catching fire on the minute, an' Mis' Sykes

-holding out like she does unless so be she's thought of an idea herself.

-But oh, Mis' Toplady, she's differ'nt.</p>

-

-<p>"'Goodness alive!' she said, 'why ain't some of us thought o' that

-before? Ain't it the funniest thing, the way folks can have a way out

-right under their noses, an' not sense it?'</p>

-

-<p>"I had never had a new-born notion come into my head so ready-made. I

-could hardly talk it fast enough, and Mis' Toplady same way, and we

-hurried back to the post-office store, Mis' Sykes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> not convinced but

-keeping still because us two talked it so hard.</p>

-

-<p>"Silas and Timothy and Eppleby Holcomb was setting in the back part of

-the post-office store waiting for us, and Mis' Toplady and I hurried

-right up to them.</p>

-

-<p>"'You tell, Calliope,' says Mis' Toplady. 'It's your idee.'</p>

-

-<p>"But first we both told, even Mis' Sykes joining in, shocked, about the

-doorway carryin' ons and all the rest. 'Land, land!' Mis' Toplady says,

-'I never had a little girl. I lost my little girl baby when she was

-eleven months. But I ain't never felt so like <i>shieldin'</i> her from

-somethin' as I feel to-night.'</p>

-

-<p>"'It's awful, awful!' says Timothy Toplady, decided. 'We've just got to

-get some law goin', that's all.'</p>

-

-<p>"Silas agreed, scowling judicial. 'We been talkin' curfew,' he says. 'I

-donno but we'll hev to get the curfew on 'em.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Curfew!' says I. 'So you're thinking of curfewin' 'em off the streets.

-Will you tell me, Silas Sykes, where you're going to curfew 'em <i>to</i>?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that's what I meant about vigilancin' 'em

-off somewheres. <i>Where to?</i> What say, Silas?'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p><p>"'That ain't our concern, woman!' shouts Silas, exasperated by us

-harping on the one string. 'Them young folks has all got one or more

-parents. Leave 'em use 'em.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes, indeed,' says Mis' Sykes, nodding once, with her eyes shut brief.

-'An' young people had ought to be encouraged to do evening studyin'.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady jerked her head sideways. 'Evenin' fiddlestick!' she

-snaps, direct. 'If you've got a young bone left in your body, Mis'

-Sykes,' says she, 'you know you're talkin' nonsense.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Ain't you no idees about how well-bred young ladies should conduct

-themselves?' says Mis' Sykes, in her most society way.</p>

-

-<p>"'I donno so much about well-bred young ladies,' says Mis' Toplady,

-frank. 'I was thinkin' about just girls. Human girls. An' boys the

-same.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Me, too,' I says, fervent.</p>

-

-<p>"'What you goin' to <i>do</i>?' says Silas, spreading out his hands stiff and

-bowing his knees. 'What's your idee? You've got to have a workin' idee

-for this thing, same as the curfew is.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, Silas,' I says then, 'that's what we've got&mdash;that's what we've

-got. Them poor young things wants a good time&mdash;same as you and all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> of

-us did, and same as we do yet. Why not give 'em a place to meet and be

-together, normal and nice, and some of us there to make it pleasant for

-'em?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Heh!' says Silas. 'You talk like a dook. Where you goin' to <i>get</i> a

-place for 'em? Hire the opery-house, air ye?'</p>

-

-<p>"'No, sir,' I says to him. 'Give 'em the place that's theirs. Give 'em

-the schoolhouse, open evenings, an' all lit up an' music an' things

-doin'.'</p>

-

-<p>"'My Lord heavens!' says Silas, that's an elder in the church and ain't

-no more control of his tongue than a hen. 'Air you crazy, Calliope

-Marsh? Plump, stark, starin' ravin'&mdash;why, woman alive, who's goin' to

-donate the light an' the coal? <i>You?</i>'</p>

-

-<p>"'I thought mebbe the building and the School Board, too, was <i>for</i> the

-good o' the young folks,' I says to him, sharp.</p>

-

-<p>"'So it is,' says Silas, 'it's for their <i>good</i>. It ain't for their

-foolishness. Can't you see daylight, Calliope?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Is arithmetic good an' morals <i>not</i>, Silas Sykes?' I says.</p>

-

-<p>"Then Timothy Toplady let loose: 'A school-buildin', Calliope',

-s'he,&mdash;'why, it's a dignified place. They must respect it, same as they

-would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> a church. Could you learn youngsters the Constitution of the

-United States in a room where they'd just been cookin' up cough drops

-an' hearin' dance tunes?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says I, calm, 'if you can't, I'd leave the Constitution of the

-United States <i>go</i>. If it's that delicate,' I says back at him, 'gimme

-the cough drops.'</p>

-

-<p>"'You're talkin' treason,' says Silas, hoarse.</p>

-

-<p>"Timothy groans. '<i>Dancin!</i>' he says. 'Amanda,' he says, 'I hope you

-ain't sunk so low as Calliope?'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady wavered a little. She's kind of down on dancing herself.

-'Well,' she says, 'anyhow, I'd fling some place open and invite 'em in

-for <i>somethin'</i>.'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>I</i> ain't for this, Silas,' says Mis' Sykes, righteous. '<i>I</i> believe

-the law is the law, and we'd best use it. Nothin' we can do is as good

-as enforcin' the dignity of the law.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, <i>rot</i>!' says Eppleby Holcomb, abrupt. Eppleby hadn't been saying a

-word. But he looked up from the wood-box where he was setting, and he

-wrinkled up his eyes at the corners the way he does&mdash;it wasn't a real

-elegant word he picked, but I loved Eppleby for that 'rot.' 'Asking your

-pardon, Mis' Sykes,' he says, 'I ain't got so much confidence in

-enforcin' the law<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> as I've got in edgin' round an' edgin' round

-accordin' to your cloth&mdash;an' your pattern. An' your pattern.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Lord heavens!' says Silas, looking glassy, 'if this was Roosia, you

-an' Calliope'd both be hoofin' it hot-foot for Siberia.'</p>

-

-<p>"Well, it was like arguing with two trees. They wasn't no use talking to

-either Silas or Timothy. I forget who said what last, but the meeting

-broke up, after a little, some strained, and we hadn't decided on

-anything. Us ladies had vigilanced one night to about as much purpose as

-mosquitoes humming. And I said good night to them and went on up street,

-wondering why God lets a beautiful, burning plan come waving its wings

-in your head and your heart if he don't intend you to make a way for

-yourself to use it.</p>

-

-<p>"Then, by the big evergreens a block or so from my house, I heard

-somebody laugh&mdash;a little, low, nice, soft, sort of foolish laugh, a

-woman's laugh, and a man's voice joined in with it, pleasant and sort of

-singing. I was right onto them before they see me.</p>

-

-<p>"'I thought it was a lonesome town,' says somebody, 'but I guess it

-ain't.'</p>

-

-<p>"And there, beside of me, sitting on the rail fence under the

-evergreens, was Minerva Beach,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> my own cousin, and the little, tired

-photograph-taking man. I had just bare time to catch my breath and to

-sense where the minute really belonged&mdash;that's always a good thing to

-do, ain't it?&mdash;and then I says, cool as you please:</p>

-

-<p>"'Hello, Minerva! My! ain't the night grand? I don't wonder you couldn't

-stay in the house. How do, Mr. Myers? I was just remembering my

-lemon-pie that won't be good if it sets till to-morrow. Come on in and

-let's have it, and make a little lemonade.'</p>

-

-<p>"Ordinarily, I think it's next door to immoral to eat lemon-pie in the

-evening; but I had to think quick, and it was the only thing like a

-party that I had in the butt'ry. Anyhow, I was planning bigger morals

-than ordinary, too.</p>

-

-<p>"Well, sir, I'd been sure before, but that made me certain sure. There

-had been my parlour and my porch, and them two young people was welcome

-to them both; but they wanted to go somewheres, natural as a bird

-wanting to fly or a lamb to caper. And there I'd been living in

-Friendship Village for sixty years or so, and I'd reco'nized the laws of

-housekeeping and debt paying and grave digging and digestion, and I'd

-never once thought of this, that's as big as them all.</p>

-

-<p>"Ain't it nice the way God has balanced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> towns! He never puts in a Silas

-Sykes that he don't drop in an Eppleby Holcomb somewheres to undo what

-the Silases does. It wasn't much after six o'clock the next morning, and

-I was out after kindling, when they come a shadow in the shed door, and

-there was Eppleby. He had a big key in his hand.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm a-goin' to the City, Calliope,' says he. 'Silas an' Timothy an' I

-are a-goin' up to the City on the Dick Dasher' (that's our daily

-accommodation train, named for the engineer). 'Silas and Timothy is set

-on buying the iron gates for the schoolhouse entry, an' I'm goin' along.

-He put the key in my hand, meditative. 'We won't be back till the ten

-o'clock Through,' he says, 'an' I didn't know but you might want to get

-in the schoolhouse for somethin' to-night&mdash;you an' Mis' Toplady.'</p>

-

-<p>"I must of stood staring at him, but he never changed expression.</p>

-

-<p>"'The key had ought to be left with some one, you know,' he says. 'I'm

-leavin' it with you. You go ahead. I'll go snooks on the blame. Looks

-like it was goin' to be another nice day, don't it?' he says, casual,

-and went off down the path.</p>

-

-<p>"For a minute I just stood there, staring down at the key in my hand.

-And then, 'Eppleby,' I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> sings after him, 'oh, Eppleby,' I says, 'I feel

-just like I was going to <i>crow</i>!'</p>

-

-<p>"I don't s'pose I hesitated above a minute. That is, my head may have

-hesitated some, like your head will, but my heart went right on ahead. I

-left my breakfast dishes standing&mdash;a thing I do for the very few&mdash;and I

-went straight for Mis' Toplady. And she whips off her big apron and left

-<i>her</i> dishes standing, an' off we went to the half a dozen that we knew

-we could depend on&mdash;Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, Mis'

-Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that's going to

-be married again and has got real human towards other folks, like she

-wasn't in her mourning grief&mdash;we told 'em the whole thing. And we one

-and all got together and we see that here was something that could be

-done, right there and then, so be we was willing to make the effort, big

-enough and unafraid.</p>

-

-<p>"When I remember back, that day is all of a whirl to me. We got the

-notice in the daily paper bold as a lion, that there would be a party to

-the schoolhouse that night, free to everybody. We posted the notice

-everywheres, and sent it out around by word of mouth. And when we'd gone

-too far to go back, we walked in on Mis' Sykes&mdash;all but Abagail, that

-had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> pitched in to making the cakes&mdash;and we told her what we'd done, so

-she shouldn't have any of the blame.</p>

-

-<p>"She took it calm, not because calm is Christian, I bet, but because

-calm is grand lady.</p>

-

-<p>"'It's what I always said,' says she, 'would be the way, if the women

-run things.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Women don't run things,' says Mis' Toplady, placid, 'an' I hope to the

-land they never will. But I believe the time'll come when men an'

-women'll run 'em together, like the Lord meant, an' when women can see

-that they're mothers to all men an' not just to their little two-by-four

-families.'</p>

-

-<p>"'My duty to men is in my own home,' says Mis' Sykes, regal.</p>

-

-<p>"'So is mine,' says Mis' Toplady, 'for a beginning. But it don't stop in

-my wood box nor my clothes-basket nor yet in my mixin'-bowl.'</p>

-

-<p>"We went off and left her&mdash;it's almost impossible to federate Mis' Sykes

-into anything. And we went up to the building and made our preparations.

-And then we laid low for the evening, to see what it would bring.</p>

-

-<p>"I was putting on my hat that night in front of the hall-tree

-looking-glass when J. Horace Myers come up on the front porch to call

-for Minerva. He was all dressed up, and she come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> downstairs in a little

-white dimity she had, trimmed with lace that didn't cost much of

-anything, and looking like a picture. They sat down on the porch for a

-little, and I heard them talking while I was hunting one o' my gloves.</p>

-

-<p>"'Ain't it the dandiest night!' says J. Horace Myers.</p>

-

-<p>"'Ain't it!' says Minerva. 'I should say. My! I'm glad I come to this

-town!'</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm awful glad you did, too,' says J. Horace. 'I thought first it was

-awful lonesome here, but I guess&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'They're goin' to have music to-night,' says Minerva, irrelevant.</p>

-

-<p>"'Cricky!' says the little photograph man.</p>

-

-<p>"Minerva had her arm around a porch post and she sort of swung back and

-forth careless, and&mdash;'My!' she said, 'I just do love to go. Have you

-ever travelled anywheres?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Texas an' through there,' he says. 'I'm goin' again some day, when&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm goin' West now,' says Minerva. 'I just can't stand it long in one

-place, unless,' she added, 'it's <i>awful</i> nice.'</p>

-

-<p>"I'd found my glove, but I recollect I stood still, staring out the

-door. I see it like I never see it before&mdash;<i>They was living</i>. Them two

-young things out there on my porch, and all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> young folks of

-Friendship Village, they was just living&mdash;trying to find a future and a

-life of their own. They didn't know it. They thought what they wanted

-was a good time, like the pioneers thought they wanted adventure. But

-here they were, young pioneers of new villages, flocking together

-wherever they could, seeking each other out, just living. And us that

-knew, us that had had life, too, or else had missed it, we was just

-letting them live, haphazard. And us that had ought to of been mothers

-to the town young, no less than to our own young, had been leaving them

-live alone, on the streets and stairways and school entries of

-Friendship Village.</p>

-

-<p>"I know I fair run along the street to the schoolhouse. It seemed as if

-I couldn't get there quick enough to begin the new way.</p>

-

-<p>"The schoolhouse was lit up from cellar to garret and it looked sort of

-different and surprised at itself, and like it was sticking its head up.

-Maybe it sounds funny, but it sort of seemed to me the old brick

-building looked <i>conscious</i>, and like it had just opened its eyes and

-turned its face to something. Inside, the music was tuning up, the desks

-that was only part screwed down had been moved back; in one of the

-recitation-rooms we'd got the gas plates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> for the candy making, and

-Abagail was in there stirring up lemonade in a big crock, and the other

-ladies, with white aprons on, was bustling round seeing to cutting the

-cakes.</p>

-

-<p>"It wasn't a good seven-thirty before they begun coming in, the girls

-nipping in pretty dresses, the boys awkward and grinning, school-girls,

-shop-girls, Mis' Sykes's Em'ly an' Abe Luck and everybody&mdash;they come

-from all directions that night, I guess, just to see what it was like.</p>

-

-<p>"And when they got set down, I realized for the first time that the law

-and some of the prophets of time to come hung on what kind of a time

-they had that first night.</p>

-

-<p>"While I was thinking that, the music struck into a tune, hurry-up time,

-and before anybody could think it, there they were on their feet, one

-couple after another. And when the lilty sound of the dance and the

-sliding of feet got to going, like magic and as if they had dropped out

-of the walls, in come them that had been waiting around outside to see

-what we was really going to do. They come in, and they joined in and in

-five minutes the floor was full of them. And after being boxed in the

-house all day, or bottled in shops or polishing windows or mending

-eaves-troughs or taking photographs of humbly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> houses or doing I donno

-what-all that they didn't like, here they were, come after their good

-time and having it&mdash;<i>and having it</i>.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady was peeking through a crack in the recitation-room door.</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Dancin'!</i>' she says, with a little groan. 'I donno what my

-conscience'll say to me about this when it gets me alone.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, seeing to the frosting

-on the ends of her fingers, 'I feel like they'd been pipin' to me for

-years an' I'd never let 'em dance. An' now they're dancin' up here safe

-an' light an' with us. An' I'm glad of it, to my marrow.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I know,' says Mis' Toplady, wiping her eyes. 'I donno but <i>my</i> marrow

-might get use' to it.'</p>

-

-<p>"Long about ten o'clock, when we'd passed the refreshments and everybody

-had carried their own plates back and was taking the candy out of the

-tins, I nudged Mis' Toplady and we slipped out into the schoolhouse

-entry and set down on the steps. We'd just heard the Through whistle,

-and we knew the School Board Iron Gate Committee was on it, and that

-they must of seen the schoolhouse lit from 'way acrost the marsh.

-Besides, I was counting on Eppleby to march them straight up there.</p>

-

-<p>"And so he done. Almost before I knew it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> they stepped out onto us,

-setting there in the starlight. I stood up and faced them, not from

-being brave, but from intending to jump <i>first</i>.</p>

-

-<p>"'Silas and Timothy,' I says, 'what's done is done, but the consequences

-ain't. The Women's Evening Vigilance Committee that you appointed

-yourself has tried this thing, and now it's for us all to judge if it

-works.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Heh!' says Silas, showing his teeth. 'Hed a little party, did you?

-Thought you'd get up a little party an' charge it to the Board, did you?

-Be su'prised, won't you, when you women get a bill for rent an' light

-for this night's performance?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Real surprised,' I says, dry.</p>

-

-<p>"'Amanda,' pipes up Timothy, 'air you a fool party to this fool doin's?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, shucks!' says Mis' Toplady, tired. 'I been doin' too real things

-to row, Timothy.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Nev' mind,' says Silas, pacific. 'When the new iron gates gets here

-for this here entry, we won't have no more such doin's as this. They're

-ordered,' says Silas, like a bombshell, 'to keep out the hoodlums.'</p>

-

-<p>"Then Eppleby, that had been peeking through the schoolhouse window,

-whirled around.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' says he. 'Let's put up the gates to keep out the hoodlums. But

-what you going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> to do for the girls and boys of Friendship Village that

-ain't hoodlums? What you goin' to do for them? I want to tell you that I

-knew all about what was goin' on here to-night, and I give over the

-schoolhouse key myself. And now you look down there.'</p>

-

-<p>"It was Friendship Village he pointed to, laying all around the

-schoolhouse slope, little lights shining for homes. And Eppleby went on

-before Silas and Timothy could get the breath to reply:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'The town's nothin' but <i>roots</i>, is it?' Eppleby says. 'Roots, sendin'

-up green shoots to the top o' this hill to be trained up here into some

-kind of shape to meet life. What you doin' to 'em? Buildin' 'em a great,

-expensive schoolhouse that they use a few hours a day, part o' the year,

-an' the rest of the time it might as well be a hole in the ground for

-all the good it does anybody. An' here's the young folks, that you built

-it <i>for</i> chasin' the streets to let off the mere flesh-an'-blood energy

-the Lord has give to 'em. Put up your iron gates if you want to, but

-don't put 'em up till the evenin's over an' till there's been some sort

-o' doin's here like this to give 'em what's their right. Put up your

-iron gates, but shame on the schoolhouse that puts 'em up an' stops

-there! Open the buildin' in the name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> of public decency, but in the name

-of public decency, don't shut it up!'</p>

-

-<p>"Timothy was starting to wave his arms when Mis' Toplady stood up,

-quiet, on the bottom step.</p>

-

-<p>"'Timothy,' she says, 'thirty-five years ago this winter you an' I was

-keepin' company. Do you remember how we done it? Do you remember singin'

-school? Do you remember spellin' school? Did our straw ridin' an' sleigh

-ridin' to the Caledonia district schoolhouse for our fun ever hurt the

-schoolhouse, or do you s'pose we ever learnt any the less in it? Well, I

-remember; an' we both remember; an' answer me this: Do you s'pose them

-young things in there is any differ'nt than we was? An' what's the sin

-an' the crime of what they're doin' now? Look at 'em!'</p>

-

-<p>"She pushed open the door. But just while we was looking, the music

-struck up the 'Home Sweet Home' waltz, and they all melted into dancing,

-the ladies in white aprons standing by the recitation-room doors looking

-on.</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Dancin'!</i>' says Timothy, shuddering&mdash;but looking, too.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' says Amanda, brave as you please, 'ain't it pretty? Lots

-prettier than chasin' up an' down Daphne Street. What say, Timothy?'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p><p>"Eppleby give Silas a little nudge. 'Le's give it a trial,' he says.

-'This is the Vigilance Committee's idee. Le's give it a trial.'</p>

-

-<p>"Silas stood bitin' the tail of his beard. 'Go on to destruction if you

-want to!' he says. 'I wash my hands of you!'</p>

-

-<p>"'So do I,' says Timothy, echoish, 'wash mine.'</p>

-

-<p>"Eppleby took them both by the shoulders. 'Well, then, go on inside a

-minute,' he says to 'em. 'Don't let's leave 'em all think we got stole a

-march on by the women!'</p>

-

-<p>"And though it was that argument that made them both let Eppleby push

-them inside, still, when the door shut behind them, I knew there wasn't

-anything more to worry over. But me&mdash;I waited out there in the entry

-till the waltz was through. And it was kind of like the village down

-there to the foot of the hill was listening, quiet, to great councils.</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>X</h2>

-

-<p>"Up to Proudfit House the conservatory wasn't set aside from everyday

-living for just a place to be walked through and looked at and left

-behind for something better. It was a glass regular room, full of green,

-but not so full that it left you out of account. Willow chairs and a

-family of books and open windows into the other rooms made the

-conservatory all of a piece with the house, and at one end the tile was

-let go up in a big You-and-me looking fireplace, like a sort of shrine

-for fire, I use' to think, in the middle of a temple to flowers, and

-like both belonged to the household.</p>

-

-<p>"On the day of the evening company at Proudfit House Robin was sitting

-with a book in this room. I'd gone up that day to do what I could to

-help out, and to see to Christopher some. Him I'd put to taking his nap

-quite awhile before, and I was fussing with the plants like I love to

-do&mdash;it seems as if while I pick off dead leaves and give the roots a

-drink I was kind of doing their thinking for them. When I heard Alex

-Proudfit coming acrost the library, I started to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> go, but Robin says to

-me, 'Don't go, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'stay here and do what you're

-doing&mdash;if you don't mind.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Land,' thinks I, turning back to the ferns, 'never tell me that young

-ladies are getting more up-to-date in love than they use' to be. My day,

-she would of liked that they should be alone, so be she could manage it

-without seeming to.'</p>

-

-<p>"I donno but I'm foolish, but it always seems to me that a minute like

-that had ought to catch fire and leap up, like a time by itself. In all

-the relationships of men and women, it seems like no little commonplace

-time is so vital as the minute when the man comes into a room where a

-woman is a-waiting for him. There is about it something of time to be

-when he'll come, not to gloat over his day's kill, or to forget his

-day's care, but to talk with her about their day of hardy work. Habitual

-arriving in a room again and again for ever can never quite take off,

-seems though, the edge of that coming back to where she is.... But

-somehow, that day, Alex Proudfit must have stepped through the door

-before the minute had quite caught fire, and Robin merely smiled up at

-him, calm and idle, from her low chair as he come to a chair beside her.</p>

-

-<p>"'Tea, Robin Redbreast,' says he, 'is going to be here in a minute, with

-magnificent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>macaroons. But I think that you and I will have it by

-ourselves. Everybody is either asleep or pretending. I'm glad,' he tells

-her, 'you're the sort that can do things in the evening without resting

-up for from nine to ten hours preceding.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm resting now,' Robin said; 'this is quite heavenly&mdash;this green

-room.'</p>

-

-<p>"He looked at her, eager. 'Do you like it?' he asked. 'I mean the

-room&mdash;the house?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Enormously,' she told him. 'How could I help it?'</p>

-

-<p>"'I wanted you to like it,' he says. 'We shall not be here much, you

-know, but we shall be here sometimes, and I'm glad if you feel the

-feeling of home, even with all these people about. It's all going very

-decently for to-night, thanks to Mrs. Emmons. Not a soul that we really

-wanted has failed us.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Except Mr. Insley,' Robin says.</p>

-

-<p>"'Except Insley,' Alex concedes, 'and I own I can't make him out. Not

-because he didn't come here. But because he seems so enthusiastic about

-throwing his life away. Very likely,' he goes on, placid, 'he didn't

-come simply because he wanted to come. Those people get some sort of

-medi&aelig;val renunciation mania, I believe. Robin,' he went on, 'where do

-you think you would like to live? Not to settle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> down, you know, but for

-the Eternal Place To Come Back To?'</p>

-

-<p>"'To come back to?' Robin repeated.</p>

-

-<p>"'The twentieth century home is merely that, you know,' Alex explained.

-'We're just beginning to solve the home problem. We've tried to make

-home mean one place, and then we were either always wanting to get away

-for a while, or else we stayed dreadfully put, which was worse. But I

-think now we begin to see the truth: Home is nowhere. Rather, it is

-everywhere. The thing to do is to live for two months, three months, in

-a place, and to get back to each place at not too long intervals. Home

-is where you like to be for the first two weeks. When that wears off,

-it's home no more. Then home is some other place where you think you'd

-like to be. We are becoming nomadic again&mdash;only this time we own the

-world instead of being at its feet for a bare living. You and I, Robin

-Redbreast, are going to be citizens of the whole world.'</p>

-

-<p>"Robin looked over at him, reflective. And it seemed to me as if the

-whole race of women that have always liked one place to get in and be in

-and stay in spoke from her to Alex.</p>

-

-<p>"'But I've always had a little garden,' she says.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p><p>"'A little what?' Alex asks, blank.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, a garden,' she explains, 'to plant from year to year so that I

-know where things are going to come up.'</p>

-

-<p>"She was laughing, but I knew she meant what she said, too.</p>

-

-<p>"'My word,' Alex says, 'why, every place we take shall have a garden and

-somebody to grub about in it. Won't those and the conservatories do

-you?'</p>

-

-<p>"'I like to get out and stick my hands in the spring-smelly ground,' she

-explains, 'and to remember where my bulbs are.'</p>

-

-<p>"'But I've no objection to bulbs,' Alex says. 'None in the world. We'll

-plant the bulbs and take a run round the world and come back to see them

-bloom. No?'</p>

-

-<p>"'And not watch them come up?' Robin says, so serious that they both

-laughed.</p>

-

-<p>"'We want more than a garden can give,' Alex says then, indulgent. 'We

-want what the whole world can give.'</p>

-

-<p>"She nodded. 'And what we can give back?' she says.</p>

-

-<p>"He leaned toward her, touched along her hair.</p>

-

-<p>"'My dear,' he said, 'we've got two of us to make the most of we can in

-this life: that's you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> and I. The world has got to teach us a number of

-things. Don't, in heaven's name, let's be trying to teach the wise old

-world.'</p>

-

-<p>"He leaned toward her and, elbow on his knee, he set looking at her. But

-she was looking a little by him, into the green of the room, and I guess

-past that, into the green of all outdoors. I got up and slipped out,

-without their noticing me, and I went through the house with one fact

-bulging out of the air and occupying my brain. And it was that sitting

-there beside him, with him owning her future like he owned his own,

-Robin's world was as different from Alex's as the world is from the

-Proudfits' conservatory.</p>

-

-<p>"I went up to Chris, in the pretty, pinky room next to Robin's and found

-him sitting up in bed and pulling the ties out of the down comforter, as

-hard as he could. I just stood still and looked at him, thinking how

-eating and drinking and creating and destroying seems to be the native

-instincts of everybody born. Destroying, as I look at it, was the weapon

-God give us so that we could eat and drink and create the world in

-peace, but we got some mixed up during getting born and we got to

-believing that destruction was a part of the process.</p>

-

-<p>"'Chris,' I says, 'what you pulling out?'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p><p>"'I donno those names of those,' he says. 'I call 'em little pulls.'</p>

-

-<p>"'What are they for?' I ask' him.</p>

-

-<p>"'I donno what those are for,' he says, 'but they come out <i>slickery</i>.'</p>

-

-<p>"Ain't it funny? And ain't it for all the world the way Nature works,

-destroying what comes out <i>slickery</i> and leaving that alone that resists

-her? I was so struck by it I didn't scold him none.</p>

-

-<p>"After a while I took him down for tea. On the way he picked up a sleepy

-puppy, and in the conservatory door we met the footman with the little

-tea wagon and the nice, drowsy quiet of the house went all to pieces

-with Chris in it:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Supper, supper&mdash;here comes supper on a wagon, runnin' on litty wheels

-goin' wound an a-w-o-u-n-d&mdash;' says he, some louder than saying and

-almost to shouting. He sat down on the floor and looked up expectant:

-'Five lumps,' he orders, not having belonged to the house party for

-nothing.</p>

-

-<p>"'Tell us about your day, Chris,' Robin asks. 'What did you do?'</p>

-

-<p>"'It isn't <i>by</i>, is it?' Chris says, anxious. 'To-day didn't stop yet,

-did it?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Not yet,' she reassures him. 'Now is still now.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p><p>"'I want to-day to keep being now,' Chris said, 'because when it stops,

-then the bed is right there. It don't be anywhere near to-night, is it?'

-he says.</p>

-

-<p>"'Not very near,' Robin told him. 'Well, then, what are you doing

-to-day?' she asks.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm to the house's party,' he explained. 'The house is having its

-party. An' I'm to it.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Do you like this house, dear?' Robin asked.</p>

-

-<p>"'It's nice,' he affirmed. 'In the night it&mdash;it talks wiv its lights. I

-saw it. With my daddy. When I was off on a big road.' Chris looked at

-her intent, from way in his eyes. 'I was thinkin' if my daddy would

-come,' he says, patient.</p>

-

-<p>"Robin stoops over to him, quick, and he let her. He'd took a most

-tremendous fancy to her, the little fellow had, and didn't want her long

-out of his sight. 'Is that Robin?' he always said, when he heard anybody

-coming from any direction. She give him a macaroon, now, for each hand,

-and he run away with the puppy. And then she turned to Alex, her face

-bright with whatever she was thinking about.</p>

-

-<p>"'Alex,' she says, 'he's a dear little fellow&mdash;a dear little fellow. And

-all alone. I've wanted so much to ask you: Can't we have him for ours?'</p>

-

-<p>"Alex looks at her, all bewildered up in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> minute. 'How ours?' he asks.

-'Do you mean have him educated? That, of course, if you really want it.'</p>

-

-<p>"'No, no,' she says. '<i>Ours.</i> To keep with us, bring up, make. Let's let

-him be really ours.'</p>

-

-<p>"He just leaned back in the big chair, smiling at her, meditative.</p>

-

-<p>"'My dear Robin,' he says, 'it's a terrible responsibility to meddle

-that way with somebody's life.'</p>

-

-<p>"She looked at him, not understanding.</p>

-

-<p>"'It's such an almighty assumption,' he went on, 'this jumping blithely

-into the office of destiny&mdash;keeping, bringing-up, making, as you

-say&mdash;meddling with, I call it&mdash;anybody's life.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Isn't it really meddling to let him be in a bad way when we can put

-him in a better one?' she asked, puzzled.</p>

-

-<p>"'I love you, Robin,' says he, light, 'but not for your logic. No, my

-dear girl. Assuredly we will not take this child for ours. What leads

-you to suppose that Nature really wants him to live, anyway?'</p>

-

-<p>"I looked at him over my tea-cup, and for my life I couldn't make out

-whether he was speaking mocking or speaking plain.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p><p>"'If Chris is to be inebriate, criminal, vicious, even irresponsible,

-as his father must be,' Alex says, 'Nature wants nothing of the sort.

-She wants to be rid of him as quickly as possible. How do you know what

-you are saving?'</p>

-

-<p>"'How do you know,' Robin says, 'what you are letting go?'</p>

-

-<p>"'I can take the risk if Nature can,' he contends.</p>

-

-<p>"She sat up in her chair, her eyes bright as the daylight, and I thought

-her eagerness and earnestness was on her like a garment.</p>

-

-<p>"'You have nobody to refer the risk to,' Robin says, 'Nature has us. And

-for one, I take it. So far as Chris is concerned, Alex, if no one claims

-him, I want him never to be out of touch with me.'</p>

-

-<p>"But when a woman begins to wear that garment, the man that's in love

-with her&mdash;unless he is the special kind&mdash;he begins thinking how much

-sweeter and softer and <i>womaner</i> she is when she's just plain gentle.

-And he always gets uneasy and wants her to be the gentle way he

-remembers her being&mdash;that is, unless he's special, unless he's special.

-Like Alex got uneasy now.</p>

-

-<p>"'My heavens, dear,' he says&mdash;and I judged Alex had got to be one of

-them men that lays a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> lace 'dear' over a haircloth tone of voice, and so

-solemnly believes they're keeping their temper&mdash;'My heavens, dear, don't

-misunderstand me. Experiment as much as you like. Material is cheap and

-abundant. If you don't feel the responsibility, have him educated

-wherever you want to. But don't expect me to play father to him. The

-personal contact is going it a little too strong.'</p>

-

-<p>"'That is exactly what he most needs,' says Robin.</p>

-

-<p>"'Come, dear,' says Alex, 'that's elemental&mdash;in an age when everybody

-can do things better than one can do them oneself.'</p>

-

-<p>"She didn't say nothing, and just set there, with her tea. Alex was

-watching her, and I knew just about as sure what he was thinking as

-though I had been his own thought, oozing out of his mind. He was

-watching her with satisfaction, patterned off with a kind of quiet

-amusement and jabbed into by a kind of worryin' wonder. How exactly, he

-was thinking, she was the type everlasting of Wife. She was girlish, and

-in little things she was all I'll-do-as-you-say, and she was even shy;

-he believed that he was marrying a girl whose experience of the world

-was commendably slight, whose ideas about it was kind of

-vague&mdash;commendably again;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> and whose ways was easy-handled, like skein

-silk. By her little firmnesses, he see that she had it in her to be

-firm, but what he meant was that she should adopt his ideas and turn

-firm about them. He had it all planned out that he was going to

-embroider her brain with his notions of what was what. But all of a

-sudden, now and then, there she was confronting him as she had just done

-then with a serious, settled look of Woman&mdash;the Woman everlasting,

-wanting a garden, wanting to work, wanting a child....</p>

-

-<p>"In the doorway back of Alex, Bayless come in, carrying a tray, but it

-didn't have no card.</p>

-

-<p>"'It's somebody to speak with you a minute, Mr. Proudfit,' says Bayless.

-'It's Mr. Insley.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Have him come here,' Alex says. 'I hope,' he says, when the man was

-gone, 'that the poor fellow has changed his mind about our little

-festivities.'</p>

-

-<p>"Robin sort of tipped up her forehead. 'Why <i>poor</i>?' she asks.</p>

-

-<p>"'Poor,' says Alex, absent, 'because he lives in a pocket of the world,

-instead of wearing the world like a garment&mdash;when it would fit him.'</p>

-

-<p>"I was just setting my tea-cup down when she answered, and I recollect I

-almost jumped:</p>

-

-<p>"'He knows something better to do with the world than to wear it at

-all,' was what she said.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p><p>"I looked over at her. And maybe it was because she was sort of

-indignant, and maybe it was because she thought she had dared quite a

-good deal, but all of a sudden something sort of seemed to me to set

-fire to the minute, and it leaped up like a time by itself as we heard

-Insley's step crossing the library and coming towards us....</p>

-

-<p>"When he come out where we were, I see right off how pale he looked.

-Almost with his greeting, he turned to Alex with what he had come for,

-and he put it blunt.</p>

-

-<p>"'I was leaving the Cadozas' cottage on the Plank Road half an hour

-ago,' he said. 'A little way along I saw a man, who had been walking

-ahead of me, stagger and sprawl in the mud. He wasn't conscious when I

-got to him. He was little&mdash;I picked him up quite easily and got him back

-into the Cadozas' cottage. He still wasn't conscious when the doctor

-came. He gave him things. We got him in bed there. And then he spoke. He

-asked us to hunt up a little boy somewhere in Friendship Village, who

-belonged to him. And he said the boy's name was Chris.'</p>

-

-<p>"It seemed like it was to Alex Proudfit's interested lifting of eyebrows

-rather than to Robin's exclamation of pity that Insley answered.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p><p>"'I'm sorry it was necessary to trouble you,' he says, 'but Chris ought

-to go at once. I'll take him down now.'</p>

-

-<p>"'That man,' Robin says, 'the father&mdash;is he ill? Is he hurt? How badly

-is he off?'</p>

-

-<p>"'He's very badly off,' says Insley, 'done for, I'm afraid. It was in a

-street brawl in the City&mdash;it's his side, and he's lost a good deal of

-blood. He walked all the way back here. A few hours, the doctor thought

-it would be, at most.'</p>

-

-<p>"Robin stood up and spoke like what she was saying was a

-take-for-granted thing.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh,' she says, 'poor, poor little Chris. Alex, I must go down there

-with him.'</p>

-

-<p>"Alex looks over at her, incredulous, and spoke so: 'You?' says he.

-'Impossible.'</p>

-

-<p>"I was just getting ready to say that of course I'd go with him, if that

-was anything, when from somewheres that he'd gone with the puppy, Chris

-spied Insley, and come running to him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, you are to the house's party, too!' Chris cried, and threw himself

-all over him.</p>

-

-<p>"Robin knelt down beside the child, and the way she was with him made me

-think of that first night when she see him at the church, and when her

-way with him made him turn to her and talk with her and love her ever

-since.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p><p>"'Listen, dear,' she said. 'Mr. Insley came here to tell you something.

-Something about daddy&mdash;your daddy. Mr. Insley knows where he is, and

-he's going to take you to him. But he's very, very sick, dear

-heart&mdash;will you remember that when you see him? Remember Robin told you

-that?'</p>

-

-<p>"There come on his little face a look of being afraid that give it a

-sudden, terrible grown-up-ness.</p>

-

-<p>"'Sick like my mama was?' he asked in a whisper. 'And will he <i>go out</i>,

-like my mama?'</p>

-

-<p>"Robin put her arm about him, and he turned to her, clung to her.</p>

-

-<p>"'You come, too, Robin,' he said. 'You come, too!'</p>

-

-<p>"She got up, meeting Alex's eyes with her straight look.</p>

-

-<p>"'I must go, Alex,' she said. 'He wants me&mdash;needs me. Why, how could I

-do anything else?'</p>

-

-<p>"Alex smiles down at her, with his way that always seemed to me so much

-less that of living every minute than of watching it live itself about

-him.</p>

-

-<p>"'May I venture to remind you,' he says&mdash;like a little thin edge of

-something, paper, maybe, that's smooth as silk, but that'll cut neat and

-deep if you let it&mdash;'May I venture to remind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> you that your aunt is

-announcing our engagement to-night? I think that will have escaped your

-mind.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' Robin says, simple, 'it had. Everything had escaped my mind

-except this poor little thing here. Alex&mdash;it's early. He'll sleep after

-a little. But I must go down with him. What did you come in?' she asked

-Insley, quiet.</p>

-

-<p>"I told her I'd go down, and she nodded that I was to go, but Chris

-clung to her hand and it was her that he wanted, poor little soul, and

-only her. Insley had come up in the doctor's rig. She and I would join

-him with the child, she told him, at the side entrance and almost at

-once. There was voices in the house by then, and some of the young folks

-was coming downstairs and up from the tennis-court for tea. She went

-into the house with Chris. And I wondered if she thought of the thing I

-thought of and that made me glad and glad that there are such men in the

-world: Not once, not once, out of some felt-he-must courtesy, had Insley

-begged her not to go with him. He knew that she was needed down there

-with Chris and him and me&mdash;he knew, and he wouldn't say she wasn't.

-Land, land I love a man that don't talk with the outside of his head and

-let what he means lay cramped somewheres underneath,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> but that reaches

-down and gets up what he means, and holds it out, for you to take or to

-leave.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Emmons was overseeing the decorations in the dining room. The

-whole evening party she had got right over onto her shoulders the way

-she does everything, and down to counting the plates she was seeing to

-it all. We found her and told her, and her pity went to the poor fellow

-down there at the Cadozas' almost before it went to Chris.</p>

-

-<p>"'Go, of course,' she said. 'I suppose Alex minds, but leave him to me.

-I've got to be here&mdash;but it's not I Chris wants in any case. It's you.

-Get back as soon as you can, Robin.'</p>

-

-<p>"I must say Alex done that last minute right, the way he done

-everything, light and glossy. When Robin come down, I was up in the

-little seat behind the doctor's cart, and Alex stood beside and helped

-her. A servant, he said, would come on after us in the automobile with a

-hamper, and would wait at the Cadozas' gate until she was ready to come

-back. Somehow, it hadn't entered anybody's head, least of all, I guess,

-Alex's own, that he should come, too. He see us off with his manners on

-him like a thick, thick veil, and he even managed to give to himself a

-real dignity so that Robin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> said her good-by with a kind of wistfulness,

-as if she wanted to be reassured. And I liked her the better for that.

-For, after all, she <i>was</i> going&mdash;there was no getting back of that. And

-when a woman is doing the right thing against somebody's will, I'm not

-the one to mind if she hangs little bells on herself instead of going

-off with no tinkle to leave herself be reminded of, pleasant.</p>

-

-<p>"We swung out onto the open road, with Chris sitting still between the

-two of them, and me on the little seat behind. The sunset was flowing

-over the village and glittering in unfamiliar fires on the windows. The

-time was as still as still, in that hour 'long towards night when the

-day seems to have found its harbour it has been looking for and to have

-slipped into it, with shut sails&mdash;so still that Robin spoke of it with

-surprise. I forget just what she said. She was one of them women that

-can say a thing so harmonious with a certain minute that you never wish

-she'd kept still. I believe if she spoke to me when I was hearing music

-or feeling lifted up all by myself, I wouldn't mind it. What she'd say

-would be sure to fit what was being. They ain't many folks in anybody's

-life like that. I believe she could talk to me any time, sole unless

-it's when I first wake up in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>morning; then any talking always seems

-like somebody stumbling in, busy, among my sleeping brains.</p>

-

-<p>"For a minute Insley didn't say anything. I was almost sure he was

-thinking how unbelievable it was that he should be there, alone with

-her, where an hour ago not even one of his forbidden dreams could have

-found him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Beautifully still,' he answered, 'as if all the things had stopped

-being, except some great thing.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I wonder,' she says, absent, 'what great thing.' And all the time she

-seemed sort of relaxed, and resting in the sense&mdash;though never in the

-consciousness&mdash;that the need to talk and to be talked to, to suggest and

-to question, had found some sort of quiet, levelling process with which

-she was moving along, assentin'.</p>

-

-<p>"Insley stooped down, better to shield her dress from the mud there was.

-I see him look down at her uncovered hands laying on the robe, and then,

-with a kind of surprise, up at her face; and I knew how surprising her

-being near him seemed.</p>

-

-<p>"'That would be one thing for you,' he answered, 'and another for me.'</p>

-

-<p>"'No,' she says, 'I think it's the same thing for us both.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p><p>"He didn't let himself look at her, but his voice&mdash;well, I tell you,

-his voice looked.</p>

-

-<p>"'What do you mean?' he says&mdash;just said it a little and like he didn't

-dare trust it to say itself any more.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, being able to help in this, surely,' she says.</p>

-

-<p>"I could no more of helped watching the two of them than if they had

-been angels and me nothing but me. I tried once or twice to look off

-across the fields that was smiling at each other, same as faces, each

-side of the road; but my eyes come back like they was folks and wanted

-to; and I set there looking at her brown hair, shining in the sun,

-without any hat on it, and at his still face that was yet so many kinds

-of alive. He had one of the faces that looked like it had been cut out

-just the way it was <i>a-purpose</i>. There wasn't any unintentional

-assembling of features there, part make-shift and part rank growth of

-his race. No, sir. His face had come to life by being meant to be just

-the way it was, and it couldn't have been better.... It lit up wonderful

-when he answered.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' he said, 'a job is a kind of creation. It's next best to getting

-up a sunrise. Look here,' he remembered, late in the day, 'you'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> have

-no dinner. You can't eat with them in that place. And you ought to have

-rest before to-night.'</p>

-

-<p>"Ain't it funny how your voice gets away from you sometimes and goes

-dilly-nipping around, pretty near saying things on its own account? I

-use' to think that mebbe my voice didn't belong to the me I know about,

-but was some of the real me, inside, speaking out with my mouth for a

-trumpet. I donno but I think so yet. For sometimes your voice is a

-person and it says things all alone by itself. So his voice done then.

-The tender concern of it was pretty near a second set of words. It was

-the first time he had struck for her the great and simple note, the note

-of the caring of the man for the physical comfort of the woman. And

-while she was pretending not to need it, he turned away and looked off

-toward the village, and I was certain sure he was terrified at what

-might have been in his voice.</p>

-

-<p>"'I like to think of it down there,' he said, pretty near at random,

-'waiting to be clothed in a new meaning.'</p>

-

-<p>"'The village?' she asked.</p>

-

-<p>"'Everywhere,' he answered. 'Some of the meanings we dress things up in

-are so&mdash;dowdy. We wouldn't think of wearing them ourselves.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p><p>"She understood him so well that she didn't have to bother to smile.

-And I hoped she was setting down a comparison in her head: Between

-clothing the world in a new meaning, and wearing it for a garment.</p>

-

-<p>"Chris looked up in Insley's face.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm new,' he contributes, 'I'm new on the outside of me. I've got on

-this new brown middie.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I've been admiring it the whole way,' says Insley, hearty&mdash;and that

-time his eyes and Robin's met, over the little boy's head, as we stopped

-at the cottage gate.</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>XI</h2>

-

-<p>"The lonesome little parlour at Mis' Cadoza's was so far past knowing

-how to act with folks in it, that it never changed expression when we

-threw open the shutters. Rooms that are used to folks always sort of

-look up when the shutters are opened; some rooms smile back at you; some

-say something that you just lose, through not turning round from the

-window quite quick enough. But Mis' Cadoza's parlour was such a poor

-folkless thing that it didn't make us any reply at all nor let on to

-notice the light. It just set there, kind of numb, merely enduring

-itself.</p>

-

-<p>"'You poor thing,' I thought, 'nobody come in time, did they?'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley picked out a cane-seat rocker that had once known how to behave

-in company, and drew it to the window. Ain't it nice, no matter what

-kind of a dumb room you've got into, you can open its window and fit the

-sky onto the sill, and feel right at home....</p>

-

-<p>"Robin sat there with Chris in her arms, waiting for any stir in the

-front bedroom. I went in the bedroom, while Dr. Heron told me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> about the

-medicine, and it seemed to me the bare floor and bare walls and

-dark-coloured bedcovers was got together to suit the haggardy unshaven

-face on the pillow. Christopher's father never moved. I set in the

-doorway, so as to watch him, and Insley went with the doctor to the

-village to bring back some things that was needed. And I felt like we

-was all the first settlers of somewheres.</p>

-

-<p>"Chris was laying so still in Robin's arms that several times she looked

-down to see if he was awake. But every time his eyes was wide and dark

-with that mysterious child look that seems so much like thought. It kind

-of hurt me to see him doing nothing&mdash;that's one of the parts about

-sickness and dying and some kinds of trouble that always twists

-something up in my throat: The folks that was so eager and able and

-flying round the house just being struck still and not able to go on

-with everyday doings. I know when Lyddy Ember, the dressmaker, died and

-I looked at her laying there, it seemed to me so surprising that she

-couldn't hem and fell and cut out with her thumb crooked like she

-done&mdash;and that she didn't know a dart from a gore; her hands looked so

-much like she knew how yet. It's like being inactive made death or grief

-double. And it's like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>working or playing around was a kind of life....

-The whole house seemed inactive and silence-struck, even to the kitchen

-where Mis' Cadoza and the little lame boy was.</p>

-

-<p>"Robin set staring into the lilacs that never seemed to bloom, and I

-wondered what she was thinking and mebbe facing. But when she spoke, it

-was about the Cadoza kitchen.</p>

-

-<p>"'Miss Marsh,' she says, 'what kind of people must they be that can stay

-alive in a kitchen like that?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Pioneers,' I says. 'They's a lot of 'em pioneerin' away and not

-knowing it's time to stop.'</p>

-

-<p>"'But the dirt&mdash;' she says.</p>

-

-<p>"'What do you expect?' I says. 'They're emergin' out of dirt. But they

-<i>are</i> emergin'.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Don't it seem hopeless?' says she.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, I donno,' I says; 'dirt gets to be apples&mdash;so be you plant 'em.'</p>

-

-<p>"But the Cadoza kitchen <i>was</i> fearful. When we come through it, Mis'

-Cadoza was getting supper, and she'd woke up nameless smells of greasy

-things. There the bare table was piled with the inevitable mix-up of

-unwashed dishes that go along with the Mis' Cadozas of this world, so

-that you wonder how they ever got so much crockery together. There the

-floor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> wasn't swept, clothes was drying on a line over the stove, Spudge

-was eating his supper on the window-sill, and in his bed in the corner

-lay little Eph, so white and frail and queer-coloured that you felt you

-was looking on something bound not to last till much after you'd stopped

-looking. And there was Mis' Cadoza. When we had come through the

-kitchen, little Eph had said something glad at seeing Insley and hung

-hold of his hand and told him how he meant to model a clay Patsy,

-because it was Patsy, the dog, that had gone out in the dark and first

-brought Insley in to see him.</p>

-

-<p>"'An' when I'm big,' the child says, 'I'm going to make a clay <i>you</i>,

-Mr. Insley.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Cadoza had turned round and bared up her crooked teeth.</p>

-

-<p>"'Don't you be impident!' she had said, raspish, throwing her hand out

-angular.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Cadoza was like somebody that hadn't got outside into the daylight

-of <i>Yet</i>. She was ignorant, blind to life, with some little bit of a

-corner of her brain working while the rest lay stock-still in her skull;

-unclean of person, the mother to no end of nameless horrors of

-habit&mdash;and her blood and the blood of some creature like her had been

-poured into that poor little boy, sickly, bloodless, not ready for the

-struggle.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p><p>"'<i>Is</i> there any use trying to do anything with anybody like that?'

-says Robin.</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Is</i> there?' says I, but I looked right straight at Christopher. If

-there wasn't no use trying to do anything with little Eph, with his

-mother out there in the kitchen, then what was the use of trying to do

-anything with Chris, with his father here in the front bedroom? Sick

-will, tainted blood, ruined body&mdash;to what were we all saving Chris?

-Maybe to misery and final defeat and some awful going out.</p>

-

-<p>"'I don't know,' she says, restless. 'Maybe Alex is right....'</p>

-

-<p>"She looked out towards the lilac bushes again, and I knew how all of a

-sudden they probably dissolved away to be the fine green in the

-conservatory at Proudfit House, and how she was seeing herself back in

-the bright room, with its summer of leaves, and before the tea wagon,

-making tea for Alex lounging in his low chair, begging her not, in

-heaven's name, to try to teach the wise old world....</p>

-

-<p>" ... I knew well enough how she felt. Every woman in the world knows.

-In that minute, or I missed my guess, she was finding herself clinging

-passionate and rebellious to the mere ordered quiet of the life Alex

-would make for her; to the mere outworn routine, the leisure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> of long

-days in pretty rooms, of guests and house parties and all the little

-happy flummery of hospitality, the doing-nothingness, or the nice tasks,

-of travelling; the joy of sinking down quiet into the easy ways to do

-and be. Something of the sheer, clear, mere self-indulgence of the

-last-notch conservative was sweeping over her, the quiet, the order, the

-plain <i>safety</i> of the unchanging, of going along and going along and

-leaving things pretty much as they are, expecting them to work

-themselves out ... the lure of all keeping-stillness. And I knew she was

-wondering, like women do when they're tired or blue or get a big job to

-do or see a house like the Cadozas', why, after all, she shouldn't, in

-Alex's way, make herself as dainty in morals and intellect as she could

-and if she wanted to 'meddle,' to do so at arm's length, with some of

-the material that is cheap and abundant&mdash;like Chris....</p>

-

-<p>"'Maybe there isn't any use trying to do anything with Chris, either,' I

-says brutal. 'Mebbe Nature's way <i>is</i> best. Mebbe she knows best when to

-let them die off.'</p>

-

-<p>"Robin's arms kind of shut up on the little kiddie. He looked up.</p>

-

-<p>"'Did you squeeze me on purpose?' he whispered.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p><p>"She nodded at him.</p>

-

-<p>"'What for?' he asks.</p>

-

-<p>"'Just loving,' she answered.</p>

-

-<p>"After that, we sat still for a long time. Insley came back with the

-medicine, and told me what to do if the sick man came to. Then he filled

-and lit the bracket lamp that seemed to make more shadows than light,

-and then he stopped beside Robin&mdash;as gentle as a woman over a plant&mdash;and

-asked her if she wanted anything. He come through the room several

-times, and once him and her smiled, for a still greeting, almost as

-children do. After a while he come with a little basket of food that he

-had had Abagail put up to the bakery, and we tried to eat a little

-something, all of us. And all the while the man on the bed lay like he

-was locked up in some new, thick kind of silence.</p>

-

-<p>"When eight o'clock had gone, we heard what I had been expecting to

-hear&mdash;the first wheels and footsteps on the Plank Road directed towards

-Proudfit House. And Insley come in, and went over to Robin, and found

-Chris asleep in her arms, and he took him from her and laid him on the

-sagging Brussels couch.</p>

-

-<p>"'You must go now,' he says to Robin, with his kind of still authority

-that wan't ordering nor schoolmastery, nor you-do-as-I-say, but was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>

-just something that made you want to mind him. 'I'll wake Chris and take

-him in at the least change&mdash;but you must go back at once.'</p>

-

-<p>"And of course I was going to stay. Some of my minds was perfectly

-willing not to be at the party in any case, and anyhow the rest of them

-wanted to stay with Chris.</p>

-

-<p>"Insley picked up some little belongings of hers, seeming to know them

-without being told, and because the time was so queer, and mebbe because

-death was in the next room, and mebbe for another reason or two, I could

-guess how, all the while he was answering her friendly questions about

-the little Cadoza boy&mdash;all that while the Personal, the <i>Personal</i>, like

-a living thing, hovered just beyond his words. And at last it just

-naturally came in and possessed what he was saying.</p>

-

-<p>"'I can't thank you enough for coming down here,' he says. 'It's meant

-everything to Chris&mdash;and to me.'</p>

-

-<p>"She glanced up at him with her pretty near boyish frankness, that had

-in it that night some new element of confidence and charm and just being

-dear.</p>

-

-<p>"'Don't thank me,' she says, 'it was mine to do, too. And besides, I

-haven't done anything. And I'm running away!'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p><p>"He looked off up the road towards where, on its hill, Proudfit House

-was a-setting, a-glowing in all its windows, a-waiting for her to come,

-and to have her engagement to another man announced in it, and then to

-belong up there for ever and ever. He started to say something&mdash;I donno

-whether he knew what or whether he didn't; but anyhow he changed his

-mind and just opened the door for her, the parlour door that I bet was

-as surprised to be used as if it had cackled.</p>

-

-<p>"The Proudfit motor had stood waiting at the gate all this while, and as

-they got out to it, Dr. Heron drove up, and with him was Mis'

-Hubbelthwait come to enquire. So Robin waited outside to see what Dr.

-Heron should say when he had seen Chris's father again, and I went to

-the door to speak to Mis' Hubbelthwait.</p>

-

-<p>"'Liquor's what ails him fast enough,' Mis' Hubbelthwait whispers&mdash;Mis'

-Hubbelthwait would of whispered in the middle of a forty-acre field if

-somebody had said either birth or death to her. 'Liquor's what ails him.

-I know 'em. I remember the nice, well-behaved gentleman that come to the

-hotel and only lived one night after. "Mr. Elder," I says to him,

-severe, "you needn't to tell me your stomach ain't one livin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> pickle,

-for I know it is!" An' he proved it by dyin' that very night. If he

-didn't prove it, I don't know what he did prove. "Alcoholism," Dr. Heron

-called it, but I know it was liquor killed him. No use dressin' up

-words. An' I miss my guess if this here poor soul ain't the self-same

-river to cross.'</p>

-

-<p>"She would have come in, but there's no call for the whole town to nurse

-a sick-bed, I always think&mdash;and so she sort of hung around a minute,

-sympathetic and mum, and then slimpsed off with very little starch to

-her motions, like when you walk for sick folks. I looked out to where

-Robin and Insley was waiting by the big Proudfit planet that was going

-to take her on an orbit of its own; and all of a sudden, with them in

-front of me and with what was behind me, the awful <i>good-byness</i> of

-things sort of shut down on me, and I wanted to do something or tell

-somebody something, I didn't know what, before it was too late; and I

-run right down to them two.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh,' I says, scrabblin' some for my words, 'I want to tell you

-something, both of you. If it means anything to either of you to know

-that there's a little more to me, for having met both of you&mdash;then I

-want you to know it. And it's true. You both&mdash;oh, I donno,' I says,

-'what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> it is&mdash;but you both kind of act like life was a person, and like

-it wasn't just your dinner to be et.... And I kind of know the person,

-too....'</p>

-

-<p>"I knew what I meant, but meant things and said things don't often match

-close. And yet I donno but they understood me. Anyway, they both took

-hold of a hand of mine, and said some little broke-off thing that I

-didn't rightly get. But I guess that we all knew that we all knew. And

-in a minute I went back in the house, feeling like I'd got the best of

-some time when I might of wished, like we all do, that I'd let somebody

-know something while then was then.</p>

-

-<p>"When I got inside the door, I see right off by Dr. Heron's face that

-there'd been some change. And sure enough there was. Chris's father had

-opened his eyes and had spoke. And I done what I knew Robin would have

-wanted; I wheeled round and went to the door and told her so.</p>

-

-<p>"'He's come to,' I says, 'and he's just asked for Chris.'</p>

-

-<p>"Sharp off, Robin turned to say something to the man waiting in the

-automobile. Insley tried to stop her, but she put him by. They come back

-into the cottage together, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> Proudfit automobile started steaming

-back to Proudfit House without her.</p>

-

-<p>"Once again Robin roused Chris, as she had roused him on the night when

-he slept on the church porch; she just slipped her hands round his

-throat and lifted his face, and this time she kissed him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Come with Robin,' she said.</p>

-

-<p>"Chris opened his eyes and for a minute his little senses come

-struggling through his sleep, and then with them come dread. He looked

-up in Robin's face, piteous.</p>

-

-<p>"'Did my daddy <i>go out</i>?' he asks, shrill, 'like my mama did?'</p>

-

-<p>"'No, no, dear,' Robin said. 'He wants you to say good-by to him first,

-you know. Be still and brave, for Robin.'</p>

-

-<p>"There wasn't no way to spare him, because the poor little figure on the

-bed was saying his name, restless, to restless movements. I was in there

-by him, fixing him a little something to take.</p>

-

-<p>"'Where's Chris?' the sick man begged. 'Look on the church steps&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"They took Chris in the room, and Insley lifted him up to Robin's knee

-on the chair beside the bed.</p>

-

-<p>"'Hello&mdash;my nice daddy,' Chris says, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> his little high voice, and

-smiles adorable. 'I&mdash;I&mdash;I was waitin' for you all this while.'</p>

-

-<p>"His father put out his hand, awful awkward, and took the child's arm

-about the elbow. I'll never forget the way the man's face looked. It

-didn't looked <i>used</i>, somehow&mdash;it looked all sort of bare and barren,

-and like it hadn't been occupied. I remember once seeing a brand-new

-house that had burned down before anybody had ever lived in it, and some

-of it stuck up in the street, nice new doors, nice hardwood stairway,

-new brick chimney, and everything else all blackened and spoiled and

-done for, before ever it had been lived in. That was what Chris's

-father's face made me think of. The outline was young, and the eyes was

-young&mdash;young and burning&mdash;but there was the man's face, all spoiled and

-done for, without ever having been used for a face at all.</p>

-

-<p>"'Hello, sonny,' he says, weak. 'Got a good home?'</p>

-

-<p>"'He's in a good home, with good people, Mr. Bartlett,' Insley told him.</p>

-

-<p>"'For keeps?' Chris's father asks, his eyes burning at Insley's over the

-boy's head.</p>

-

-<p>"'We shall look after him somehow, among us,' Robin says. 'Don't worry

-about him, Mr. Bartlett. He's all right.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p><p>"The father's look turned toward her and it sort of lingered there a

-minute. And then it lit up a little&mdash;he didn't smile or change

-expression, but his look lit up some.</p>

-

-<p>"'You're the kind of a one I meant,' he says. 'I wanted he should have a

-good home. I&mdash;I done pretty good for you, didn't I, Chris?' he says.</p>

-

-<p>"Chris leaned way over and pulled at his sleeve. 'You&mdash;you&mdash;you come in

-our house, too,' he says.</p>

-

-<p>"'No, sonny, no,' says the man. 'I guess mebbe I'm&mdash;goin' somewheres

-else. But I done well by you, didn't I? Your ma and I always meant you

-should hev a good home. I'm glad&mdash;if you've got it. It's nicer than

-bein' with me&mdash;ain't it? Ain't it?'</p>

-

-<p>"Chris, on Robin's knee, was leaning forward on the bed, his hand

-patting and pulling at his father's hand.</p>

-

-<p>"'If you was here, then it is,' the child says.</p>

-

-<p>"At that his father smiled&mdash;and that was the first real, real look that

-had come into his face. And he looked around slow to the rest of us.</p>

-

-<p>"'I wasn't never the kind to hev a kid,' he says. 'The drink had me&mdash;had

-me hard. I knew I'd got to find somebody to show him&mdash;about growin' up.

-I'm glad you're goin' to.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p><p>"He shut his eyes and Chris threw himself forward and patted his face.</p>

-

-<p>"'Daddy!' he cried, 'I wanted to tell you&mdash;I had that hot ice-cream

-an'&mdash;an'&mdash;an' tea on a litty wagon....'</p>

-

-<p>"Robin drew him back, hushed him, looked up questioning to Insley. And

-while we all set there, not knowing whether to leave or to stay, the man

-opened his eyes, wide and dark.</p>

-

-<p>"'I wish't it had been different,' he said. 'Oh&mdash;<i>God</i>....'</p>

-

-<p>"Chris leans right over, eager, towards him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Didn't he say anything back?' he says.</p>

-

-<p>"'I guess so,' the man says, thick. 'I guess if you're a good boy, he

-did.' Then he turned his head and looked straight at Robin. 'Don't you

-forget about his throat, will you?' he says.

-'It&mdash;gets&mdash;sore&mdash;awful&mdash;easy....'</p>

-

-<p>"He stopped talking, with a funny upsetting sound in his voice. It

-struck me then, like it has since, how frightful it was that neither him

-nor Chris thought of kissing each other&mdash;like neither one had brought

-the other up to know how. And yet Chris kissed all of us when we asked

-him&mdash;just like something away back in him knew how, without being

-brought up to know.</p>

-

-<p>"He knew how to cry, though, without no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> bringing up, like folks do. As

-Robin come with him out of the room, Chris hid his face in her skirts,

-crying miserable. She set down by the window with him in her arms, and

-Insley went and stood side of them, not saying anything. I see them so,

-while Dr. Heron and I was busy for a minute in the bedroom. Then we come

-out and shut the door&mdash;ain't it strange, how one minute it takes so many

-people around the bed, and next minute, there's the one that was the one

-left in there all alone, able to take care of itself.</p>

-

-<p>"Dr. Heron went away, and Robin still set there, holding Chris. All of a

-sudden he put up his face.</p>

-

-<p>"'Robin,' he says, 'did&mdash;did my daddy leave me a letter?'</p>

-

-<p>"'A letter?' she repeated.</p>

-

-<p>"'To tell me what to do,' says the child. 'Like before. On the church

-steps.'</p>

-

-<p>"'No&mdash;why, no, Chris,' she answers him. 'He didn't have to do that, you

-know.'</p>

-

-<p>"His eyes was holding hers, like he wanted so much to understand.</p>

-

-<p>"'Then how'll I know?' he asks, simple.</p>

-

-<p>"It seemed to me it was like a glass, magnifying living, had suddenly

-been laid on life. Here he was, in the world, with no 'letter' to tell

-him what to do.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p><p>"All she done was just to lay her cheek right close to his cheek.</p>

-

-<p>"'Robin is going to tell you what to do,' she says, 'till you are big

-enough to know.'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley stood there looking at her, and his face was like something had

-just uncovered it. And the minute seemed real and simple and almost

-old&mdash;as if it had begun to be long, long before. It was kind of as if

-Robin's will was the will of all women, away back for ever and ever in

-time, to pour into the world their power of life and of spirit, through a child.</p>

-

-<p class="space-above">"Insley went out in the kitchen to see Mis' Cadoza about some

-arrangements&mdash;if 'Arrangements' means funerals, it always seems like the

-word was spelt different and stiffer&mdash;and we was setting there in that

-sudden, awful idleness that comes on after, when there was the noise of

-an automobile on the Plank Road, and it stopped to the cottage and Alex

-Proudfit come springing up to the front door. He pushed it open and come

-in the room, and he seemed to put the minute in capitals, with his voice

-and his looks and his clothes. I never see clothes so black and so white

-and so just-so as Alex Proudfit's could be, and that night they was more

-just-so than usual. That night, his hands, with their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> thick, strange

-ring, and his dark, kind of <i>even</i> face was like some fancy picture of a

-knight and a lover. But his face never seemed to me to be made very much

-a-purpose and just for him. It was rather like a good sample of a good

-brand, and like a good sample of any other good brand would have done

-him just as well. His face didn't fit him inevitable, like a cork to a

-bottle. It was laid on more arbitrary, like a window on a landscape, and

-you could have seen the landscape through any other window just as well,

-or better.</p>

-

-<p>"'Robin!' he said, 'why did you let the car come back without you? We've

-been frantic with anxiety.'</p>

-

-<p>"She told him in a word or two what had happened, and he received it

-with his impressions just about half-and-half: one-half relief that the

-matter was well over and one-half anxiety for her to hurry up. Everyone

-was at the house, everyone was wondering. Mrs. Emmons was anxious....

-'My poor Robin, you've overtaxed your strength,' he ends. 'You'll look

-worn and not yourself to-night. It's too bad of it. Come, for heaven's

-sake, let's be out of this. Come, Calliope....'</p>

-

-<p>He asked her if she had anything to bring, and he gathered up what she

-told him was hers. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> got ready, too, so's to go up to Proudfit House to

-put Chris to bed and set by him awhile. And just as I was going out to

-let Insley know we was leaving, the door to the other room opened and

-there stood Mis' Cadoza. I see she'd twisted her hair over fresh and

-she'd put on a collar. I remember now the way I felt when she spoke.</p>

-

-<p>"'I've got the coffee pot on and some batter stirred up,' says she, kind

-of shame-faced. 'I thought mebbe some hot pan-cakes and somethin' hot to

-drink'd go good&mdash;with Mr. Insley an' all of you.'</p>

-

-<p>"Alex started to say something&mdash;heaven knows what&mdash;but Robin went right

-straight up to Mis' Cadoza&mdash;and afterwards I thought back to how Robin

-didn't make the mistake of being too grateful.</p>

-

-<p>"'How I'd like them!' she says, matter-of-fact. 'But I've got a lot of

-people waiting for me, and I oughtn't to keep them....'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley spoke up from where he was over on the edge of little Eph's bed,

-and I noticed Mis' Cadoza had tried to neaten up the kitchen some, and

-she'd set the table with oil-cloth and some clean dishes.</p>

-

-<p>"'I was afraid you'd all stay,' he says, 'and I do want all the

-pan-cakes. Hurry on&mdash;you're keeping back our supper.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p><p>"He nodded to Alex, smiled with us, and come and saw us out the door.

-Mis' Cadoza come too, and Robin and I shook hands with her for

-goodnight. And as Mis' Cadoza stood there in her own door, seeing us

-off, and going to be hostess out in her own kitchen, I wondered to

-myself if it was having a collar on, or what it was, that give her a

-kind of pretty near dignity.</p>

-

-<p>"I got in the front seat of the car. Chris was back in the tonneau

-between Robin and Alex, and as we started he tried to tell Alex what had

-happened.</p>

-

-<p>"'My&mdash;my&mdash;my daddy&mdash;&mdash;' he says.</p>

-

-<p>"'Poor little cuss,' says Alex. 'But how extremely well for the child,

-Robin, that the beggar died. Heavens, how I hate your going in these

-ghastly places. My poor Robin, what an experience for <i>to-night</i>! For

-our to-night....'</p>

-

-<p>"She made a sudden move, abrupt as a bird springing free of something

-that's holding it. She spoke low, but I heard every word of it.</p>

-

-<p>"'Alex,' she said, 'we've made a mistake, you and I. But it isn't too

-late to mend it now.'</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>XII</h2>

-

-<p>"'I hope, Calliope,' said Postmaster Silas Sykes to me, 'that you ain't

-in favour of women suffrage.'</p>

-

-<p>"'No, Silas,' says I, 'I ain't.'</p>

-

-<p>"And I felt all over me a kind of a nice wild joy at saying a thing that

-I knew a male creature would approve of.</p>

-

-<p>"Silas was delivering the groceries himself that day, and accepting of a

-glass of milk in my kitchen doorway. And on my kitchen stoop Letty

-Ames&mdash;that had come home in time for the Proudfit party&mdash;was a-sitting,

-a-stitching away on a violet muslin breakfast-cap. It was the next day

-after the party and my regular wash-day and I was glad to be back in my

-own house, washing quiet, with Emerel Daniel to help me.</p>

-

-<p>"'At school,' says Letty, 'everybody was for it.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I know it,' says Silas, gloomy. 'The schools is goin' to the dogs,

-hot-foot. Women suffrage, tinkerin' pupils' teeth, cremation&mdash;I don't

-know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> what-all their holdin' out for. In my day they stuck to 'rithmetic

-and toed the crack.'</p>

-

-<p>"'That isn't up to date, Mr. Sykes,' says Letty, to get Silas riled.</p>

-

-<p>"It done it. He waved his left arm, angular.</p>

-

-<p>"'Bein' up to date is bein' up to the devil,' he begun, raspish, when I

-cut in, hasty and peaceful.</p>

-

-<p>"'By the way, Silas,' I says, 'speaking of dates, it ain't more'n a

-<i>year</i> past the time you aldermen was going to clear out Black Hollow,

-is it? Ain't you going to get it done <i>this</i> spring?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, dum it, no,' Silas says. 'They're all after us now to get to

-pavin' that new street.'</p>

-

-<p>"'That street off there in the marsh. I know they are,' I says innocent.

-'Your cousin's makin' the blocks, ain't he, Silas?'</p>

-

-<p>"Just then, in from the shed where she was doing my washing come Emerel

-Daniel&mdash;a poor little thing that looked like nothing but breath with the

-skin drawn over it&mdash;and she was crying.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'I guess you'll have to leave me go home. I

-left little Otie so sick&mdash;I hadn't ought to of left him&mdash;only I did want

-the fifty cents....'</p>

-

-<p>"'Otie!' I says. 'I thought Otie was getting better.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p><p>"'I've kept sayin' so because I was ashamed to let folks know,' Emerel

-says, 'an' me leavin' him to work. But I had to have the money&mdash;'</p>

-

-<p>"'Land,' I says, 'of course you did. Go on home. Silas'll take you in

-the delivery wagon, won't you, Silas? You're going right that way, ain't

-you?'</p>

-

-<p>"'I wasn't,' says Silas, 'but I can go round that way to oblige.' That's

-just exactly how Silas is.</p>

-

-<p>"'Emerel,' I says, 'when you go by the Hollow, you tell Silas what you

-was tellin' me&mdash;about the smells from there into your house. Silas,' I

-says, 'that hole could be filled up with sand-bar sand dirt cheap, now

-while the river's low, and you know it.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Woman&mdash;' Silas begins excitable.</p>

-

-<p>"'Of course you can't,' I saved him the trouble, 'not while the council

-is running pavement halfway acrost the swamp to graft off'n the Wooden

-Block folks. That's all, Silas. I know you, head and heart,' I says,

-some direct.</p>

-

-<p>"'You don't understand city dealin's no more'n&mdash;Who-a!' Silas yells,

-pretending his delivery horse needed him, and lit down the walk, Emerel

-following. Silas reminds me of the place in the atmosphere where a

-citizen ought to be, and ain't.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p><p>"Emerel had left the clothes in the bluing water, so I stood and talked

-with Letty a minute, stitching away on her muslin breakfast-cap.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'd be for women voting just because Silas isn't,' she says, feminine.</p>

-

-<p>"'In them words,' says I to her, 'is some of why women shouldn't do it.

-The most of 'em reason,' I says, 'like rabbits!'</p>

-

-<p>"Letty sort of straightened up and looked at me, gentle. She just

-graduated from the Indian Mound School and, in spite of yourself, you

-notice what she says. 'You're mistaken, Miss Marsh,' says she, 'I

-believe in women voting because we're folks and mothers, and we can't

-bring up our children with men taking things away from 'em that we know

-they'd ought to have. I want to bring up my children by my votes as well

-as by my prayers,' says she.</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Your</i> children!' says I.</p>

-

-<p>"I donno if you've ever noticed that look come in a girl's face when she

-speaks of her children that are going to be sometime? Up to that minute

-I'd 'a' thought Letty's words was brazen. But when I see how she looked

-when she said it, I sort of turned my eyes away, kind of half reverent.

-We didn't speak so when I was a girl. The most we ever heard mentioned

-like that was when our mothers showed us our first baby dress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> and told

-us that was for <i>our</i> baby&mdash;and then we always looked away, squeamish.</p>

-

-<p>"'That's kind of nice,' I says, slow, 'your owning up, out loud that

-way, that maybe you might possibly have&mdash;have one, sometime.'</p>

-

-<p>"'My mother has talked to me about it since I began to

-know&mdash;everything,' Letty said.</p>

-

-<p>"That struck awful near home.</p>

-

-<p>"'I always wisht,' I says, 'I'd talked with my mother&mdash;like that. I

-always wisht I'd had her tell me about the night I was born. I think

-everybody ought to know about that. But I remember when she begun to

-speak about it, I always kind of shied off. I should think it would of

-hurt her. But then,' I says, 'I never had any of my own. So it don't

-matter.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, yes, you have, Miss Marsh,' says Letty.</p>

-

-<p>"I looked at her, blank.</p>

-

-<p>"'Every child that's born belongs to you,' says Letty to me, solemn.</p>

-

-<p>"'Go on,' says I, to draw her out. 'I wouldn't own most of the little

-jackanapesses.'</p>

-

-<p>"'But you <i>do</i>,' says Letty, 'and so do I! So does every woman, mother

-or not.'</p>

-

-<p>"She set the little violet muslin cap on her head to try it, and swept

-up and made me a little bow. Pretty as a picture she looked, and ready

-for loving.... I always wonder if things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> ain't sometimes arranged to

-happen in patterns, same as crystals. For why else should it be that at

-that instant minute young Elbert Sykes, Silas's son, that was home for

-the party and a little longer, come up to my door with a note from his

-mother&mdash;and see Letty in the violet cap, bowing like a rose?</p>

-

-<p>"While they was a-talking easy, like young folks knows how to do

-nowdays, I read the note; and it was about what had started Silas to

-talking suffrage. Mis' Sykes had opened her house to a suffrage meeting

-that evening, and Mis' Martin Lacy from the City was a-going to talk,

-and would I go over?</p>

-

-<p>"'Land, yes,' I says to Elbert. 'Tell her I'll come, just for something

-to do. I wonder if I can bring Letty, too?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Mother'd be proud, I know,' says Elbert, looking at her like words,

-and them words a-praising. They had used to play together when they was

-little, but school had come in and kind of made them over.</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>So</i>,' says he to Letty, bantering, 'you're in favour of women voting,

-are you?'</p>

-

-<p>"She broke off her thread and looked up at him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Of course I am,' she says, giving a cunning little kitten nod that run

-all down her shoulders.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p><p>"'So you think,' says Elbert, 'that you're just as strong as I am&mdash;to

-carry things along? Mind you, I don't say as clever. You're easily that.

-But put it at just <i>strong</i>.'</p>

-

-<p>"She done the little nod again, nicer than the first time.</p>

-

-<p>"'You talk like folks voted with their muscles,' says she. 'Well, I

-guess some men do, judging by the results.'</p>

-

-<p>"He laughed, but he went on.</p>

-

-<p>"'And you think,' he says, 'that you would be just as wonderful in

-public life as you would be in your home&mdash;your very own home?'</p>

-

-<p>"Letty put the last stitch in her muslin cap and she set it on her

-head&mdash;all cloudy and rose-budded, and land, land, she was lovely when

-she looked up.</p>

-

-<p>"'Surely,' she says from under the ruffle, with a little one-cornered

-smile.</p>

-

-<p>"He laughed right into her eyes. 'I don't believe you think so,' he

-says, triumphant. And all of a sudden there come a-sticking up its head

-in his face the regular man look&mdash;I can't rightly name it, but every

-woman in the world knows it when she sees it&mdash;a kind of an <i>I'm the one

-of us two but don't let's stop pretending it's you</i> look.</p>

-

-<p>"When she see it, what do you suppose Letty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> done? First she looked

-down. Then she blushed. Then she shrugged up one shoulder and laughed,

-sort of little and low and soft. <i>And she kept still.</i> She was about as

-much like the dignified woman that had just been talking to me about

-women's duty as a bow of blue ribbon is like my work apron. And as plain

-as the blue on the sky, I see that <i>she liked the minute when she let

-Elbert beat her&mdash;liked it</i>, with a sort of a glow and a quiver.</p>

-

-<p>"He laughed again, and, 'You stay just the the way you are,' he says,

-and he contrived to make them common words sort of flow all over her

-like petting.</p>

-

-<p>"That evening, when we marched into the Sykes's house to the meeting, he

-spoke to her like that again. The men was invited to the meeting, too,

-but Mis' Sykes let it be known that they needn't to come till the coffee

-and sandwiches, thus escaping the speech. Mis' Sykes ain't in favour of

-suffrage, but she does love a new thing in town, and Mis' Martin Lacy

-was so well dressed and so soft-spoken that Mis' Sykes would of left her

-preach foot-binding in her parlour if she'd wanted to. Mis' Sykes is

-like that. Letty was about the youngest there, and she was about the

-prettiest I 'most ever saw; and when he'd got them all seated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> young

-Elbert Sykes, that was the only man there, just naturally gravitated

-over and set down by her, like the Lord meant. I love to see them little

-things happen, and I never smile at them, same as some. Because it's

-like I got a peek in behind the curtain and see the eternal purpose

-working away, quiet and still.</p>

-

-<p>"Well, Mis' Lacy, she talked, and she put things real sane and plain,

-barring I didn't believe any of what she said. And pretty soon I stopped

-trying to listen and I begun thinking about Emerel Daniel. I'd been down

-to see her just before supper, and I hadn't had her out of my head much

-of the time since. Emerel's cottage wasn't half a block from Black

-Hollow, the great low place beyond the river road that the town used as

-a dump. It was full of things without names, and take it on a day with

-the wind just right, Emerel had to keep her window shut on that side of

-her house. Water was standing in the hollow all the whole time. Flies

-and mosquitoes come from it by the flock and the herd. And when I'd held

-my nose and scud past it that afternoon to get to Emerel's, I'd almost

-run into Dr. Heron, just coming out from seeing Otie, and I burst right

-out with my thoughts all over him, and asked him if Black Hollow wasn't

-what was the matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> with Otie and if it wasn't all that was the matter

-with him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Unquestionably,' says Dr. Heron. 'I told Mrs. Daniel six months ago

-that she must move.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says I, 'not having any of her other country homes open this

-year, Emerel had to stay where she was. And Otie with her. But what did

-you say to the council about filling in the hole?'</p>

-

-<p>"'The council,' says Dr. Heron, 'is paving the county swamp. There's a

-good crop of wooden blocks this year.'</p>

-

-<p>"'True enough,' says I, grim, 'and Otie is a-paying for it.'</p>

-

-<p>"That was exactly how the matter stood. And all the while Mis' Lacy was

-a-talking her women suffrage, I set there grieving for Emerel, and

-wondering how it was that Silas Sykes and Timothy Toplady and Jimmy

-Sturgis and even Eppleby Holcomb, that belonged to the common council,

-<i>could</i> set by and see Otie die, and more or less of the rest of us in

-the same kind of danger.</p>

-

-<p>"Next I knew, Mis' Lacy, that was all silky movements and a sweet voice,

-had got through her own talk and was asking us ladies to express

-ourselves. Everybody felt kind of delicate at first, and then Libby

-Liberty starts up and spoke her mind:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p><p>"'<i>I</i> believe all you've been a-saying,' she says, 'and I hev for

-twenty years. I never kill a hen without I realize how good the women

-can do a human being's work if they're put to it.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I always think of that, too,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, quick, 'about

-the hotel....' She kind of stopped, but we all knew what she meant.

-Threat is seldom if ever sober, especially on election day; but he

-votes, and she only runs the hotel and keeps them both out of the

-poorhouse.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, look at me,' says Abagail Arnold, 'doin' work to oven and to

-counter, an' can't get my nose near nothin' public but my taxes.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Of course,' says Mis' Uppers, rocking, 'I've almost <i>been</i> the mayor

-of Friendship Village, bein' his wife, so. An' I must say he never done

-a thing I didn't think I could do. Or less it was the junketin' trips.

-I'd 'a' been down with one o' my sick headaches on every one o' them.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Men <i>know</i> more,' admitted Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'but I donno as

-they can <i>do</i> any more than us. When the Fire Chief was alive an'

-holdin' office an' entertaining politicians, I use' often to think o'

-that, when I had their hot dinner to get.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I s'pose men do know more than we do,' says Mis'

-Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>reflective. 'I know Eppleby is lightnin'

-at figures, an' he can tell about time-tables, an' he sees sense to fine

-print parts o' the newspapers that looks like so many doctors'

-prescriptions to me. An' yet honestly, when it comes to some questions

-of sense, I've known Eppleby not to have any.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Jimmy, either,' says Mis' Sturgis, confidential. 'I donno. I've

-thought about that a good deal. It seems as if, if we got the chance, us

-women might not vote brilliant at first, but we would vote with our

-sense. The sense that can pick out a pattern and split a receipt, an'

-dress the children out o' the house money. I bet there's a lot o' that

-kind o' sense among women that don't get used up, by a long shot.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Timothy Toplady drew her shawl up her back, like she does.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well-a,' she says, 'Timothy's an awful good husband, but when I see

-some of the things he buys for the house, an' the way he gets took in on

-real estate, I often wonder if he's such a good citizen as he lets on.'</p>

-

-<p>"I kep' a-wondering why Letty didn't say something, and by and by I

-nudged her.</p>

-

-<p>"'Go on, speak up,' I intimated.</p>

-

-<p>"And, same time, I heard Elbert Sykes, on the other side, say something

-to her, low. 'I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> could tell them,' he says to her, 'that to look like

-you do is better than being elected!'</p>

-

-<p>"And Letty&mdash;what do you s'spose?&mdash;she just glanced up at him, and made a

-little kind of a commenting wrinkle with her nose, and looked down and

-kept her silence. Just like he'd set there with a little fine chain to

-her wrist.</p>

-

-<p>"We talked some more and asked some questions and heard Mis' Lacy read

-some, and then it was time for the men. They come in together&mdash;six or

-eight of them, and most of them, as it happened, members of the common

-council. And when Mis' Sykes had set them down on the edge of the room,

-and before anybody had thought of any remark to pass, Mis' Lacy she

-spoke up and ask' the men to join in the discussion, and called on Mis'

-Sykes, that hadn't said nothing yet, to start the ball a-rolling.</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Well</i>,' says Mis' Sykes, with her little society pucker, 'I must say

-the home and bring-up my children seems far, far more womanly to me than

-the tobacco smoke and whiskey of public life.'</p>

-

-<p>"She glanced over to the men, kind of with a way of arching her neck and

-they all gave her a sort of a little ripple, approving. And with this

-Mis' Toplady kind of tossed her head up.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p><p>"'Oh, well, I don't want the responsibility,' she says. 'Land, if I was

-a votin' woman, I should feel as if I'd got bread in the pan and cake in

-the oven and clothes in the bluin' water all the whole time.'</p>

-

-<p>"'He, he, he!' says Timothy, her lawful lord. And Silas and Jimmy

-Sturgis and the rest joined in, tuneful.</p>

-

-<p>"Then Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, she vied in, and done a small,

-careless laugh.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, well, me, too,' she says, 'I declare, as I get older an' wake up

-some mornin's I feel like life was one big breakfast to get an' me the

-hired girl. If I had to vote besides, I donno what I <i>would</i> do.'</p>

-

-<p>"'An',' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'I always feel as if a politician was a

-disgrace to be, same as an actor, <i>unless</i> you got to be a big one. An'

-can us women ever be big ones even if we want? Which I'm sure I don't

-want,' she says, sidling a look towards the men's row.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, not only that,' says Abagail Arnold, 'but you'd feel so kind of

-sheepish votin' for the President, away off there in Washington. I

-always feel terrible sheepish even prayin' for him, let alone

-votin'&mdash;an' like it <i>couldn't</i> make no real difference.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, an' <i>ladies</i>!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> 'really it's bad enough to

-have been the wife of a mayor. If I had to vote an' was in danger of

-coming down with a nomination for somethin' myself, I couldn't get to

-sleep nights.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Mercy,' said Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'a mayor is nothin' but a baby

-in public life compared to a fire chief. A mayor gets his night's rest.

-Could a woman ever chase to fires at three o'clock in the mornin'? An'

-if she votes, what's to prevent her bein' elected to some such job by

-main strength?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Or like enough get put on a jury settin' on a murderer, an' hev to

-look at dug-up bones an' orgins,' says Mis' Sturgis&mdash;her that's an

-invalid and gloomy by complexion.</p>

-

-<p>"And one and all, as they spoke, they looked sidewise to the men for

-their approval. And they got it.</p>

-

-<p>"'That's the ticket!' says Timothy Toplady, slapping his knee. 'I tell

-you, gentlemen, we've got a nice set of women folks here in this town.

-They don't prostitute their brains to no fool notions.'</p>

-

-<p>"There was a little hush, owing to that word that Timothy had used kind

-of uncalled for, and then a little quick buzz of talk to try to cover

-it. And in the buzz I heard Elbert saying to Letty:</p>

-

-<p>"'You <i>know</i> you think of yourself in a home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> afterward&mdash;and not around

-at polls and things, Letty.'</p>

-

-<p>"'You don't have to board at the polls because you vote there, you

-know,' Letty said; but she says it with a way, with a way. She said it

-like a pretty woman talking to a man that's looking in her eyes and

-thinking how pretty she is, and she knows he's thinking so. And you

-can't never get much real arguing done that way.</p>

-

-<p>"It always kind of scares me to see myself showed up&mdash;and now it was

-like I had ripped a veil off the whole sex, and off me, too. I see us

-face to face. Why was it that before them men had come in, the women had

-all talked kind of doubtful and suffrage-leaning, and then had veered

-like the wind the minute the men had come on the scene? Mis' Toplady had

-defied Timothy time after time, both public and private; Mis'

-Hubbelthwait bosses her husband not only drunk but sober; Mis' Sturgis

-don't do a thing Jimmy wants without she happens to want it too&mdash;and so

-on. Yet at the mention of this one thing, these women that had been

-talking intelligent and wondering open-minded had all stopped being the

-way they was and had begun to say things sole to please the men. Even

-Libby Liberty had kept still&mdash;her that has a regular tongue in her head.

-And Letty, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> believed in it all, and had talked to me so womanly

-that morning, she was listening and blushing for Elbert and holding her

-peace. And then I remembered, like a piece of guilt, sensing that nice,

-wild feeling I myself had felt that morning a-denying woman suffrage in

-the presence of Postmaster Silas Sykes. What in creation ailed us all?</p>

-

-<p>"<i>What in creation....</i> Them words sort of steadied me. It looked to me

-like it was creation itself that ailed us yet. Creation is a thing that

-it takes most folks a good while to recover from....</p>

-

-<p>" ... I remembered seeing Silas's delivery boy go whistling along the

-street one night, and pass a cat. The cat wasn't doing nothing active.

-It was merely idle. But the boy brought up a big shingle he was carrying

-and swished it through the air and says 'Z-t-t-t-t,' to the cat's heels,

-to see the cat take to them&mdash;which it done&mdash;like the cat immemorial has

-done for immemorial boys, delivery and other. And once, at dusk, a big,

-strange man with a gun on his shoulder passed me on Daphne Street, and

-when he done so, he says to me 'Z-t-t-t,' under his breath, just like

-the boy to the cat, and just like the untamed man immemorial has said

-when he got the chance. It seemed to me like men was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> created with, so

-to say, a shingle and a gun, for the hunting, and just as there is joy

-in their hunting, so there is a palpitatin' delight in being hunted and

-flattered by being caught and bound, hand and foot and mind.</p>

-

-<p>"'We like it&mdash;why, I tell you, we like it,' I says to myself, 'and us

-here in Mis' Sykes's parlour are burning with the old original,

-left-over fire, breathed at creation into women's breasts!'</p>

-

-<p>"And it seemed like I kind of touched hands with all the women that used

-to be. And I looked over to that row of grinning, tired men, not so very

-much dressed up, and I thought:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, you're the men of this world and we're the women, and there ain't

-no more thrilling fact in this universe. And why don't we all reco'nize

-it and shut up?'</p>

-

-<p>"That was what I was thinking over in my mind while Mis' Martin Lacy

-said good night to us and rushed off to catch her train for the City,

-hoping she had made us see some light. That was what I was still going

-over when Mis' Sykes called me to help with the refreshments. And then,

-just as I started out to the kitchen, the outside door that was part

-open was pushed in and somebody come in the room. It was Emerel Daniel,

-in calico and no hat. And as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> soon as we see her face, everybody stopped

-talking and stared. She was white as the table-cloth and shaking.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'won't one of you come down to the house?

-Otie's worse&mdash;I donno what it is. I donno what to do to take care of

-him.'</p>

-

-<p>"She broke down, poor, nervous little thing, and sort of swallowed her

-whole throat. And Mis' Toplady and we all rushed right over to her.</p>

-

-<p>"'Why, Emerel,' Mis' Toplady says, 'I thought Otie was getting ever so

-much better. Is it the real typhoid, do you s'pose?' she ask' her.</p>

-

-<p>"Emerel looked over to me. 'Isn't it?' she says. And then I spoke right

-up with all there is to me.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes, sir,' I says, 'it is the real typhoid. And if you want to know

-what's giving it to him, ladies and gentlemen, ask the common council

-that's setting over there by the wall. Dr. Heron says that Black Hollow,

-that's a sink for the whole town, give it to him, and that nothing else

-did&mdash;piled full of diseases right in back of Emerel's house. And if you

-want to know who's responsible for his dying if he dies,' I says right

-out, 'look over in the same direction to the men that wouldn't vote to

-fill in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> Black Hollow with sand because they needed the money so bad

-for paving up half the county swamp.'</p>

-

-<p>"It was most as still in the room as when Timothy had said 'prostitute.'

-All but me. I went right on&mdash;nothing could of kept me still then.</p>

-

-<p>"'Us ladies,' I says, 'has tried for two years to get the Council to

-fill in that hole. We've said and said what would happen to some of us,

-what with our pumps so near the place, and what with flies from it

-visiting our dinner-table dishes, sociable and continual. What did you

-say to us? You said women hadn't no idee of town finances. Mebbe we

-ain't&mdash;mebbe we ain't. But we have got some idea of town humanity, if I

-do say it, that share in it. And this poor little boy has gone to work

-and proved it.'</p>

-

-<p>"With that, Emerel, who had been holding in&mdash;her that's afraid even to

-ask for starch if you forget to give it to her&mdash;she broke right down and

-leaned her head on her arm on the clock shelf:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh,' she says, 'all the years I been giving him his victuals and his

-bath and sewing his clothes up, I never meant it to come to this&mdash;for no

-reason. If Otie dies, I guess he needn't of&mdash;that's the worst. He

-needn't of.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Toplady put her arm right around Emerel and kind of poored her

-shoulder in that big, mother way she's got&mdash;and it was her that went

-with her, like it's always Mis' Toplady that does everything. And us

-ladies turned around and all begun to talk at once.</p>

-

-<p>"'Let's plan out right here about taking things in to Emerel,' says Mis'

-Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I've got some fresh bread out of the oven.

-I'll carry her a couple of loaves, and another couple next baking or

-two.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I'll take her in a hen,' says Libby Liberty, 'so be she'll kill it

-herself.'</p>

-

-<p>"Somebody else said a ham, and somebody some butter, and Libby threw in

-some fresh eggs, if she got any. Mis' Hubbelthwait didn't have much to

-do with, but she said she would take turns setting up with Otie. Mis'

-Sykes give a quarter&mdash;she don't like to bake for folks, but she's real

-generous with money. And Silas pipes in:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Emerel can have credit to the store till Otie begins to get better,'

-he said. 'I ain't been lettin' her have it. She's looked so peaked I

-been afraid she wan't a-goin' to be able to work, an' I didn't want she

-should be all stacked up with debts.'</p>

-

-<p>"But me, I set there a-thinking. And all of a sudden I says out what I

-thought: 'Ladies,' I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> says, 'and all of you: What to Emerel is hens and

-hams and credit? They ain't,' I says, 'nothing but patches and poultices

-on what's the trouble up to her house.'</p>

-

-<p>"Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying much, spoke up:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'I know,' he says, 'I know. You mean what good do they do to the boy.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I mean just that,' I says. 'What good is all that to Otie that's lying

-over by Black Hollow? And how does it keep the rest of the town safe?'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says Silas, eager, 'let's us get out the zinc wagon you ladies

-bought, and let's us go to collectin' the garbage again so that won't

-all be dumped in Black Hollow. And leave the ladies keep on payin' for

-it. It's real ladies' work, I think, bein' as it's no more'n a general

-scrapin' up of ladies' kitchens.'</p>

-

-<p>"Then Letty Ames, that hadn't been saying anything, spoke up, to nobody

-in particular:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Otie's a dear little soul,' she said, 'a dear little soul!'</p>

-

-<p>"'Ain't he?' says Marne Holcomb. 'Eppleby 'most always has a nut or

-somethin' in his pocket to give him as he goes by. He takes it like a

-little squirrel an' like a little gentleman.'</p>

-

-<p>"'He's awful nice when he comes in the shop,' said Abagail. 'He looks at

-the penny-apiece kind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> and then buys the two-for-a-cent, so's to give

-his mother one.'</p>

-

-<p>"'He knows how to behave in a store,' Silas admitted. 'I 'most always

-give him a coffee-berry, just to see him thank me.'</p>

-

-<p>"'He come into the hotel one day,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'an' stood by

-me when I was bakin'. I give him a little wad of dough to roll.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I let him drive the 'bus one day, settin' on my knee,' says Jimmy

-Sturgis. 'He was a nice, careful, complete little cuss.'</p>

-

-<p>"Eppleby Holcomb nodded with his eyes shut.</p>

-

-<p>"'We don't like folks to swing on our front gate,' he says. 'He done it,

-but he marched right in and told us he'd done it. I give him a

-doughnut&mdash;an' he's kep' right on swingin' an' ownin' up an' eatin'

-doughnuts.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Even when he chased my chickens,' says Libby Liberty, 'he chased 'em

-like a little gentleman&mdash;<i>towards</i> the coop an' not down the road. I

-always noticed that about him.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' says Letty, again, 'he's a dear little soul. <i>What makes us let

-him die?</i>'</p>

-

-<p>"She said it so calm that it caught even my breath&mdash;and my breath, in

-these things, ain't easy caught. But I got it right back again, and I

-says:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes, sir. He was on the way to being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> somebody that Friendship Village

-could have had for the right kind of an inmate. And now he'll be nothing

-but a grave, that's no good to anybody. And Sodality,' I couldn't help

-adding, 'will likely pitch right in and take care of his grave,

-tasteful.'</p>

-

-<p>"And when I said that, it come over me how Emerel had dressed him and

-bathed him and made his clothes, and done washings, tireless, to get the

-fifty cents&mdash;besides bringing him into the world, tedious. And now it

-was all going for nothing, all for nothing&mdash;when we could of helped it.

-And I plumped out with what I'd said that morning to Silas:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Why don't you fill up Black Hollow with sand-bar sand out of the

-river, now it's so low? Then, even if it's too late for Otie, mebbe we

-can keep ourselves from murderin' anybody else.'</p>

-

-<p>"Them half a dozen men of the common council set still a minute, looking

-down at Mis' Sykes's parlour ingrain. And I looked over at them, and my

-heart come up in my throat and both of them ached like the toothache.

-Because all of a sudden it seemed to me it wasn't just Timothy and

-Eppleby and Silas and some more of the council setting there by the

-wall&mdash;but it was like, in them few men, tired and not so very well

-dressed, was setting the lawmakers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> of the whole world; and there in

-front of them, wasn't only Mis' Holcomb and Libby and Letty and me, but

-Emerel Daniel, too, and all the women there is&mdash;saying to them: 'My

-land, we've dressed 'em an' bathed 'em an' sewed for 'em an' brought 'em

-into the world, tedious. Let 'em live&mdash;fix things so's they can live an'

-so's it needn't all go for nothin'.' And I sort of bubbled up and

-spilled over, as if everything we was all of us <i>for</i> had come up in my

-throat.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, folks,' I says, 'just look what us in this room could have done

-for Otie&mdash;so be we'd begun in time.'</p>

-

-<p>"Right like a dash of cold water into my face, Mis' Sykes spoke up, cold

-as some kind of death:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, ladies,' she says, 'I guess we've got our eyes open now. <i>I</i> say

-that's what we'd ought to hev been doin' instead o' talkin' women

-votin',' she says, triumphant.</p>

-

-<p>"Then somebody spoke again, in a soft, new, not-used-to-it little voice,

-and in her chair over beside Elbert, Letty Ames leaned forward, and her

-eyes was like the sunny places in water.</p>

-

-<p>"'Don't you see,' she says, 'don't you see, Mis' Sykes, that's what Mis'

-Lacy meant?'</p>

-

-<p>"'How so?' says Mis' Sykes, short.</p>

-

-<p>"I'll never forget how sweet and shy and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>unexpected and young Letty

-looked, but she answered, as brave as brave:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Otie Daniel is sick,' she said, 'and all us women can do is to carry

-him broth and bread and nurse him. It's only the men that can bring

-about the things to make him well. And they haven't done it. It's been

-the women who have been urging it&mdash;and not getting it done. Wasn't it

-our work to do, too?'</p>

-

-<p>"I see Elbert looking at her&mdash;like he just couldn't bear to have her

-speak so, like some men can't. And I guess he spoke out in answer before

-he meant to:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'But let them do it womanly, Letty,' he said, 'like your mother did and

-my mother did.'</p>

-

-<p>"Letty turned and looked Elbert Sykes straight in the face:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>Womanly!</i>' she says. 'What is there womanly about my bathing and

-feeding a child inside four clean walls, if dirt and bad food and

-neglect are outside for him? Will you tell me if there is anything more

-womanly than my right to help make the world as decent for my children

-as I would make my own home?'</p>

-

-<p>"I looked at Letty, and looked; and I see with a thrill I can't tell you

-about how Letty seemed. For she seemed the way she had that morning on

-my kitchen stoop, when she spoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> of her children and when I felt like

-I'd ought to turn away&mdash;the way I'd used to when my mother showed me my

-baby dress and told me who it would be for. Only now&mdash;only now, somehow,

-I didn't want to turn away. Somehow I wanted to keep right on looking at

-Letty, like Elbert was looking. And I see what he see. How Letty was

-what she'd said that morning that she was&mdash;and that I was&mdash;and that we

-all was: A mother, then and there, whether she ever had any children or

-not. And she was next door to owning up to it right there before them

-all and before Elbert. We didn't speak so when I was a girl. We didn't

-own up, out loud, that we ever thought anything about what we was for.

-But now, when I heard Letty do it....</p>

-

-<p>" ... Now, when I heard Letty do it, all to once, I looked into a window

-of the world. And instead of touching hands like I had with the women

-that use' to be, I looked off and off down all the time there's going to

-be, and for a minute I touched, tip-fingers, the hands of the other

-women that's coming towards me; and out of places inside of me that I

-didn't know before had eyes, I see them, mothers to the whole world,

-<i>inside their four walls and out</i>. And they wasn't coming with poultices

-and bread and broth in their hands, to patch up what had been left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>

-undone; nor with the keys to schoolhouses that they'd got open by

-scheming; nor with newspapers full of health that they'd had to run down

-back alleys to sell; nor national holidays that they'd got a-hold of

-through sheer accident; nor yet with nice new headstones for cemetery

-improvements on the dead and gone&mdash;no, sir, their hands wasn't occupied

-with any of these ways of serving that they'd schemed for and stole. But

-their hands&mdash;was in men's hands, closer and nearer than they'd ever been

-before. And their eyes was lit up with a look that was a new look, and

-that give new life to the old original left-over blaze. And I looked

-across to that row of tired men, not so very much dressed up, and I

-thought:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'You're the men of this world and we're the women. And there ain't no

-more thrilling fact in this universe, save one, <i>save one</i>: And that's

-that we're all human beings. That your job and ours is to make the world

-ready for the folks that are to come, and to make the folks that come

-fit to live in that new world. And yet over there by Black Hollow one of

-our children is dying from something that was your job <i>and</i> ours to do,

-and we didn't take hold of hands and do it!'</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, Letty!' I says out. 'And Silas and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> all of you! Let's pretend,

-just for a minute, that we was all citizens and equal. And let's figure

-out things for Otie, just like we had the right!'</p>

-

-<p class="space-above">"I'd asked Letty to spend the night with me, and Elbert walked home with

-us. And just as we got there, he says to her again:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, Letty&mdash;you ain't <i>strong</i> enough to help carry things along!'</p>

-

-<p>"'You've got more strength,' she says to him, 'and more brains. But it

-isn't so much the strength or the brains in women that is going to help

-when the time comes. It's the&mdash;mother in them.'</p>

-

-<p>"And I says to myself:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'And it's the&mdash;<i>human beingness</i> of them.' But Letty didn't know that

-yet.</p>

-

-<p>"Elbert answered, after a minute:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'You may be right and you may be wrong, but, Letty, Letty, what a woman

-you are!'</p>

-

-<p>"And at that Letty looked up at him, just as she had looked at him that

-morning&mdash;just for a minute, and then she dipped down the brim of her big

-hat. I donno what she answered him. I didn't care. I didn't care. For

-what I see was the old wild joy of a woman in being glorified by a male

-creature. And I knew then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> and I know now, that that won't never die,

-no matter what.</p>

-

-<p>"Elbert put out his hand.</p>

-

-<p>"'Good night, Letty,' he said.</p>

-

-<p>"She gave him hers, and he closed over it light with his other hand.</p>

-

-<p>"'May I see you to-morrow?' he asked her.</p>

-

-<p>"'Oh, I don't know,' said Letty. 'Come and see if I'll see you&mdash;will

-you?'</p>

-

-<p>"He laughed a little, looking in her eyes.</p>

-

-<p>"'At about eight,' he promised. 'Good night....'</p>

-

-<p>"I got the key out from under the mat to a tune inside me. Because I'd

-heard, and I knew that Letty had heard, that tone in Elbert's voice that

-is the human tone&mdash;I can't rightly name it, but every woman in the world

-knows it when she hears it&mdash;a tone that says: <i>If I have my way, you and

-I are going to live out our lives together</i>.</p>

-

-<p>"And I knew then, and I know now, that that tone won't ever die, either.

-And some day, away off in a new world right here on this earth, I

-believe there's going to be a wilder joy in being men and women than all

-the men and women up to now have ever lived or dared or dreamed.</p>

-

-<hr />

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>

-

-<h2>XIII</h2>

-

-<p>"'Miss Marsh,' says Christopher.</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Emmons's living-room was like a cup of something cool, and I set

-there in the after-supper light having such a nice rested time drinking

-it in that at first I didn't hear him.</p>

-

-<p>"'Miss Marsh,' he says again, and pulled at my dress. I put out my hand

-to him and he took it. Sometimes I donno but hands are a race of beings

-by themselves that talk and answer and do all the work and act like

-slaves and yet really rule the world.</p>

-

-<p>"'Is it me telling my feet where to go or do they tell me where I go?'

-asked Christopher.</p>

-

-<p>"'You can have it either way you want,' I told him. 'Some does one way

-and some does the other. Which way do you like?'</p>

-

-<p>"He thought for a minute, twisting on one foot with the other up in his

-hand.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'd like 'em to know how without our sayin' so,' he announces finally.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' I says, 'I left out that way. That's really the best way of

-all.'</p>

-

-<p>"He looked at me eager.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p><p>"'Is it a game?' he says.</p>

-

-<p>"'Yes,' I told him.</p>

-

-<p>"'What's its name?' he ask' me.</p>

-

-<p>"'Game of Life,' I told him again.</p>

-

-<p>"He thought about it, still twisting. Then he done one of his littlest

-laughs, with his head turned away.</p>

-

-<p>"'My feet heard you,' he says. 'Now they know how to play.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I hope so, Christopher,' says I, and kissed him on the back of his

-neck. That made him mad, like it usually done.</p>

-

-<p>"'My neck is my neck,' says he, 'and it's shut in my collar. It ain't

-home to-day.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Is your mouth home?' I ask' him.</p>

-

-<p>"And it was.</p>

-

-<p>"I could of set there talking with him all evening, but not on the night

-of Sodality's Annual. I'd stopped by for Mis' Emmons. She was getting

-ready, and while I waited I could hear folks passing on their way to the

-schoolhouse where the meeting was. For the town was all het up about

-what the meeting was going to do.</p>

-

-<p>"I'd seen half-dozen or so of us that afternoon when we was putting

-plants on the hall platform, and we'd all spoke our minds.</p>

-

-<p>"'I'm gaspin',' observed Mis' Sturgis, 'to take a straw vote of us on

-this amendin' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>business. Near as I can make out, it's going through.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Near as I can make out,' says Marne Holcomb, 'a good deal more than

-amending is going on here to-night. It looks to me as if Sodality was

-just going to get into its own Cemetery and be forgot, and as if

-something else was coming to meet us&mdash;something big!'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Toplady spoke up, comfortable, down on her knees putting green

-paper on the pots.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well, my land!' she says, 'I've noticed two-three things in my

-lifetime. And one is, that do what whoever will, things do change. And

-so whenever a new change pops up, I always think: "Oh, I guess you're

-comin' along anyway. I donno's I need to help." An' yet somethin' in me

-always prances to pitch in, too.'</p>

-

-<p>"Timothy was there, occupying himself with the high places us ladies

-couldn't get up to.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says he, 'if folks stop dying, like Sodality evidently intends

-they shall if it goes out of business, maybe you'll stay home some,

-Amandy, and not always be off laying folks out.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I know it,' Mis' Toplady returns, 'I've laid out most everybody I

-know, and of course I'm real glad to do it. But the last dead's hair I

-done up, I caught myself thinking how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> much more interesting it'd be if

-they was alive an' could find fault. Doin' for the dead gets kind of

-monotonous, <i>I</i> think.'</p>

-

-<p>"'<i>I</i> don't,' says Timothy, decided. 'The minute you work for the

-living, you get all upset with being criticised. I s'pose the dead would

-find fault, if they could, over the way you cut the grass for 'em. But

-they can't an' so there's an end to it, an' we get along, peaceful. If

-they was living folks layin' there, you can bet they'd do some back

-talk.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' says I, 'I've been sick of Sodality for years. But it was about

-the most what-you-might-call society I had, and I hated to give it up.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Me, either,' says Mame Holcomb.</p>

-

-<p>"'Me, either,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I declare I've often said I wouldn't

-know what <i>to</i> do if folks stopped dyin' so's Sodality would have to

-close out.'</p>

-

-<p>"Mis' Sykes was setting watching the rest of us.</p>

-

-<p>"'Well,' she observes, cold, 'if I was usin' the dead to keep in

-society, I donno's I'd own it up.'</p>

-

-<p>"Silas Sykes had just come over from the store to see if there was

-anything he could meddle in.</p>

-

-<p>"'Heh!' says he, showing his teeth. 'Not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> many of Sodality, as I can

-see, <i>deserves</i> to die and be done for, civilized.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Don't you worry yourself, Silas Sykes,' says I, 'we're going to be

-done things for before we die hereafter, and more civilized than ever

-you dreamed of, all up and down your ledger. That's where you do dream,

-ain't it, Silas?' I says. And though I said it gay, I meant it frank.</p>

-

-<p>"I remember I looked off down the room, and all of a sudden I see it as

-it would be that night, packed with folks. Somehow, we'd got to saying

-less about the Sodality part of the meeting, and more about the <i>open</i>

-part. Most of the town would be there. We'd got the School Board to

-leave us announce the second party for that night, following the

-meeting, and music was coming, and us ladies had froze the ice-cream,

-and the whole time reminded me of a big bud, flowered slow and bursting

-sudden.</p>

-

-<p>"'Land, land,' I says, fervent, 'I feel like Friendship Village was a

-person that I was going to meet to-night for the first time.'</p>

-

-<p>"'You express yourself so odd sometimes, Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes,

-distant&mdash;but Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, they

-both looked up and nodded, and they knew.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p><p>"I set holding Christopher in Mis' Emmons's living-room, and thinking

-about this and most everything else, when I looked out and see Insley

-going along. He hadn't been back in town since Christopher's father's

-funeral, two days before, and I'd been wanting to talk over with him a

-thing or two that was likely to come up at the meeting, that of course

-he was going to be at, and that had to be handled with thimbles on every

-finger, or somebody'd get pricked. So I rapped smart on the upper sash

-and called to him through the screen, but not before I had seen the look

-on his face. I've caught that special look only once or twice in my

-life&mdash;the look of somebody passing the house that is different to them

-from all other houses in the world. The look that wants to be a look and

-won't let itself be, that tries to turn the other way and can't start,

-that thinks it's unconscious and knows it isn't, and that finally, with

-Insley, give it up and looked Mis' Emmons's house straight in the face

-for a minute, as if he might anyhow let himself have that much intimacy.</p>

-

-<p>"I had a little list of things I wanted to see go through that night.

-Enough of us was ready to have Sodality perform its last cemetery rite

-and bury itself so that that was pretty sure to go through, but I wanted

-more than that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> and several of us ladies did; and it looked to me like

-the schoolhouse and the young folks and the milk and the meat of this

-town could be done nice things to, so be we managed the meeting right. I

-even had a wild dream that the whole new society might adopt

-Christopher. Well, I donno why that's funny. It ain't funny when a club

-makes a building or a play or a bazaar or a dinner. Why shouldn't it

-make a man?</p>

-

-<p>"I told some of this to Insley, and he caught fire and lit up into a

-torch and had it all thought out beforehand, better than I could of

-dreamed it. But he made me feel bad. Haunted folks&mdash;folks haunted by

-something that was and that isn't&mdash;always makes me feel bad. How is it

-possible, I see he was asking himself the old, wore-out question, to

-drive out of the world something that is the world?</p>

-

-<p>"While we talked, Christopher went off to sleep in my arms, and even

-while I was so interested, I was enjoying the change that comes&mdash;the

-head growing heavier and heavier on my arm, as if sleep weighed

-something.</p>

-

-<p>"'Poor little kiddie,' I says, stupid.</p>

-

-<p>"'Rich little kiddie,' Insley says, wistful.</p>

-

-<p>"'Dear little kiddie,' says somebody else.</p>

-

-<p>"In the dining room doorway Robin stood&mdash;in a doorway as we had first

-seen her.</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p><p>"'Put him over here on the couch, do,' she says. 'It's much too hot to

-hold him, Calliope.'</p>

-

-<p>"She'd called me that at Mr. Bartlett's funeral, and I recollect how my

-throat went all over me when she done so. Ain't it funny about your own

-first name? It seems so <i>you</i> when somebody nice says it for the first

-time&mdash;more you than you ever knew you were.</p>

-

-<p>"Insley lifted Chris in his arms to do as she said, and then stood

-staring at her across the child.</p>

-

-<p>"'I've been thinking,' he said, blunt&mdash;it's like watching the sign of

-folks to watch the different kind of things that makes them blunt. 'It's

-not my affair, but do you think you ought to let Chris get so&mdash;so used

-to you? What will he do when you're&mdash;when you go away?'</p>

-

-<p>"At this she said nothing for a moment, then she smiled up at him.</p>

-

-<p>"'I meant what I told him that night his father died,' she answered.

-'I'm going to keep Chris with me, always.'</p>

-

-<p>"'Always?' He stared at her, saw her face mean what she said. 'How fine

-of you! How fine of Mr. Proudfit!' said Insley.</p>

-

-<p>"She waited just a breath, then she met his eyes, brave.</p>

-

-<p>"'Not fine of me,' she says&mdash;'only fine for me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> And not&mdash;Mr. Proudfit

-at all. I ought to take back what I told you&mdash;since I did tell you. That

-is not going to be.'</p>

-

-<p>"I don't think Insley meant for a minute to show any lack of formal

-respect for Christopher's sleep. But what Insley did was simply to turn

-and sit him down, bolt upright, on my lap. Then he wheeled round, trying

-to read her face.</p>

-

-<p>"'Do you mean you aren't going to marry him?' he demanded, rough&mdash;it's

-like watching another sign of folks to watch for the one thing that will

-make one or another rough.</p>

-

-<p>"'We are not going to be married,' she said. 'I mean that.'</p>

-

-<p>"I suppose likely the room went away altogether then, Christopher and me

-included, and left Insley there in some place a long ways from

-everywhere, with Robin's face looking at him. And he just naturally took

-that face between his hands.</p>

-

-<p>"'Robin,' he said, 'don't make me wait to know.'</p>

-

-<p>"Insley was the suddenest thing. And land, what it done to her name to

-have him say it. Just for a minute it sounded as if her name was the

-population of the world,&mdash;but with room for everybody else, too.</p>

-

-<p>"I think she put up her hands to take down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> his hands, but when she

-touched them, I think hers must have closed over his, next door to on

-purpose.</p>

-

-<p>"'Dear,' she says, 'tell me afterward.'</p>

-

-<p>"In that minute of stillness in which any new heaven is let down on a

-suitable new earth, a little voice piped up:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p>"'Tell it now,' says the voice. 'Is it a story? Tell it now.'</p>

-

-<p>"And there was Christopher, wide awake where he had been set down rude

-on my knee, and looking up at them, patient.</p>

-

-<p>"'I was dreamin' my dream,' he explained, polite. 'It was about all the

-nice things there is: You and you and you and hot ice-cream and the

-house's party.... Is they any more?' he asked, anxious.</p>

-

-<p>"Robin put out her arms for him, and she and Insley and I smiled at one

-another over his head.</p>

-

-<p>"'Ever so many more,' we told him.</p>

-

-<p class="space-above">"I slipped out then and found Mis' Emmons, and I guess I come as near

-shining as anything that's like me can.</p>

-

-<p>"'What's the matter?' she says to me. 'You look as if you'd turned up

-the wick.'</p>

-

-<p>"'I did. They have. I won't tell,' I says.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> 'Oh, Mis' Emmons, I guess

-the meeting to-night won't need to adopt Christopher.'</p>

-

-<p>"She looked up at me quick, and then she started shining, too.</p>

-

-<p>"'What a universe it is,' she says, '&mdash;what a universe it is.'</p>

-

-<p>"Then we went off down to the meeting together. And the village was

-wonderful to go through, like a home some of us had hollowed out of the

-hills and was living in, common. As we went walking to the schoolhouse,

-the sidewalks seemed to me no more than ways dickered up to fasten us

-together, and to fasten us to them whose feet had wore the road before

-us, and to lead us to them that was coming, coming after: Christopher

-and Eph and Spudge Cadoza and Otie Daniel, or them like these. Otie

-Daniel had died the night before. Dr. Barrows had said Eph would not be

-lame, but we see he wan't sure of the value of the boy's physical life.

-But even so, even so we had a chance with Chris, and we had a chance

-with Spudge, and we had millions more. My feet wanted to run along them

-roads to meet the millions and my fingers tingled to get things ready.

-And as we went down Daphne Street to that meeting, I see how we all

-<i>was</i> getting things ready, and I could of sung out for what I saw:&mdash;</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p><p>"For Mame Holcomb, sprinkling clothes on the back porch and hurrying to

-get to the hall.</p>

-

-<p>"For Mis' Uppers, picking her currants before she went, so's to get an

-early start on her jam in the morning.</p>

-

-<p>"For Viny Liberty, setting sponge for her bread loud enough so we heard

-her clear out in the street, and for Libby, shutting up her chicken coop

-that they earned their own living with.</p>

-

-<p>"For Mis' Toplady, driving by with Timothy, and her in the brown silk

-she'd made herself, like she's made all she's got.</p>

-

-<p>"For Abagail Arnold, wiping out her window to be filled to-morrow with

-the pies of her hand.</p>

-

-<p>"For little Mis' Sparks, rocking her baby on the front stoop and

-couldn't come to the meeting at all, 'count of having nobody to leave

-him with.</p>

-

-<p>"For them that had left cloth bleaching in their side yards and was

-saving the price of buying bleached. For them that had done their day's

-work, from parlour to wood-shed, and had hurried up the supper dishes

-and changed their dress and was on their way to the schoolhouse. For

-them that had lived lives like this and had died at it. For all the

-little dog-eared, wore-out account books where every one of them women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>

-figured out careful what they couldn't spend. And I looked down the

-street till I couldn't see no farther, and yet Daphne Street was going

-on, round and round the world, and acrost and acrost it, full of women

-doing the same identical way. And I could see away off to the places

-that Daphne Street led past, where women has all these things done for

-them and where the factories is setting them free, like us here in the

-village ain't free just yet, and I felt a wicked envy for them that can

-set their hands to the New Work, that us here in Friendship Village is

-trying so hard to get in between whiles. And I could see away ahead to

-times when sponge and currants and clothes and coops and similar won't

-have to be mothered by women 'most as much as children are; but when

-women, Away Off Then, will be mothers and workers and general human

-beings such as yet we only know how to think about being, scrappy and

-wishful. But all the time, in their arms and in ours and nowheres else,

-lays all the rest of the world that is ever going to be. And something

-in me kind of climbed out of me and run along ahead and looked back at

-me over its shoulder and says: 'Keep up, keep up, Calliope.' And before

-I knew it, right out loud, I says: 'I will. I will.'</p>

-

-<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p><p>"An hour later, up in the schoolhouse, Silas Sykes stood arguing, to

-the top of his tone, that the first work of the reorganized

-society&mdash;that was to take in the whole town&mdash;had ought to be to buy a

-bargain Cupid-and-fish fountain he knew of, for the market square.</p>

-

-<p>"'It's going to take years and years to do&mdash;everything,' says Mis'

-Emmons to me, low.</p>

-

-<p>"But that didn't seem like much of anything to either of us. 'What if it

-is,' I says. And she nodded."</p>

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-<pre>

-

-

-

-

-

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-</pre>

-

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+    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
+    <title>
+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mothers To Men, by Zona Gale.
+    </title>
+    <style type="text/css">
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+            /*  visibility: hidden;  */
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+                left: 92%;
+                font-size: smaller;
+                text-align: right;
+                text-indent: 0px;
+              } /* page numbers */
+
+    .center   {text-align: center;}
+    .smaller  {font-size: smaller;}
+    .smcap    {font-variant: small-caps;}
+    .mynote { background-color: #DDE; color: black; padding: .5em; margin-left: 20%;
+              margin-right: 20%; } /* colored box for notes at beginning of file */
+    .space-above {margin-top: 3em;}
+    .right            {text-align: right;}
+    .left             {text-align: left;}
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+    .poem             {display: inline-block; text-align: left;}
+    .poem br          {display: none;}
+    .poem .stanza     {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;}
+    .poem div        {margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;}
+
+    </style>
+  </head>
+<body>
+<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53650 ***</div>
+
+<div class="mynote"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:<br /><br />
+A Table of Contents has been added.<br /></p></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="center"><a name="cover.jpg" id="cover.jpg"></a><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover" /></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="bold2">MOTHERS TO MEN</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="logo" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+NEW YORK &middot; BOSTON &middot; CHICAGO<br />SAN FRANCISCO<br /><br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br />
+LONDON &middot; BOMBAY &middot; CALCUTTA<br />MELBOURNE<br /><br />
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br />TORONTO</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1>MOTHERS TO MEN</h1>
+
+<p class="bold space-above">BY</p>
+
+<p class="bold2">ZONA GALE</p>
+
+<p class="bold">AUTHOR OF "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE," "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE<br />
+LOVE STORIES," "THE LOVES OF PELLEAS<br />
+AND ETARRE," ETC.</p>
+
+<p class="bold space-above">New York<br />
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+1911<br />
+<br />
+<i>All Rights Reserved</i></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1911, by The Butterick Publishing Company, The Ridgeway<br />
+Company, The Crowell Publishing Company, and The Standard<br />
+Fashion Company.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1911,<br /><br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.<br />&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911.</p>
+
+<p class="center space-above">Norwood Press<br />
+J. S. Cushing Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith Co.<br />Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="bold2">MOTHERS TO MEN</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span>CONTENTS</span></h2>
+
+<table summary="CONTENTS">
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smaller">CHAPTER</span></td>
+    <td> &nbsp; &nbsp; <span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>MOTHERS TO MEN</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>I</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>II</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>III</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>IV</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>V</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_130">130</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VIII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>IX</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>X</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XIII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_314">314</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>MOTHERS TO MEN</h2>
+
+<p>"Daddy!"</p>
+
+<p>The dark was so thick with hurrying rain that the child's voice was
+drowned. So he splashed forward a few steps in the mud and puddles of
+the highway and plucked at the coat of the man tramping before. The man
+took a hand from a pocket and stooped somewhat to listen, still plodding
+ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"Daddy! It's the hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went right
+through that hole an' it chokes my toe awful."</p>
+
+<p>The man suddenly squatted in the mud, presenting a broad, scarcely
+distinguishable back.</p>
+
+<p>"Climb up," he commanded.</p>
+
+<p>The boy wavered. His body ached with weariness, his feet were sore and
+cold, something in his head was numb. But in a moment he ran on, two
+steps or three, past the man.</p>
+
+<p>"Nope," he said, "I'm seeing if I could walk all the way. I could&mdash;yet.
+I just told you 'bout my toe, daddy, 'cause I <i>had</i> to talk about it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p><p>The man said nothing, but he rose and groped for the child's arm and
+got it about the armpit, and, now and then as they walked, he pulled the
+shoulder awkwardly upward, trying to help.</p>
+
+<p>After a time of silence the rain subsided a little, so that the child's
+voice was less like a drowned butterfly.</p>
+
+<p>"Daddy," he said, "what's velvet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno, sonny. Some kind of black cloth, I guess. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"It came in my head," the child explained. "I was tryin' to think of
+nice things. Velvet sounds like a king's clothes&mdash;but it sounds like a
+coffin too. I didn't know if it's a nice thing."</p>
+
+<p>This, the man understood swiftly, was because <i>her</i> coffin had been
+black velvet&mdash;the coffin which he had had no money to buy for her, for
+his wife and the boy's mother, the coffin which had been bought with the
+poor fund of a church which he had never entered. "What other nice thing
+you been thinkin' of?" he asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Circus. An' angels. An' ice-cream. An' a barrel o' marbles. An' bein'
+warm an' clean stockin's an' rocked...."</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" said the man.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p><p>The child looked up expectantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say anything back?" he inquired eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word," said the man in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Lemme try," said the child. "God&mdash;oh, God&mdash;<i>God dear</i>!" he called into
+the night.</p>
+
+<p>From the top of the hill on the edge of the Pump pasture which in that
+minute they had reached, they suddenly saw, cheery and yellow and alive,
+the lamps of Friendship Village, shining in the valley; and away at one
+side, less in serene contemplation than in deliberate withdrawal, shone
+the lights of a house set alone on its hill.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, daddy, daddy&mdash;look at the lights!" the child cried. "God didn't say
+nothin' with words. Maybe he talks with lights instead of 'em."</p>
+
+<p>The man quickened his steps until, to keep pace with him, the little boy
+broke into uneven running.</p>
+
+<p>"Is those lights where we're goin', daddy?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That's where," said the man. He put his hand in his pocket and felt for
+the fifteen cents that lay there, wrapped in paper. The fancied odour
+and warmth of something to drink caught at him until he could hardly
+bear the longing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p><p>But before he could get to the drink he must do something else. The man
+had been fighting away the thought of what he meant to do. But when they
+entered the village and were actually upon its main street, lonely in
+the rainy, eight o'clock summer dusk, what he meant to do had to be
+faced. So he began looking this way and that for a place to leave the
+child. There was a wagon shop. Old wagons stood under the open shed,
+their thills and tongues hanging, not expectant of journeys like those
+of new wagons, but idle, like the worn arms of beaten men. Some men, he
+thought, would leave the boy there, to sleep under a seat and be found
+in the morning; but he was no such father as that, he reflected
+complacently. He meant to leave the boy in a home, give him a fair
+start. There was a little house with a broken picket fence&mdash;someway she
+wouldn't have liked him to be there; <i>she</i> always liked things nice. He
+had never been able to give the boy much that was nice, but now, he said
+to himself, he would take nothing second rate. There was a grocery with
+a light above stairs where very likely the family lived, and there, too,
+was a dry stairway where the child could sit and wait until somebody
+came&mdash;no, not there either.... "The best ain't none too good for the
+little fellow," thought the man.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p><p>"Dad-<i>ee</i>!" cried the child suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>He had run a few steps on and stood with his nose against the misty pane
+of Abagail Arnold's Home Bakery. Covered with pink mosquito-netting were
+a plate of sugar rolls, a fruit cake, a platter of cream puffs, and a
+tall, covered jar of shelled nuts.</p>
+
+<p>"Hustle up&mdash;you!" said the man roughly, and took him by the arm again.</p>
+
+<p>"I was comin'," said the little boy.</p>
+
+<p>Why not leave the child at the bakery? No&mdash;a house. It must be a house,
+with a porch and a front stair and big upstairs rooms and a look of
+money-in-the-bank. He was giving care to the selection. It was as if he
+were exercising some natural paternal office, to be scrupulously
+discharged. Music issued from the wooden saloon building with the false
+two-story front and the coloured windows; from a protesting piano a
+dance tune was being furiously forced, and, as the door swung open, the
+tap and thud of feet, the swell of voices and laughter, the odour of the
+spirits caught at the cold and weary man. "Hurry along&mdash;hurry along!" he
+bade the boy roughly. That was where he would come back afterward, but
+first he must find the right place for the boy.</p>
+
+<p>Vaguely he was seeking for that section of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> the village which it would
+call "the residence part," with that ugly and naked appropriation of the
+term which excludes all the humbler homes from residence-hood at all.
+But when he had turned aside from the main street he came upon the First
+Church, with lights streaming from the ground-glass windows of the
+prayer-meeting room, and he stood still, staring up at it.</p>
+
+<p>She had cared a good deal about that sort of thing. Churches did
+good&mdash;it was a church that had buried her when he could not. Why not
+there? Why not leave the child there?</p>
+
+<p>He turned aside and mounted the three wooden steps and sat down, drawing
+the boy beside him. Grateful for a chance to rest, the child turned
+sidewise and dropped his head heavily on his father's arm. There was
+light enough for the father to see the thick, wet hair on the babyish
+forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"I did walked all the way, didn't I?" the child said triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet you did," said his father absently.</p>
+
+<p>Since the boy's mother had died only three months had passed, but in
+that time had been crowded for the child a lifetime of physical misery.
+Before that time, too, there had been hunger and cold and the torture of
+the continual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> quarreling between that mother, sickly, half-fed,
+irritable, and this father, out of work and drunken. Then the mother had
+died, and the man had started out with the boy, seeking new work where
+they would not know his old vice. And in these three months, for the
+boy's sake, that old vice had been kept bound. For the boy's sake he had
+been sober and, if the chance had come, he would have been industrious.
+But, save for odd jobs, the chance never came; there seemed to be a kind
+of ineffectualness in the way he asked for work which forbade him a
+trial. Then one day, after almost three months of the struggle, he had
+waked to the old craving, to the need, the instant need, for liquor. He
+had faced the situation honestly. He knew, or thought he knew, his power
+of endurance. He knew that in a day or two he would be worsted, and that
+there would follow a period of which, afterward, he would remember
+nothing. Meanwhile, what of the boy? He had a fondness for the boy, and
+there remained to the man some shreds of decency and even of tradition.
+He would not turn him over to the "authorities." He would not cast him
+adrift in the city. He resolved to carry him to the country, to some
+near little town where, dimly it seemed to him, the people would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+more likely to take him in. "They have more time&mdash;an' more room&mdash;an'
+more to eat," he sought to explain it to himself. So he had walked, and
+the child had walked, from the City to Friendship Village. He must find
+a place to leave him: why not leave him here on the church steps,
+"outside the meetin'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you go to sleep, kiddie," he said, and shook him lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"I was jus' restin' my eye-flaps. Eye-things. <i>What</i> are they, daddy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eye-lids."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Them. They're tired, too," said the child, and smiled&mdash;the sleepy
+smile which gave his face a baby winsomeness. Then he snuggled in the
+curve of arm, like a drowsy, nosing puppy.</p>
+
+<p>The father sat looking down on him, and in his breast something pulled.
+In these three months he had first become really acquainted with the
+boy, had first performed for him little personal offices&mdash;sewed on a
+button or two, bought him shoes, bound up a hurt finger. In this time,
+too, he had first talked with him alone, tried to answer his questions.
+"Where <i>is</i> my mamma, an' will she rock somebody else?" "Are you going
+to be my daddy till you die, an' <i>then</i> who'll be?" "What is the biggest
+thing everybody knows? Can I know it too?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>... Also, in these three
+months, at night he had gone to sleep, sometimes in a bed, oftener in a
+barn, now and again under the stars, with the child breathing within his
+reach, and had waked to keep him covered with his own coat. Now he was
+going to end all this.</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't fair to the kid not to. It ain't fair to cart him around like
+this," he said over and over, defending himself before some dim
+dissenter.</p>
+
+<p>The boy suddenly swung back from his father's arm and looked up in his
+face. "Will&mdash;will there be any supper till morning?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>You might have thought that the man did not hear, he sat so still
+looking down the wet road-ruts shining under the infrequent lamps.
+Hunger and cold, darkness and wet and ill-luck&mdash;why should he not keep
+the boy from these? It was not deserting his child; it was giving him
+into better hands. It did not occur to him that the village might not
+accept the charge. Anything would be better than what he himself had to
+give. Hunger and cold and darkness....</p>
+
+<p>"You stay still here a minute, sonny," said the man.</p>
+
+<p>"You goin' 'way?" the child demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"A minute. You stay still here&mdash;right<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> where you are," said the man, and
+went into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The little boy sat still. He was wide awake now that he was alone; the
+walls of the dark seemed suddenly to recede, and instead of merely the
+church steps there was the whole black, listening world to take account
+of. He sat alert, trying to warm each hand on the cold wrist of its
+fellow. Where had his father gone? To find them a place to stay? Suppose
+he came back and said that he had found them a home; and they should go
+to it; and it would have a coal stove and a bedstead, and a pantry with
+cookies and brown sugar in the jars. And a lady would come and cook
+molasses candy for him....</p>
+
+<p>All this time something was hurting him intolerably. It was the foot,
+and the biggest toe, and the hole that was "choking" <i>him</i>. He fumbled
+at his shoe laces, but they were wet and the shoes were wet and sodden,
+and he gave it up. Where had his father gone? How big the world seemed
+when he was gone, and how <i>different</i> the night was. And when the lady
+had the molasses candy cooked, like in a story, she would cool it at the
+window and they would cut it in squares....</p>
+
+<p>As suddenly as he had gone, his father reappeared from the darkness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>"Here," he said roughly, and thrust in the child's hands a paper bag.
+And when he had opened it eagerly there were sugar rolls and cream puffs
+and a piece of fruit cake and some shelled nuts. Fifteen cents' worth of
+food, badly enough selected, in all conscience, but&mdash;fifteen cents'
+worth. The fifteen cents which the man had been carrying in his pocket,
+wrapped in paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Now set there," said his father, "an' eat 'em up. An' listen, son. Set
+there till folks come out from in there. Set there till they come out.
+An' here's somethin' I'm puttin' in your coat pocket&mdash;see? It's a paper.
+Don't you look at it. But when the folks come out from in there&mdash;an' ask
+you anything&mdash;you show 'em that. Remember. Show 'em that."</p>
+
+<p>In the prayer-meeting room the reed organ sent out some trembling,
+throaty chords, and the little group in there sang an old melody. It was
+strange to the man, as he listened&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>"Break thou the bread of life</div>
+<div>To me, to me&mdash;"</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>but, "That's it," he thought, "that's it. Break it to him&mdash;I can't. All
+I can give him is stuff in a paper bag, an' not always that. Now you
+break it to him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p><p>"Dad-<i>ee</i>!" cried the child. "You!"</p>
+
+<p>Startled, the man looked down at him. It was almost like a counter
+charge. But the child was merely holding out to him half his store. The
+man shook his head and went down the steps to the sidewalk and turned to
+look back at the child munching happily from the paper sack. "Break it
+to him&mdash;break it to him&mdash;God!" the father muttered, as he might have
+used a charm.</p>
+
+<p>Again the child looked out expectantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say anything back?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word&mdash;not a word," said the man again. This time he laughed,
+nervously and foolishly. "But mebbe he will," he mumbled
+superstitiously. "I dunno. Now, you set there. An' then you give 'em the
+paper&mdash;an' go with anybody out o' the church that asks you. Dad may not
+get back for&mdash;quite a while...."</p>
+
+<p>The man went. The child, deep in the delight of a cream puff, wondered
+and looked after him troublously, and was vaguely comforted by the
+murmur of voices beyond the doors.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, God didn't answer back because he was to the church meeting," the
+child thought, when he heard the people moving about within.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<p>"Inside the church that night," Calliope Marsh is wont to tell it, "the
+Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality was having one
+of our special meetings, with hot chocolate and ice lemonade and two
+kinds of wafers. There wasn't a very big attendance, account of the
+rain, and there was so much refreshments ready that us ladies was urgin'
+the men to have all they wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"'Drink both kinds, Timothy,' Mis Toplady says to her husband,
+persuadin'; 'it'll have to be throwed away if somebody don't drink it
+up.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Lord, Amandy,' says Timothy, testy, 'I do hate to be sicked on to my
+food like that. It takes away my appetite, same as poison would.'</p>
+
+<p>"'They always do it,' says Jimmy Sturgis, morose. 'My wife'll say to me,
+"Jimmy, eat up them cold peas. They'll spoil if you don't," and, "Jimmy,
+can't you make 'way with them cold pancakes?" Till I wish't I could
+starve.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, if you hadn't et up things,' says Mis' Sturgis, mild, 'we'd of
+been scrappin' in the poor-house by now. I dunno but I'd ruther scrap
+where I am.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p><p>"'Sure!' says Postmaster Silas Sykes, that always pours oil on troubled
+waters except when the trouble is his own; and then he churns them.</p>
+
+<p>"'I dunno what ailed me in business meeting to-night,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I declare, I was full as nervous as a
+witch. I couldn't keep my feet still anywheres.'</p>
+
+<p>"'The fidgets,' comprehends Mis' Uppers, sympathetic. 'I get 'em in my
+feet 'long toward night sometimes. Turn an' twist an' shift&mdash;I know the
+feeling. Whenever my feet begin that, I always give right up an' take
+off my shoes an' get into my rubbers.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I wish't I had some rubbers now,' says Mis' Mayor Uppers. 'I
+wore my best shoes out to tea an' come right from tea here, like a
+maniac. An' now look at me, in my Three Dollar-and-a-half kids an' the
+streets runnin' rivers.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You take my rubbers,' Mis' Timothy Toplady offered. 'I've set with 'em
+on all evening because I always get 'em mixed up at Sodality, an' I
+declare the water'll feel good to my poor feet.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, no, don't you trouble,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I'll just slip my shoes
+off an' track that one block in my stocking feet. Then I'll put 'em in
+good, hot water an' go to bed. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> wouldn't of come out to-night at all
+if it hadn't of been for the professor.'</p>
+
+<p>"'For goodness' sakes,' I says, 'don't call him that. You know how he
+hates it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But I do like to say it,' Mis' Uppers insists, wistful. 'He's the only
+professor I ever knew.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Me either,' I says&mdash;and I knew how she felt.</p>
+
+<p>"Just the same, we was getting to like Mr. Insley too much to call him
+that if he didn't want it, or even 'doctor' that was more common, though
+over to Indian Mound College, half way between us and the City, he is
+one or both, and I dunno but his name tapers off with capital letters,
+same as some.</p>
+
+<p>"'I just came over here to work,' he told us when we first see him. 'I
+don't profess anything. And "doctor" means teacher, you know, and I'm
+just learning things. Must you have a formal title for me? Won't Mr.
+do?'</p>
+
+<p>"Most of the College called him just 'Insley,' friendly and approving,
+and dating back to his foot-ball days, and except when we was speaking
+to him, we commonly got to calling him that too. A couple of months
+before he'd come over from the College with a letter of introduction
+from one of the faculty to Postmaster Silas Sykes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> that is an alderman
+and our professional leading citizen. The letter from the College said
+that we could use Mr. Insley in any local civic work we happened to be
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Civic work?' Silas says to him, thoughtful. 'You mean shuttin' up
+saloons an' like that?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Not necessarily,' he told him. 'Just work with folks, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a, settin' out bushes?' Silas asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Whatever you're most interested in, Mr. Sykes,' says he. 'Isn't there
+some organization that's doing things here?'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas wasn't interested in so very much of anything except Silas. But
+the word 'organization' helped him out.</p>
+
+<p>"'There's the Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality,'
+says he. 'That must be the very kind of a thing you mean.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley laughed a little, but he let Mis' Sykes, that loves new things
+and new people, bring him to our next evening meeting in the church
+parlors, and he'd been back several times, not saying much, but just
+getting acquainted. And that rainy night, when the men met with us to
+talk over some money raising for Sodality, we'd asked him to come over
+too. We all liked him. He had a kind of a used-to-things way, and you
+felt like you'd always known him or, for the time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> you hadn't, that
+you'd both missed something out; and he had a nice look too, a look that
+seemed to be saying 'good morning' and to be beginning a fine, new
+day&mdash;the best day yet.</p>
+
+<p>"He'd set there kind of broodin' the most of that evening, drinking
+whatever anybody brought him, but not putting his mind to it so very
+much; but it was a bright broodin', an' one that made you think of
+something that's going to open and not just of something that's shut up.
+You can brood both ways, but the effect is as different as a bud from a
+core.</p>
+
+<p>"'Speakin' of money raisin' for Sodality,' says Silas Sykes, kind of
+pretend hearty and pretend casual, like he does, 'why don't Sodality
+make some money off'n the Fourth of July? Everybody else is.'</p>
+
+<p>("Sodality always speaks of itself and of the Cemetery real intimate,
+without the <i>the</i>, an' everybody's got to doing it.)</p>
+
+<p>"Us ladies all set still and kept still. The Fourth of July, that was
+less than a week off, was a sore point with us, being we'd wanted a
+celebration that would <i>be</i> a celebration, and not merely a money-raiser
+for the town.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I say canvass, house to house,' says Timothy. 'Folks would give
+you a dime to get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> you off'n the front porch that wouldn't come out to a
+dime entertainment, never.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why not ask them that's got Dead in their own families, to pay out for
+'em, an' leave them alone that's got livin' mouths to feed?' says Threat
+Hubbelthwait, querulous. Threat ain't no relations but his wife, and he
+claims to have no Dead of his own. I always say they must be either
+living or dead, or else where's Threat come in? But he won't admit it.</p>
+
+<p>"'What you raisin' money for anyhow?' asks Eppleby Holcomb, quiet.
+Eppleby always keeps still a long time, and then lets out something
+vital.</p>
+
+<p>"As a matter of fact, Sodality didn't have no real work on hand,
+Cemetery lookin' real neat and tasty for Cemetery, and no immediate dead
+coming on as far as we could know; but we didn't have much of anything
+in the treasury, either. And when we didn't have any work on hand, we
+was in the habit of raising money, and when we'd got some money earnt,
+we was in the habit of devising some nice way to spend it. And so we
+kept Sodality real alive.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, there may not be any active dead just now,' Mis' Sykes explains
+it, 'but they are sure to die and need us. We had two country funerals
+to pay for last year. Or I might say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> one an' a half, one corpse
+contributing half enough for his own support in Cemetery.'</p>
+
+<p>"With that Insley spoke up, kind of firm and nice, with muscles in his
+tone, like he does:</p>
+
+<p>"'What's the matter with doing something with these folks before they
+die?' he asks.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess we all looked kind of blank&mdash;like when you get asked <i>why</i>
+Columbus discovered America and all you know how to answer is just the
+date he done so on.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'do what?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mustn't there be something to do with them, living, if there's
+everything to be done for them, dead?' Insley asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a' says Mis' Sykes, 'I don't know that I understand just how you
+mean that. Perhaps the Mission Band&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' says Insley. 'You. Us.'</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew a man to say so little and yet to get so much said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'of course Sodality was formed with the idee
+of caring for Cemetery. You see that lets in the Dead only.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Gosh,' says Eppleby Holcomb, 'how exclusive.' But I don't know as
+anybody heard him but me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' says Insley, slow. 'Well, at any rate, perhaps there are
+things that all of us <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>Living might do together&mdash;for the sake, say, of
+earning some money for the Dead. There'd be no objection to that, would
+there?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, no,' says Mis' Sykes. 'I'm sure nobody could take exception to
+<i>that</i>. Of course you always have to earn money out of the living.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley looked at us all kind of shy&mdash;at one and another and another of
+us, like he thought he might find some different answer in somebody's
+eyes. I smiled at him, and so did Mis' Toplady, and so did Eppleby; and
+Mis' Eleanor Emmons, the widow-lady, lately moved in, she nodded. But
+the rest set there like their faces was on wrong side out and didn't
+show no true pattern.</p>
+
+<p>"'I mean,' he says, not quite knowing how to make us understand what he
+was driving at, 'I mean, let's get to know these folks while they are
+alive. Aren't we all more interested in folks, than we are in their
+graves?'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Folks</i>,' Timothy Toplady says over, meditative, like he'd heard of
+members, customers, clients, murderers and the like, but never of folks.</p>
+
+<p>"'I mean,' Insley says again, 'oh, any one of a dozen things. For
+instance, do something jolly that'll give your young people something to
+do evenings&mdash;get them to help earn the money for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> Cemetery, if you want
+to,' he adds, laughing a little.</p>
+
+<p>"'There's goin' to be a Vigilance Committee to see after the young folks
+of Friendship Village, nights,' says Silas Sykes, grim.</p>
+
+<p>"'You might have town parties, have the parties in schools and in the
+town hall,' Insley goes on, 'and talk over the Cemetery that belongs to
+you all, and talk over the other things besides the Cemetery that belong
+to you all. Maybe I could help,' he adds, 'though I own up to you now
+I'm really more fond of folks&mdash;speaking by and large&mdash;than I am of
+tombstones.'</p>
+
+<p>"He said a little more to us, about how folks was doing in the world
+outside the village, and he was so humorous about it that they never
+knew how something inside him was hopping with hope, like I betted it
+was, with his young, divine enthusiasm. And when he'd got done he
+waited, all grave and eager, for somebody to peep up. And it was, as it
+would be, Silas Sykes who spoke first.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's all right, it's all right,' says he, 'so long as Sodality don't
+go meddling in the village affairs&mdash;petitionin' the council and
+protestin' an' so on. That gets any community all upset.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's so,' says Timothy, nodding. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>'Meetin', singin' songs, servin'
+lemonade an' plantin' things in the ground is all right enough. It helps
+on the fellow feelin' amazin'. But pitchin' in for reforms and things&mdash;'
+Timothy shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"'As to reforms,' says Insley, 'give me the fellowship, and the reforms
+will take care of themselves.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Things is quite handy about takin' their course, though,' says Silas,
+'so be we don't yank open the cocoons an' buds an' others.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Mis' Uppers, 'I can't do much more, Professor. I'm drove
+to death, as it is. I don't even get time to do my own improvin' round
+the place.' Mis' Uppers always makes that her final argument. 'Sew for
+the poor?' I've heard her say. 'Why, I can't even get my own fall sewing
+done.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Me, too,' and, 'Me, either,' went round the circle. And, 'I can't do a
+great deal myself,' says Mis' Sykes, 'not till after my niece goes
+away.'</p>
+
+<p>"I thought, 'I shouldn't think you could tend to much of anything else,
+not with Miss Beryl Sessions in the house.' That was the Sykes's niece,
+till then unknown to them, that we'd all of us heard nothing but, since
+long before she come. But of course I kept still, part because I was
+expecting an unknown niece of my own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> in a week or so, and your unknown
+relatives is quite likely to be glass houses.</p>
+
+<p>"'Another thing,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'don't let's us hold any
+doin's in this church, kicking up the new cork that the Ladies' Aid has
+just put down on the floor. It'll all be tracked up in no time, letting
+in Tom, Dick, and Harry.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't let's get the church mixed up in anything outside, for pity's
+sakes,' says Silas. 'The trustees'll object to our meeting here, if we
+quit working for a dignified object and go to making things mutual,
+promiscuous. Churches has got to be church-like.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, Silas,' says Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying anything,
+'I donno as some of us could bring ourselves to think of Christ as real
+Christ-like, if he come back the way he use' to be.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley sat looking round on them all, still with his way of saying good
+morning on a good day. I wondered if he wasn't wishing that they'd hang
+on that way to something worth hanging to. For I've always thought, and
+I think now, that they's a-plenty of stick-to-itiveness in the world;
+but the trouble is, it's stuck to the wrong thing.</p>
+
+<p>"The talk broke up after that, like somebody had said something in bad
+taste; and we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>conversed around in groups, and done our best to make
+'way with the refreshments. And Insley set talking to Mis' Eleanor
+Emmons, the new widow, lately moved in.</p>
+
+<p>"About Mis' Emmons the social judgment of Friendship Village was for the
+present hanging loose. This was partly because we didn't understand her
+name.</p>
+
+<p>"'My land, was her husband a felon or a thief or what that she don't use
+his name?' everybody asked everybody. 'What's she stick her own name in
+front of his last name like that for? Sneaked out of usin' his Christian
+name as soon as his back was turned, <i>I</i> call it,' said some. 'My land,
+I'd use my dead husband's forename if it was Nebuchadnezzar. <i>My</i>
+opinion, we'd best go slow till she explains herself.'</p>
+
+<p>"But I guess Insley had more confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"'You'll help, I know?' I heard him say to Mis' Emmons.</p>
+
+<p>"'My friend,' she says back, 'whatever I can do I'll do. It's a big job
+you're talking about, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's <i>the</i> big job,' says Insley, quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty soon Mis' Toplady got up on her feet, drawing her shawl up her
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' she says, 'whatever you decide, count on me&mdash;I'll always do for
+chinkin' in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> I've got to get home now and set my bread or it won't be
+up till day <i>after</i> to-morrow. Ready, Timothy? Good night all.'</p>
+
+<p>"She went towards the door, Timothy following. But before they got to
+it, it opened, and somebody come in, at the sight of who Mis' Toplady
+stopped short and the talk of the rest of us fell away. No stranger,
+much, comes to Friendship Village without our knowing it, and to have a
+stranger walk unbeknownst into the very lecture-room of the First Church
+was a thing we never heard of, without he was a book agent or a
+travelling man.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, though, was a stranger&mdash;and such a stranger. She was so
+unexpected and so dazzling that it shot through my head she was like a
+star, taking refuge from all the roughness and the rain outside&mdash;a star,
+so it come in my head, using up its leisure on a cloudy night with
+peepin' in here and there to give out brightness anyway. The rough, dark
+cheviot that the girl wore was sort of like a piece of storm-cloud
+clinging about that brightness&mdash;a brightness of wind-rosy face and blowy
+hair, all uncovered. She stood on the threshold, holding her wet
+umbrella at arm's length out in the entry.</p>
+
+<p>"'I beg your pardon. Are you ready, Aunt Eleanor?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Eleanor Emmons turned and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin!' she says. 'Why, you must be wet through.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm pretty wet,' says the girl, serene, 'I'm so messy I won't come in.
+I'll just stop out here on the steps. Don't hurry.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Wait a minute,' Mis' Emmons says. 'Stay where you are then, please,
+Robin, and meet these people.'</p>
+
+<p>"The girl threw the door wide, and she stepped back into the vestibule,
+where her umbrella had been trailing little puddles; and she stood there
+against the big, black background of the night and the village, while
+Mis' Emmons presented her.</p>
+
+<p>"'This is my niece, Miss Sidney,' she told us. 'She has just come to me
+to-day&mdash;for as long as I can keep her. Will you all come to see her?'</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't much the way Mis' Sykes had done, singing praises of Miss
+Beryl Sessions for weeks on end before she'd got there; nor the way I
+was doing, wondering secret about my unknown niece, and what she'd be
+like. Mis' Emmons introduced her niece like she'd always been one of us.
+She said our names over, and we went towards her; and Miss Sidney leaned
+a little inside the frame of the doorway and put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> out her hand to us
+all, a hand that didn't have any glove on and that in spite of the rain,
+was warm.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm so sorry,' she says, 'I'm afraid I'm disgracing Aunt Eleanor. But
+I couldn't help it. I love to walk in the rain.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's what rain is for,' Insley says to her; and I see the two change
+smiles before Mis' Hubbelthwait's 'Well, I do hope you've got some good
+high rubbers on your feet' made the girl grave again&mdash;a sweet grave, not
+a stiff grave. You can be grave both ways, and they're as different from
+each other as soup from hot water.</p>
+
+<p>"'I have, thank you,' she says, 'big storm boots. Did you know,' she
+adds, 'that somebody else is waiting out here? Somebody's little bit of
+a beau? And I'm afraid he's gone to sleep.'</p>
+
+<p>"We looked at one another, wondering. Who was waiting for any of us?
+'Not me,' one after another says, positive. 'We've all raced home alone
+from this church since we was born,' Mis' Uppers adds, true enough.</p>
+
+<p>"We was curious, with that curiosity that it's kind of fun to have, and
+we all crowded forward into the entry. And a little to one side of the
+shining lamp path was setting a child&mdash;a little boy, with a paper bag in his arms.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<p>"Who on earth was he, we wondered to ourselves, and we all jostled
+forward, trying to see down to him, us women lifting up our skirts from
+the entry wet. He was like a little wad of clothes, bunched up on the
+top step, but inside them the little fellow was all curled up, sleeping.
+And we knew he hadn't come for any of us, and he didn't look like he was
+waiting for anybody in particular.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas fixed up an explanation, ready-done:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'He must belong down on the flats,' says Silas. 'The idear of his
+sleepin' here. I said we'd oughter hev a gate acrost the vestibule.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Roust him up an' start him home,' says Timothy Toplady, adviceful.</p>
+
+<p>"'I will,' says Silas, that always thinks it's his share to do any
+unclaimed managing; and he brought down his hand towards the child's
+shoulder. But his hand didn't get that far.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let me wake him up,' says Robin Sidney.</p>
+
+<p>"She laid her umbrella in the wet of the steps and, Silas being
+surprised into giving way, she stooped over the child. She woke him up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+neither by speaking to him nor grasping his arm, but she just slipped
+her hands along his cheeks till her hands met under his chin, and she
+lifted up his chin, gentle.</p>
+
+<p>"'Wake up and look at me,' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"The child opened his eyes, with no starting or bewildering, and looked
+straight up into her face. There was light enough for us all to see that
+he smiled bright, like one that's real glad some waiting is done. And
+she spoke to him, not making a point of it and bringing it out like
+she'd aimed it at him, but just matter-of-fact gentle and commonplace
+tender.</p>
+
+<p>"'Whose little boy are you?' she ask' him.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm goin' with whoever wants me to go with 'em,' says the child.</p>
+
+<p>"'But who are you&mdash;where do you live?' she says to him. 'You live, don't
+you&mdash;in this town?'</p>
+
+<p>"The child shook his head positive.</p>
+
+<p>"'I lived far,' he told her, 'in that other place. I come up here with
+my daddy. He says he might not come back to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin Sidney knelt right down before him on the wet steps.</p>
+
+<p>"'Truly,' she said, 'haven't you any place to go to-night?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, yes,' says the child, 'he says I must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> go with whoever wants me to
+go with 'em. Do&mdash;do you?'</p>
+
+<p>"At that Miss Sidney looked up at us, swift, and down again. The wind
+had took hold of a strand of her hair and blew it across her eyes, and
+she was pushing it away as she got up. And by then Insley was standing
+before her, back of the little boy, that he suddenly stooped down and
+picked up in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's get inside, shall we?' he says, commanding. 'Let's all go back
+in and see about him.'</p>
+
+<p>"We went back into the church, even Silas taking orders, though of
+course that was part curiosity; and Insley sat down with the child on
+his knee, and held out the child's feet in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'He's wet as a rat,' he says. 'Look at his shoes.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a, make him tell his name, why don't you?' says Mis' Sykes,
+sharp. '<i>I</i> think we'd ought to find out who he is. What's your name,
+Boy?' she adds, brisk.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley dropped the boy's feet and took a-hold of one of his hands.
+'Yes,' he says, hasty, 'we must try to do that.' But he looked right
+straight over Mis' Sykes's shoulder to where, beyond the others, Robin
+Sidney was standing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> 'He was your friend first,' he said to her. 'You
+found him.'</p>
+
+<p>"She come and knelt down beside the child where, on Insley's knee, he
+sat staring round, all wondering and questioning, to the rest of us. But
+she seemed to forget all about the rest of us, and I loved the way she
+was with that little strange boy. She kind of put her hands on him,
+wiping the raindrops off his face, unbuttoning his wet coat, doing a
+little something to his collar; and every touch was a kind of a little
+stroke that some women's hands give almost without their knowing it. I
+loved to watch her, because I'm always as stiff as a board with a
+child&mdash;unless I'm alone with them. Then I ain't.</p>
+
+<p>"'My name's Robin,' she says to the little fellow. 'What's yours, dear?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Christopher,' he says right off. 'First, Christopher. An' then John.
+An' then Bartlett. Have you only got one name?' he asked her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, I've got two,' she says. 'The rest of mine is Sidney. Where&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Only two?' says the child. 'Why, I've got three.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Only two,' she answers. 'Where did your father go&mdash;don't you know
+that, Christopher?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>"That seemed to make him think of something, and he looked down at his
+paper bag.</p>
+
+<p>"'First he bringed me these,' he says, and his face lighted up and he
+held out his bag to her. 'You can have one my cream-puffs,' he offers
+her, magnificent. I held my breath for fear she wouldn't take it, but
+she did. 'What fat ones!' she says admiring, and held it in her hand
+while she asked him more. It was real strange how we stood around, us
+older women and all, waiting for her to see what she could get out of
+him. But there wasn't any use. He was to go with whoever asked him to
+go&mdash;that was all he knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas Sykes snaps his watch. 'It's gettin' late,' he gives out, with a
+backward look at nothing in particular. 'Hadn't we best just leave him
+at the police station? Threat Hubbelthwait and me go right past there.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady, she sweeps round on him, pulling her shawl over her
+shoulders&mdash;one of them gestures of some women that makes it seem like
+even them that works hard and don't get out much of anywhere has motions
+left in them that used to be motioned in courts and castles and like
+that. 'Police station! Silas Sykes,' says she, queenly, 'you put me in
+mind of a stone wall, you're that sympathizin'.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p><p>"'Well, <i>we</i> can't take him, Amandy,' Timothy Toplady reminds her,
+hurried. 'We live too far. 'Twouldn't do to walk him 'way there.'
+Timothy will give, but he wants to give to his own selected poor that he
+knows about; an' he won't never allow himself no luxuries in givin' here
+an' there, when something just happens to come up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, he may of come from where there's disease&mdash;you can't tell,' says
+Mis' Uppers. 'I think we'd ought to go slow.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' says two-three others, 'we'd best go slow. Why, his father may
+be looking for him.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Eleanor Emmons spoke up serene.</p>
+
+<p>"'While we're going slow,' she says, 'I think I'll just take him home
+and get his feet dry. I live the nearest. Mr. Sykes, you might report
+him at the police station as you go by, in case someone is looking for
+him. And if nobody inquires, he can sleep on my couch beside my grate
+fire to-night. Can't he, Robin?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd love it,' says the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"'Excellent,' says Insley, and set the little boy on his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"But when he done that, the child suddenly swung round and caught Miss
+Sidney's arm and looked up in her face; and his little nose was screwed
+up alarming.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p><p>"'What <i>is</i> it&mdash;what's the matter, Christopher?' she ask' him. And the
+rest of us that had begun moving to go, stopped to listen. And in that
+little stillness Christopher told us:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' he says, 'it's that hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went
+right through that hole. And it's <i>chokin'</i> me.'</p>
+
+<p>"Just exactly as if a hand had kind of touched us all, a nice little
+stir went round among us women. And with that, Insley, who had been
+standing there so big and strong and able and willing, and waiting for a
+chance to take hold, he just simply put his hands on his knees and
+stooped over and made his back right for the little fellow to climb up
+on. The child knew what it was for, soon enough&mdash;we see somebody
+somewheres must of been doing it for him before, for he scrambled right
+up, laughing, and Miss Sidney helping him. And a kind of a little
+ripple, that wan't no true words, run round among us all. Most women and
+some men is strong on ripples of this sort, but when it comes right down
+to doing something in consequence, we ain't so handy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Leave me come along and help take care of him a little while,' I says;
+and I thought it was because I was ashamed of myself and trying to make
+up for not offering before. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> I think really what was the matter with
+me was that I just plain wanted to go along with that little boy.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm your automobile,' says Insley to the little fellow, and he laughed
+out, delighted, hanging onto his paper sack.</p>
+
+<p>"'If you'll give me the big umbrella, Aunt Eleanor,' says Miss Sidney on
+the church steps, 'I'll try to keep the rain off the automobile and the
+passenger.'</p>
+
+<p>"The rain had just about stopped when we four started down Daphne
+Street. The elms and maples along the sidewalk was dripping soft, and
+everybody's gardens was laying still, like something new had happened to
+them. It smelled good, and like everything outdoors was going to start
+all over again and be something else, sweeter.</p>
+
+<p>"When we got most to Mis' Emmon's gate, I stopped stock still, looking
+at something shining on the hill. It was Proudfit House, lit up from top
+to bottom&mdash;the big house on the hill that had stood there, blind and
+dark, for months on end.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, some of the Proudfits must of come home,' I says out loud.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Emmons answered up, all unexpected to me, for I never knew she
+knew the Proudfits.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> 'Mr. Alex Proudfit is coming on to-morrow,' she
+says. And I sort of resented her that was so near a stranger in the
+village hearing this about Alex Proudfit before I did, that had known
+him since he was in knickerbockers.</p>
+
+<p>"'Am I keeping the rain off you two people?' Miss Sidney asks as, at the
+corner, we all turned our backs on Proudfit House.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nobody,' Insley says&mdash;and his voice was always as smooth and round as
+wheels running along under his words, 'nobody ever kept the rain off as
+you are keeping it off, Miss Sidney.'</p>
+
+<p>"And, 'I did walked all that way&mdash;in that rain,' says Christopher,
+sleepy, in his automobile's collar.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<p>"If it was anyways damp or chilly, Mis' Emmons always had a little blaze
+in the grate&mdash;not a heat blaze, but just a Come-here blaze. And going
+into her little what-she-called living-room at night, I always thought
+was like pushing open some door of the dark to find a sort of
+cubby-corner hollowed out from the bigger dark for tending the homey
+fire. That rainy night we went in from the street almost right onto the
+hearth. And it was as pleasant as taking the first mouthful of
+something.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley, with Christopher still on his back, stood on the rug in front
+of the door and looked round him.</p>
+
+<p>"'How jolly it always looks here, Mrs. Emmons,' he says. 'I never saw
+such a hearty place.'</p>
+
+<p>"I donno whether you've ever noticed the difference in the way women
+bustle around? Most nice women do bustle when something comes up that
+needs it. Some does it light and lifty, like fairies going around on
+missions; and some does it kind of crackling and nervous, like goblins
+on business. Mis' Emmons was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> first kind, and it was real
+contagious. You caught it yourself and begun pulling chairs around and
+seeing to windows and sort of settling away down deep into the minute.
+She begun doing that way now, seeing to the fire and the lamp-shade and
+the sofa, and wanting everybody to be dry and comfortable, instant.</p>
+
+<p>"'You are so good-natured to like my room,' she says. 'I furnished it
+for ten cents&mdash;yes, not much more. The whole effect is just colour,' she
+says. 'What I have to do without in quality I go and wheedle out of the
+spectrum. What <i>should</i> we do without the rainbow? And what in the world
+am I going to put on that child?'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley let Christopher down on the rug by the door, and there he stood,
+dripping, patient, holding his paper bag, and not looking up and around
+him, same as a child will in a strange room, but just looking hard at
+the nice, red, warm blaze. Miss Sidney come and stooped over him, with
+that same little way of touching him, like loving.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's go and be dry now,' she says, 'and then let's see what we can
+find in the pantry.'</p>
+
+<p>"The little fellow, he just laughed out, soft and delicious, with his
+head turned away and without saying anything.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><p>"'I never said such a successful thing,' says Miss Sidney, and led him
+upstairs where we could hear Mis' Emmons bustling around cosey.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Insley and I sat down by the fire. I remember I looked over towards
+him and felt sort of nervous, he was so good looking and so silent. A
+good-looking <i>talking</i> man I ain't afraid of, because I can either
+admire or despise him immediate, and either way it gives me something to
+do answering back. But one that's still, it takes longer to make out,
+and it don't give you no occupation for your impressions. And Insley,
+besides being still, was so good looking that it surprised me every new
+time I see him. I always wanted to say: Have you been looking like that
+all the time since I last saw you, and how <i>do</i> you keep it up?</p>
+
+<p>"He had a face and a body that showed a good many men looking out of 'em
+at you, and all of 'em was men you'd like to of known. There was
+scholars that understood a lot, and gentlemen that acted easy, and
+outdoor men that had pioneered through hard things and had took their
+joy of the open. All of them had worked hard at him&mdash;and had give him
+his strength and his merriness and his big, broad shoulders and his
+nice, friendly boyishness, and his eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> that could see considerably
+more than was set before them. By his own care he had knit his body
+close to life, and I know he had knit his spirit close to it, too. As I
+looked over at him that night, my being nervous sort of swelled up into
+a lump in my throat and I wanted to say inside me: O God, ain't it nice,
+ain't it nice that you've got some folks like him?</p>
+
+<p>"He glanced over to me, kind of whimsical.</p>
+
+<p>"'Are you in favour of folks or tombstones?' he asks, with his eyebrows
+flickering up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Me?' I says. 'Well, I don't want to be clannish, but I do lean a good
+deal towards folks.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You knew what I meant to-night?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I answered, 'I knew.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought you did,' he says grave.</p>
+
+<p>"Then he lapsed into keeping still again and so did I, me through not
+quite knowing what to say, and him&mdash;well, I wasn't sure, but I thought
+he acted a good deal as if he had something nice to think about. I've
+seen that look on people's faces sometimes, and it always makes me feel
+a little surer that I'm a human being. I wondered if it was his new work
+he was turning over, or his liking the child's being cared for, or the
+mere nice minute, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> by the grate fire. Then a door upstairs shut,
+and somebody come down and into the room, and when he got up, his look
+sort of centred in that new minute.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Miss Sidney that come in, and she set down by the fire like
+something pleased her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Aunt Eleanor is going to decorate Christopher herself,' she says. 'She
+believes that she alone can do whatever comes up in this life to be
+done, and usually she's right.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley stood looking at her for a minute before he set down again. She
+had her big black cloak off by then, and she was wearing a
+dress-for-in-the-house that was all rosy. She wasn't anything of the
+star any longer. She was something more than a star. I always think one
+of the nicest commonplace minutes in a woman's everyday is when she
+comes back from somewheres outside the house where she's been, and sets
+down by the fire, or by a window, or just plain in the middle of the
+room. They always talk about pigeons 'homing'; I wish't they kept that
+word for women. It seems like it's so exactly what they <i>do</i> do.</p>
+
+<p>"'I love the people,' Miss Sidney went on, 'that always feel that
+way&mdash;that if something they're interested in is going to be really well
+done, then they must do it themselves.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p><p>"Insley always knew just what anybody meant&mdash;I'd noticed that about
+him. His mind never left what you'd said floating round, loose ends in
+the room, without your knowing whether it was going to be caught and
+tied; but he just nipped right onto your remark and <i>tied it in the
+right place</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"'I love them, too,' he says now. 'I love anybody who can really feel
+responsibility, from a collie with her pups up. But then I'm nothing to
+go by. I find I'm rather strong for a good many people that can't feel
+it, too&mdash;that are just folks, going along.'</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he expected from her the nice, ladylike agreeing, same as
+most women give to this sort of thing, just like they'd admit they're
+fond of verbenas or thin soles. But instead of that, she caught fire.
+Her look jumped up the way a look will and went acrost to his. I always
+think I'd rather have folks say 'I know' to me, understanding, than to
+just pour me out information, and that was what she said to him.</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' she says, 'on the train to-day&mdash;if you could have seen them.
+Such dreadful-looking people, and underneath&mdash;the <i>giving-up-ness</i>. I
+believe in them,' she added simple.</p>
+
+<p>"When a thing you believe gets spoke by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> somebody that believes it, too,
+it's like the earth moved round a little faster, and I donno but it
+does. Insley looked for a minute like he thought so.</p>
+
+<p>"'I believe in them,' he says; 'not the way I used to, and just because
+I thought they must be, somehow, fundamentally decent, but because it's
+true.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know just when I first knew that,' Miss Sidney says. 'It come to me,
+of all places, in a subway train, when I was looking at a row of faces
+across the car. Nobody, <i>nobody</i> can look interesting in that row along
+the side of a subway car. And then I saw....'</p>
+
+<p>"She thought for a minute and shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"'I can't tell you,' she says, 'it sounds so little and&mdash;no account. It
+was a little thing, just something that happened to a homely woman with
+a homely man, in a hat like a pirate's. But it almost&mdash;let me in. I can
+do it ever since&mdash;look into people, into, or through, or with ...' she
+tries to explain it. Then her eyes hurried up to his face, like she was
+afraid he might not be understanding. He just nodded, without looking at
+her, but she knew that he knew what she meant, and that he meant it,
+too.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p><p>" ... I thought it was wonderful to hear them. I felt like an old
+mountain, or anything natural and real ancient, listening to the Song of
+Believing, sung by two that's young and just beginning. We all sing it
+sometime in our lives&mdash;or Lord grieve for them that never do&mdash;and I
+might as well own up that I catch myself humming that same song a good
+deal of the time, to keep myself a-going. But I love to hear it when
+it's just begun.</p>
+
+<p>"They was still talking when Mis' Emmons come downstairs with
+Christopher. Land, land but the little chap looked dear, dragging along,
+holding up a long-skirted lounging dress of Mis' Emmons's. I never had
+one of them lounging dresses. There's a lot of common things that it
+never seems to me I can buy for myself: a nice dressing-gown, a block of
+black pins, a fancy-headed hat pin, and a lemon-squeezer. I always use a
+loose print, and common pins, and penny black-headed hat pins, and go
+around squeezing my lemons by hand. I donno why it is, I'm sure.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm&mdash;I'm&mdash;I'm&mdash;a little boy king!' Christopher stutters, all excited
+and satisfied, while Insley was a-packing him in the Morris chair.</p>
+
+<p>"'Rained on!' says Mis' Emmons, in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> kind of dismay that's as pure
+feminine as if it had on skirts. 'Water isn't a circumstance to what
+that dear child was. He was saturated&mdash;bless him. He must have been out
+for perfect hours.'</p>
+
+<p>"Christopher, thinking back into the rain, mebbe, from the pleasantness
+of that minute, smiled and took a long breath.</p>
+
+<p>"'I walked from that other place,' he explains, important.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Emmons knew he was hungry, and she took Miss Sidney and Insley off
+to the kitchen to find something to eat, and left me with the little
+fellow, me spreading out his clothes in front of the fire to dry. He set
+real still, like being dry and being with somebody was all he wanted.
+And of course that is a good deal.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't always quite know how to start talking to a child. I'm always
+crazy to talk with them, but I'm so afraid of that shy, grave,
+criticizin' look they have. I feel right off like apologizing for the
+silly question I've just asked them. I felt that way now when
+Christopher looked at me, real dignified and wondering. 'What you going
+to be when you grow up to be a man?' was what I had just asked him. And
+yet I don't know what better question I could of asked him, either.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p><p>"'I'm goin' to have a cream-puff store, an' make it all light in the
+window,' he answers ready.</p>
+
+<p>"'All light in the window?' I says puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"'And I'm going to keep a church,' he goes on, 'and I'm going to make
+nice, black velvet for their coffings.'</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know quite what to make of that, not being able to think back
+very far into his mind. So I kept still a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"'What was you doin' in the church?' he says to me, all at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't really know. Waiting for you to come, I guess, Christopher,' I
+says.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Was</i> you?' he cried, delighted. 'Pretty soon I came!' He looked in
+the fire, sort of troubled. 'Is God outdoors nights?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"I said a little something.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' he says, 'I thought he was in the house by the bed when you say
+your prayer. An' I thought he was in church. But I don't think he stays
+in the dark, much.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mebbe you don't,' I says, 'but you wait for him in the dark, and mebbe
+all of a sudden some night you can tell that something is there. And
+just you wait for that night to come.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's a nice game,' says Christopher, bright. 'What game is that?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I donno,' I says. 'Game of Life, I guess.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p><p>"He liked the sound; and he set there&mdash;little waif, full of no supper,
+saying it over like a chant:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Game o' life&mdash;game o' life&mdash;game o' l-i-f-e&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Just at that minute I was turning his little pockets wrong side out to
+dry them, and in one of them I see a piece of paper, all crumpled up and
+wrinkled. I spread it out, and I see it had writing on. And I held it up
+to the light and read it, read it through twice.</p>
+
+<p>"'Christopher,' I says then, 'where did you get this piece of paper? It
+was in your pocket.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at it, blank, and then he remembered.</p>
+
+<p>"'My daddy,' he says. 'My daddy told me to give it to folks. I forgot.'</p>
+
+<p>"'To folks?' I says. 'To what folks?'</p>
+
+<p>"'To whoever ask' me anything,' he answers. 'Is it a letter?' he ask'.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I says, thoughtful, 'it's a letter.'</p>
+
+<p>"'To tell me what to do?' he ask' me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I says, 'but more, I guess, to tell us what to do.'</p>
+
+<p>"I talked with him a little longer, so's to get his mind off the paper;
+and then I told him to set still a minute, and I slipped out to where
+the rest was.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p><p>"The pantry had a close, spicey, foody smell of a pantry at night, when
+every tin chest and glass jar may be full up with nice things to eat
+that you'd forgot about&mdash;cocoanut and citron and cinnamon bark. In
+grown-up folks one of the things that is the last to grow up is the
+things a pantry in the evening promises. You may get over really liking
+raisins and sweet chocolate; you may get to wanting to eat in the
+evening things that you didn't use' to even know the names of and don't
+know them now, and yet it never gets over being nice and eventive to go
+out in somebody's pantry at night, especially a pantry that ain't your
+own.</p>
+
+<p>"'Put everything on a tray,' Mis' Emmons was directing them, 'and find
+the chafing-dish and let's make it in there by Christopher. Mr. Insley,
+can you make toast? Don't equivocate,' she says; '<i>can</i> you make toast?
+People fib no end over what they can make. I'm always bragging about my
+omelettes, and yet one out of every three I make goes flat, and I know
+it. And yet I brag on. Beans, buckwheat, rice&mdash;what do you want to
+cream, Robin? Well, look in the store-room. There may be something
+there. We must tell Miss Sidney about Grandma Sellers' store-room, Mr.
+Insley,' she says, and then tells it herself, laughing like a girl,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> how
+Grandma Sellers, down at the other end of Daphne Street, has got a
+store-room she keeps full of staples and won't let her son's wife use a
+thing out. 'I've been hungry,' Grandma Sellers says, 'and I ain't
+ashamed of that. But if you knew how good it feels to have a still-room
+stocked full, you wouldn't ask me to disturb a can of nothing. I want
+them all there, so if I should want them.' 'She's like me,' Mis' Emmons
+ends, 'I always want to keep my living-room table tidy, to have a place
+in case I should want to lay anything down. And if I put anything on it,
+I snatch it up, so as to have a place in case I want to lay anything
+down.'</p>
+
+<p>"They was all laughing when I went out into the kitchen, and I went up
+to Mis' Emmons with the paper.</p>
+
+<p>"'Read that,' I says.</p>
+
+<p>"She done so, out loud&mdash;the scrawlin', downhill message:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"'Keep him will you,' the paper said, 'I don't chuck him to get rid
+of but hes only got me since my wifes dead and the drinks got me
+again. Ive stood it quite awhile but its got me again so keep him
+and oblidge. will send money to him to the P O here what I can
+spare I aint chuckin him but the drinks got me again.</p>
+
+<p class="right">"'resp, his father.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p><p>"'P S his name is Christopher Bartlett he is a good boy his throat
+gets sore awful easy.'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"When Mis' Emmons had got through reading, I remember Miss Sidney's face
+best. It was so full of a sort of a leaping-up pity and wistfulness that
+it went to your heart, like words. I knew that with her the minute
+wasn't no mere thrill nor twitter nor pucker, the way sad things is to
+some, but it was just a straight sounding of a voice from a place of
+pain. And so it was to Insley. But Mis' Emmons, she never give herself
+time to be swamped by anything without trying to climb out right while
+the swamping was going on.</p>
+
+<p>"'What'll we do?' she says, rapid. 'What in this world shall we do? Did
+you ever hear of anything&mdash;well, I wish somebody would tell me what
+we're going to do.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's be glad for one thing,' says Allen Insley, 'that he's here with
+you people to-night. Let's be glad of that first&mdash;that he's here with
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Sidney looked away to the dark window.</p>
+
+<p>"'That poor man,' she says. 'That poor father....'</p>
+
+<p>"We talked about it a little, kind of loose ends and nothing to fasten
+to, like you will. Mis'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> Emmons was the first to get back inside the
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' she says, brisk, 'do let's go in and feed the child while we
+have him. Nobody knows when he's had anything to eat but those unholy
+cream-puffs. Let's heat him some broth and let's carry in the things.'</p>
+
+<p>"Back by the fire Christopher set doing nothing, but just looking in the
+blaze like his very eyesight had been chilly and damp and needed seeing
+to. He cried out jolly when he see all the pretty harness of the
+chafing-dish and the tray full of promises.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' he cries, '<i>Robin!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>"She went over to him, and she nestled him now like she couldn't think
+of enough to do for him nor enough things to say to keep him company. I
+see Insley watching her, and I wondered if it didn't come to him like it
+come to me, that for the pure art of doing nothing so that it seems like
+it couldn't be got along without, a woman&mdash;some women&mdash;can be commended
+by heaven to a world that always needs that kind of doing nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Children have a genius for getting rid of the things that don't
+count,' Miss Sidney says. 'I love his calling me "Robin." Mustn't there
+be some place where we don't build walls around our names?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p><p>"Insley thought for a minute. 'You oughtn't to be called "Miss," and
+you oughtn't to wear a hat,' he concluded, sober. 'Both of them make
+you&mdash;too much <i>there</i>. They draw a line around you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't feel like Miss to myself,' she says, grave. 'I feel like
+Robin. I believe I <i>am</i> Robin!'</p>
+
+<p>"And I made up my mind right then and there that, to myself anyway, I
+was always going to call her Robin. It's funny about first names. Some
+of them fit right down and snuggle up close to their person so that you
+can't think of them apart. And some of them slip loose and dangle along
+after their person, quite a ways back, so that you're always surprised
+when now and then they catch up and get themselves spoke by someone. But
+the name Robin just seemed to wrap Miss Sidney up in itself so that, as
+she said, she <i>was</i> Robin. I like to call her so.</p>
+
+<p>"It was her that engineered the chafing-dish. A chafing-dish is a thing
+I've always looked on a little askant. I couldn't cook with folks
+looking at me no more than I could wash my face in company. I remember
+one hot July day when there was a breeze in my front door, I took my
+ironing-board in the parlor and tried to iron there. But land, I felt
+all left-handed; and I know it would be that way if I ever tried to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+cook in there, on my good rug. Robin though, she done it wonderful. And
+pretty soon she put the hot cream gravy on some crumbled-up bread and
+took it to Christopher, with a cup of broth that smelled like when they
+used to say, 'Dinner's ready,' when you was twelve years old.</p>
+
+<p>"He looked up at her eager. 'Can you cut it in squares?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'In what?' she asks him over.</p>
+
+<p>"'Squares. And play it's molasses candy&mdash;white molasses candy?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' says Robin, 'no, not in squares. But let's play it's hot
+ice-cream.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Hot ice-cream</i>,' he says, real slow, his eyes getting wide. To play
+Little Boy King and have hot ice-cream was about as much as he could
+take care of, in joy. Sometimes I get to wondering how we ever do
+anything else except collect children together and give them nice little
+simple fairylands. But while, on the sly, we was all watching to see
+Christopher sink deep in the delight of that hot toothsome supper, he
+suddenly lays down his spoon and stares over to us with wide eyes, eyes
+that there wasn't no tears gathering in, though his little mouth was
+quivering.</p>
+
+<p>"'What is it&mdash;what, dear?' Robin asks, from her stool near his feet.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p><p>"'My daddy,' says the little boy. 'I was thinking if he could have some
+this.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin touched her cheek down on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"'Blessed,' she says, 'think how glad he'd be to have you have some.
+He'd want you to eat it&mdash;wouldn't he?'</p>
+
+<p>"The child nodded and took up his spoon, but he sighed some. 'I wish't
+he'd hurry,' he says, and ate, obedient.</p>
+
+<p>"Robin looked up at us&mdash;I don't think a woman is ever so lovely as when
+she's sympathizing, and it don't make much difference what it's over, a
+sore finger or a sore heart, it's equally becoming.</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' she says to us, 'I know just the <i>place</i> where that hurts. I
+remember, when I was little, being in a house that a band passed, and
+because mother wasn't there, I ran inside and wouldn't listen. It's such
+a special kind of hurt....'</p>
+
+<p>"From the end of the settle that was some in the shadow, Insley set
+watching her, and he looked as if he was thinking just what I was
+thinking: that she was the kind that would most always know just the
+place things hurt. And I bet she'd know what to do&mdash;and a thousand kinds
+of things that she'd go and do it.</p>
+
+<p>"'O ...' Christopher says. 'I like this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> most next better than molasses
+candy, cutted in squares. I do, Robin!' He looked down at her, his spoon
+waiting. 'Is you that Robin Redbreast?' he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm any Robin you want me to be,' she told him. 'To-morrow we'll play
+that, shall we?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Am I here to-morrow? Don't I have to walk to-morrow?' he ask' her.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, you won't have to walk to-morrow,' she told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Christopher leaned back, altogether nearer to luxury than I guess he'd
+ever been.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm a little boy king, and it's hot ice-cream, and I love <i>you</i>,' he
+tops it off to Robin.</p>
+
+<p>"She smiled at him, leaning on his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"'Isn't it a miracle,' she says to us, 'the way we can call out&mdash;being
+liked? We don't do something, and people don't pay any attention and
+don't know the difference. Then some little thing happens, and there
+they are&mdash;liking us, doing a real thing.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know it,' I says, fervent. 'Sometimes,' I says, 'it seems to me
+wonderful cosey to be alive! I'm glad I'm it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'So am I,' says Insley, and leaned forward. 'There's never been such a
+time to be alive,' he says. 'Mrs. Emmons, why don't we ask Miss Sidney
+for some plans for our plan?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p><p>"Do you know how sometimes you'll have a number of floating ideas in
+your mind&mdash;wanting to do this, thinking that would be nice, dreaming of
+something else&mdash;and yet afraid to say much about it, because it seems
+like the ideas or the dreams is much too wild for anybody else to have,
+too? And then mebbe after a while, you'll find that somebody had the
+same idea and dreamed it out, and died with it? Or somebody else tried
+to make it go a little? Well, that was what begun to happen to me that
+night while I heard Insley talk, only I see that my floating ideas, that
+wan't properly attached to the sides of my head, was actually being
+worked out here and there, and that Insley knew about them.</p>
+
+<p>"I donno how to tell what my ideas was. I'd had them from time to time,
+and a good many of us ladies had, only we didn't know what to do with
+them. And an idea that you don't know what to do with is like a wild
+animal out of its cage: there ain't no performance till it's adjusted.
+For instance, when we'd wanted to pave Daphne Street and the whole town
+council had got up and swung its arms over its head and said that having
+an economical administration was better than paving&mdash;why, then us ladies
+had all had the same idee about that.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p><p>"'Is the town run for the sake of being the town, with money in its
+treasury, or is the town run for the folks in it?' I remember Mis'
+Toplady asking, puzzled. 'Ain't the folks the town really?' she ask'.
+'And if they are, why can't they pave themselves with their own money?
+Don't that make sense?' she ask' us, and we thought it did.</p>
+
+<p>"Us ladies had got Daphne Street paved, or at least it was through us
+they made the beginning, but there was things we hadn't done. We was all
+taking milk of Rob Henney that we knew his cow barns wasn't at all
+eatable, but he was the only milk wagon, nobody else in town delivering,
+so we kept on taking, but squeamish, squeamish. Then there was the
+grocery stores, leaving their food all over the sidewalk, dust-peppered
+and dirt-salted. But nobody liked to say anything to Silas Sykes that
+keeps the post-office store, nor to Joe Betts, that his father before
+him kept the meat market, being we all felt delicate, like at asking a
+church member to come out to church. Then us ladies had bought a zinc
+wagon and started it around to pick up the garbage to folks' doors, but
+the second summer the council wouldn't help pay for the team, because it
+was a saving council, and so the wagon was setting in a shed, with its
+hands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> folded. Then there was Black Hollow, that we'd wanted filled up
+with dirt instead of scummy water, arranging for typhoid fever and other
+things, but the council having got started paving, was engaged in paving
+the swamp out for miles, Silas Sykes's cousin being in the wooden block
+business. And, too, us ladies was just then hopping mad over the doings
+they was planning for the Fourth of July, that wasn't no more than
+making a cash register of the day to earn money into. All these things
+had been disturbing us, and more; but though we talked it over
+considerable, none of us knew what to do, or whether anything could be.
+It seemed as though every way we moved a hand, it hit out at the council
+or else went into some business man's pocket. And not having anybody to
+tell us what other towns were doing, we just set still and wished,
+passive.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and that night, while I heard Insley talking, was the first I
+knew that other towns had thought about these things, too, and was
+beginning to stir and to stir things. Insley talked about it light
+enough, laughing, taking it all casual on the outside, but underneath
+with a splendid earnestness that was like the warp to his words. He
+talked like we could pick Friendship Village up, same as a strand if we
+wanted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> and make it fine and right for weaving in a big pattern that
+his eyes seemed to see. He talked like our village, and everybody's
+village and everybody's city wasn't just a lot of streets laid down and
+walls set up, and little families and little clubs and little separate
+groups of folks organized by themselves. But he spoke like the whole
+town was just one street and <i>no</i> walls, and like every town was a piece
+of the Big Family that lives on the same street, all around the world
+and back again. And he seemed to feel that the chief thing all of us was
+up to was thinking about this family and doing for it and being it, and
+getting it to be the way it can be when we all know how. And he seemed
+to think the things us ladies had wanted to do was some of the things
+that would help it to be the way it can.</p>
+
+<p>"When he stopped, Robin looked up at him from the hearth-rug: '"The
+world is beginning,"' she quotes to him from somewheres; "'I must go and
+help the king."'</p>
+
+<p>"He nodded, looking down at her and seeing, as he must have seen, that
+her face was all kindled into the same kind of a glory that was in his.
+It was a nice minute for them, but I was so excited I piped right up in
+the middle of it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' I says, '<i>them</i> things! Was it them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> kind of things you meant
+about in Sodality to-night that we'd ought to do? Why, us ladies has
+wanted to do things like that, but we felt sort of sneaking about it and
+like we was working against the council and putting our interests before
+the town treasury&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'And of the cemetery,' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Is <i>that</i>,' I ask' him, 'what you're professor of, over to Indian
+Mound college?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Something like that,' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nothing in a book, with long words and italics?' I ask' him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' he says, 'it's getting in books now, a little. But it doesn't
+need any long words.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' I says, 'it's just being professor of human beings, then?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Trying to be, perhaps,' he says, grave.</p>
+
+<p>"'Professor of Human Beings,' I said over to myself; 'professor of being
+human....'</p>
+
+<p>"On this nice minute, the front door, without no bell or knock, opened
+to let in Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, with a shawl over her head
+and a tin can in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, I won't set any, thanks,' she says. 'I just got to
+thinking&mdash;mercy, no. Don't give me any kind of anything to eat any such
+time of night as this. I should be up till midnight taking soda. That's
+what ails folks' stomachs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> my notion&mdash;these late lunches on nobody
+knows what. No, I got to bed and I was just dropping off when I happened
+to sense how wringing wet that child was, and that I betted he'd take
+cold and have the croup in the night, and you wouldn't have no
+remedy&mdash;not having any children, so. It rousted me right up wide awake,
+and I dressed me and run over here with this. Here. Put some on a rag
+and clap it on his chest if he coughs croupy. I donno's it would hurt
+him to clap it on him, anyway, so's to be sure. No, I can't stop. It's
+'way past my bed-time....'</p>
+
+<p>"'There's lots of professors of being human, Miss Marsh,' Insley says to
+me, low.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Holcomb stood thinking a minute, brushing her lips with the fringe
+of her shawl.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mebbe somebody up to the Proudfits' would do something for him,' she
+says. 'I see they're lit up. Who's coming?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Alex Proudfit will be here to-morrow,' Mis' Emmons told her. 'He
+has some people coming to him in a day or two, for a house party over
+the Fourth.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Will he be here so soon?' says Insley. 'I've been looking forward to
+meeting him&mdash;I've a letter to him from Indian Mound.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Whatever happens,' says Mis' Holcomb,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> 'I'll get up attic first thing
+in the morning and find some old clothes for this dear child. I may be
+weak in the pocket-book, but I'm strong on old duds.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley and I both said good night, so's to walk home with Mis' Holcomb,
+and Christopher kissed us both, simple as belonging to us.</p>
+
+<p>"'We had that hot ice-cream,' he announced to Mis' Holcomb.</p>
+
+<p>"'The lamb!' says she, and turns her back, hasty.</p>
+
+<p>"I wondered a little at Mis' Emmons not saying anything to her about the
+letter we'd found, that made us know somebody would have to do
+something. But just as we was starting out, Mis' Emmons says to me low,
+'Don't let's say anything about his father yet. I have a plan&mdash;I want to
+think it over first.' And I liked knowing that already she had a plan,
+and I betted it was a plan that would be born four-square to its own
+future.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley stood holding the door open. The rain had stopped altogether
+now, and the night was full of little things sticking their heads up in
+deep grasses and beginning to sing about it. I donno about what, but
+about something nice. And Insley was looking toward Robin, and I see
+that all the ancestors he'd ever had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> was lingering around in his face,
+like they knew about something he was just beginning to know about.
+Something nice&mdash;nicer than the little outdoor voices.</p>
+
+<p>"'Good night, Miss Sidney,' he says. 'And what a good night for
+Christopher!' And he looked as if he wanted to add: 'And for me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Good night, Mis' Emmons,' I says. 'It's been an evening like a full meal.'</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<p>"By messenger the next day noon come a letter for me that made me laugh
+a little and that made me a little bit mad, too. This was it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"'Dear Calliope:</p>
+
+<p>"'Come up and help straighten things out, do. This place breathes
+desolation. Everything is everywhere except everything which
+everyone wants, which is lost. Come at once, Calliope, pray, and
+dine with me to-night and give me as much time as you can for a
+fortnight. I'm having some people here next week&mdash;twenty or so for
+over the Fourth&mdash;and a party. A company, you know! I need you.</p>
+
+<p class="right">"'<span class="smcap">Alex Proudfit.</span>'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"It was so exactly like Alex to send for me just plain because he wanted
+me. Never a word about if I was able or if I wasn't putting up berries
+or didn't have company or wasn't dead. I hadn't heard a sound from him
+in the two years or more that he'd been gone, and yet now it was just
+'Come,' like a lord. And for that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> matter like he used to do when he was
+in knickerbockers and coming to my house for fresh cookies, whether I
+had any baked or not. But I remember actually baking a batch for him one
+day while he galloped his pony up and down the Plank Road waiting for
+them. And I done the same way now. I got my work out of the way and went
+right up there, like I'd always done for that family in the forty years
+I could think back to knowing them, when I was a girl. I guessed that
+Alex had lit down sudden, a day or so behind his telegram to the
+servants; and I found that was what he had done.</p>
+
+<p>"Proudfit House stands on a hill, and it looks like the hill had
+billowed up gentle from underneath and had let some of the house flow
+down the sides. It was built ambitious, of the good cream brick that
+gives to a lot of our Middle West towns their colour of natural flax in
+among the green; it had been big in the beginning, and to it had been
+added a good many afterthoughts and postscripts of conservatory and
+entrance porch and sun room and screened veranda, till the hill couldn't
+hold them all. The house was one of them that was built fifty years ago
+and that has since been pecked and patted to suit modern uses, pinched
+off here and pulled off there to fit notions refining themselves
+gradual. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> all the time the house was let to keep some nice, ugly
+things that after a while, by mere age and use-to-ness, were finally
+accepted wholesale as dignified and desirable. The great brown mansard
+roof, niched and glassed in two places for statues&mdash;and having them,
+too, inside my memory and until Mr. Alex pulled them down; the scalloped
+tower on a wing; the round red glass window on a stairway&mdash;these we all
+sort of come to agree to as qualities of the place that couldn't be
+changed no more'n the railroad track. Tapestries and water-colours and
+Persian carpets went on inside the house, but outside was all the little
+twists of a taste that had started in naked and was getting dressed up
+by degrees.</p>
+
+<p>"Since the marriage of her daughter Clementina, Madame Proudfit had
+spent a good deal of time abroad, and the house had been shut up. This
+shutting up of people's houses always surprises me. When I shut up my
+house to go away for a couple of months or so, I just make sure the
+kitchen fire is out, and I carry the bird down to Mis' Holcomb's, and I
+turn the key in the front door and start off. But land, land when
+Proudfit House is going to be shut, the servants work days on end. Rugs
+up, curtains down, furniture covered and setting around out of place,
+pictures and ornaments wrapped up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> in blue paper&mdash;I always wonder <i>why</i>.
+Closing my house is like putting it to sleep for a little while, but
+closing Proudfit House is some like seeing it through a spasm and into a
+trance. They done that to the house most every summer, and I used to
+think they acted like spring was a sort of contagion, or a
+seventeen-year locust, or something to be fumigated for. I supposed that
+was the way the house looked when Alex got home to it, and of course a
+man must hate it worse than a woman does, because he doesn't know which
+end to tell them to take hold of to unravel. So I went right up there
+when he sent for me&mdash;and then it was a little fun, too, to be on the
+inside of what was happening there, that all the village was so curious
+about.</p>
+
+<p>"He'd gone off when I got there, gone off on horseback on some business,
+but he'd left word that he'd be back in a little while, and would I help
+him out in the library. I knew what that meant. The books was all out of
+the shelves and packed in paper, and he wanted me to see that they got
+back into their right places, like I'd done many and many a time for his
+mother. So I worked there the whole afternoon, with a couple of men to
+help me, and the portrait of Linda Proudfit on the wall watching me like
+it wanted to tell me something, maybe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> about the way she went off and
+died, away from home; and a little after four o'clock a servant let
+somebody into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked up expecting to see Alex, and it surprised me some to see
+Insley instead. But I guessed how it was: that Alex Proudfit being a
+logical one to talk over Friendship Village with, Insley couldn't lose a
+day in bringing him his letter.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, Miss Marsh,' says he, 'and do you live everywhere, like a good
+fairy?'</p>
+
+<p>"I thought afterwards that I might have said to him: 'No, Mr. Insley.
+And do you appear everywhere, like a god?' But at the time I didn't
+think of anything to say, and I just smiled. I'm like that,&mdash;if I like
+anybody, I can't think of a thing to say back; but to Silas Sykes I
+could talk back all day.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd got the room part in order by then, and Insley sat down and looked
+around him, enjoyable. It was a beautiful room. I always think that that
+library ain't no amateur at its regular business of being a vital part
+of the home. Some rooms are awful amateurs at it, and some ain't no more
+than apprentices, and some are downright enemies to the house they're
+in. But that library I always like to look around. It seems to me, if I
+really knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> about such things, and how they ought to be, I couldn't
+like that room any better. Colour, proportion, window, shadow&mdash;they was
+all lined up in a kind of an enjoyable professionalism of doing their
+best. The room was awake now, too&mdash;I had the windows open and I'd
+started the clock. Insley set looking around as if there was sighs
+inside him. I knew how, down in New England, his father's home sort of
+behaved itself like this home. But after college, he had had to choose
+his way, and he had faced about to the new west, the new world, where
+big ways of living seemed to him to be sweeping as a wind sweeps. He had
+chose as he had chose, and I suppose he was glad of that; but I knew the
+room he had when he was in town, at Threat Hubbelthwait's hotel, must be
+a good deal like being homesick, and that this library was like coming
+home.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Proudfit had just returned and would be down at once,' the man
+come back and told him. And while he waited Insley says to me:</p>
+
+<p>"'Have you seen anything of the little boy to-day, Miss Marsh?'</p>
+
+<p>"I was dying to answer back: 'Yes, I see Miss Sidney early this
+morning,' but you can't answer back all you die to. So I told him yes,
+I'd seen all three of them and they was to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> up in the city all day to
+buy some things for Christopher. Mis' Emmons and Robin was both to come
+up to Proudfit House to Alex's house party&mdash;seems they'd met abroad
+somewheres a year or more back; and they was going to bring Christopher,
+who Mis' Emmons didn't show any sign of giving up while her plan,
+whatever it was, was getting itself thought over. So they'd whisked the
+child off to the city that day to get him the things he needed. And
+there wasn't time to say anything more, for in come Alex Proudfit.</p>
+
+<p>"He was in his riding clothes&mdash;horseback dress we always call it in the
+village, which I s'pose isn't city talk, proper. He was long and thin
+and brown, and sort of slow-moving in his motions, but quick and nervous
+in his talk; and I don't know what there was about him&mdash;his clothes, or
+his odd, old-country looking ring, or the high white thing wound twice
+around his neck, or his way of pronouncing his words&mdash;but he seemed a
+good deal like a picture of a title or a noted man. The minute you
+looked at him, you turned proud of being with him, and you pretty near
+felt distinguished yourself, in a nice way, because you was in his
+company. Alex was like that.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't like having kept you waiting,' he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> says to Insley. 'I'm just
+in. By Jove, I've left Topping's letter somewhere&mdash;Insley, is it? thank
+you. Of course. Well, Calliope, blessings! I knew I could count on you.
+How are you&mdash;you look it. No, don't run away. Keep straight on&mdash;Mr.
+Insley will pardon us getting settled under his nose. Now what can I get
+you, Mr. Insley? If you've walked up, you're warm. No? As you will. It's
+mighty jolly getting back&mdash;for a minute, you know. I couldn't stop here.
+How the devil do you stop here all the time&mdash;or do you stop here all the
+time?...' All this he poured out in a breath. He always had talked fast,
+but now I see that he talked more than fast&mdash;he talked foreign.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm here some of the time,' says Insley; 'I hoped that you were going
+to be, too.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I?' Alex said. 'Oh, no&mdash;no. I feel like this: while I'm in the world,
+I want it at its best. I want it at its latest moment. I want to be
+living <i>now</i>. Friendship Village&mdash;why, man, it's living half a century
+ago&mdash;anyway, a quarter. It doesn't know about <span class="smaller">A.D.</span> nineteen-anything. I
+love the town, you know, for what it is. But confound it, I'm living
+<i>now</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley leaned forward. I was dusting away on an encyclop&aelig;dia, but I see
+his face and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> knew what it meant. This was just what he'd been hoping
+for. Alex Proudfit was a man who understood that the village hadn't
+caught up. So he would want to help it&mdash;naturally he would.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm amazed at the point of view,' Alex went on. 'I never saw such
+self-sufficiency as the little towns have. In England, on the continent,
+the villages know their place and keep it, look up to the towns and all
+that&mdash;play the peasant, as they are. Know their betters. Here? Bless
+you. Not a man down town here but will tell you that the village has got
+everything that is admirable. They believe it, too. Electric light,
+water, main street paved, cemetery kept up, "nice residences,"
+telephones, library open two nights a week, fresh lettuce all
+winter&mdash;fine, up-to-date little place! And, Lord, but it's a back-water.
+With all its improvements the whole <i>idea</i> of modern life somehow
+escapes it&mdash;music and art, drama, letters, manners, as integral parts of
+everyday living&mdash;what does it know of them? It thinks these things are
+luxuries, outside the scheme of real life, like monoplanes. Jove, it's
+delicious!'</p>
+
+<p>"He leaned back, laughing. Insley must have felt his charm. Alex always
+was fascinating. His eyes were gray and sort of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>hobnobbed with your
+own; his square chin just kind of threatened a dimple without breaking
+into one; his dark hair done clusters like a statue; and then there was
+a lot of just plain charm pouring off him. But of course more than with
+this, Insley was filled with his own hope: if Alex Proudfit understood
+some things about the village that ought to be made right, it looked to
+him as though they might do everything together.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' Insley says, 'you don't know&mdash;you don't know how glad I am to
+hear you say this. It's exactly the thing my head has been full of....'</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course your head is full of it,' says Alex. 'How can it help but be
+when you're fast here some of the time? If you don't mind&mdash;what is it
+that keeps you here at all? I don't think I read Topping's letter
+properly....'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley looked out from all over his face.</p>
+
+<p>"'I stay,' he says, 'just because all this <i>is</i> so. It needs somebody to
+stay, don't you think?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah, yes, I see,' says Alex, rapid and foreign. 'How do you mean,
+though? Surely you don't mean renouncing&mdash;and that sort of thing?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Renouncing&mdash;no!' says Insley. 'Getting into the game.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p><p>"He got his enthusiasm down into still places and outlined what he
+meant. It was all at the ends of his fingers&mdash;what there was to do if
+the town was to live up to itself, to find ways to express the everyday
+human fellowship that Insley see underneath everything. And Alex
+Proudfit listened, giving that nice, careful, pacifying attention of
+his. He was always so polite that his listening was like answering. When
+Insley got through, Alex's very disagreeing with him was sympathizing.</p>
+
+<p>"'My dear man,' says he&mdash;I remember every word because it was something
+I'd wondered sometimes too, only I'd done my wondering vague, like you
+do&mdash;'My dear man, but are you not, after all, anticipating? This is just
+the way Nature works&mdash;beating these things into the heads and hearts of
+generations. Aren't you trying to do it all at once?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm trying to help nature, to be a part of nature&mdash;exactly,' says
+Insley, 'and to do it here in Friendship Village.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' says Alex, 'you'll be talking about facilitating God's plan
+next&mdash;helping him along, by Jove.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley looks at him level. 'I mean that now,' he says, 'if you want to
+put it that way.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p><p>"'Good Lord,' says Alex, 'but how do you know what&mdash;what he wants?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't you?' says Insley, even.</p>
+
+<p>"Alex Proudfit turned and touched a bell. 'Look here,' he says, 'you
+stay and dine, won't you? I'm alone to-night&mdash;Calliope and I are. Stay.
+I always enjoy threshing this out.'</p>
+
+<p>"To the man-servant who just about breathed with a well-trained stoop of
+being deferential, his master give the order about the table. 'And,
+Bayless, have them hunt out some of those tea-roses they had in bloom
+the other day&mdash;you should see them, Calliope. Oh, and, Bayless, hurry
+dinner a bit. I'm as hungry as lions,' he added to us, and he made me
+think of the little boy in knickerbockers, asking me for fresh cookies.</p>
+
+<p>"He slipped back to their topic, ranking it right in with tea-roses. In
+the hour before dinner they went on 'threshing it out' there in that
+nice luxurious room, and through the dinner, too&mdash;a simple, perfect
+dinner where I didn't know which to eat, the plates or the food, they
+was both so complete. Up to Proudfit House I can hardly ever make out
+whether I'm chewing flavours or colours or shapes, but I donno as I
+care. Flavours, thank my stars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> aren't the only things in life I know
+how to digest.</p>
+
+<p>"First eager, then patient, Insley went over his ground, setting forth
+by line and by line, by vision and by vision, the faith that was in
+him&mdash;faith in human nature to come into its own, faith in the life of a
+town to work into human life at its best. And always down the same road
+they went, they come a-canterin' back with Alex Proudfit's 'Precisely.
+It is precisely what is happening. You can't force it. You mustn't force
+it. To do the best we can with ourselves and to help up an under dog or
+two&mdash;if he deserves it&mdash;that's the most Nature lets us in for. Otherwise
+she says: "Don't meddle. I'm doing this." And she's right. We'd bungle
+everything. Believe me, my dear fellow, our spurts of civic
+righteousness and national reform never get us anywhere in the long run.
+In the long run, things go along and go along. You can't stop them. If
+you're wise, you won't rush them.'</p>
+
+<p>"At this I couldn't keep still no longer. We was at the table then, and
+I looked over to Alex between the candlesticks and felt as if he was
+back in knickerbockers again, telling me God had made enough ponies so
+he could gallop his all day on the Plank Road if he wanted to.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p><p>"'You and Silas Sykes, Alex,' I says, 'have come to the same motto.
+Silas says Nature is real handy about taking her course so be you don't
+yank open cocoons and buds and like that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Old Silas,' says Alex. 'Lord, is he still going on about everything?
+Old Silas....'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I says, 'he is. And so am I. Out by my woodshed I've got a
+Greening apple tree. When it was about a year old a cow I used to keep
+browst it down. It laid over on the ground, broke clean off all but one
+little side of bark that kept right on doing business with sap, like it
+didn't know its universe was sat on. I didn't get time for a week or two
+to grub it up, and when I did go to it, I see it was still living,
+through that little pinch of bark. I liked the pluck, and I straightened
+it up and tied it to the shed. I used to fuss with it some. Once in a
+storm I went out and propped a dry-goods box over it. I kept the earth
+rich and drove the bugs off. I kind of got interested in seeing what it
+would do next. What it done was to grow like all possessed. It was
+twenty years ago and more that the cow come by it, and this year I've
+had seven bushels of Greenings off that one tree. Suppose I hadn't tied
+it up?'</p>
+
+<p>"'You'd have saved yourself no end of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> trouble, dear Calliope,' says
+Alex, 'to say nothing of sparing the feelings of the cow.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I ain't so anxious any more,' says I, 'about sparing folks' feelings
+as I am about sparing folks. Nor I ain't so crazy as I used to be about
+saving myself trouble, either.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Dear Calliope,' says Alex, 'what an advocate you are. Won't you be my
+advocate?'</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't argue serious with me now no more than he would when he was
+in knickerbockers. But yet he was adorable. When we got back to the
+library, I went on finishing up the books and I could hear him being
+adorable. He dipped down into the past and brought up rich things&mdash;off
+down old ways of life in the village that he'd had a part in and then
+off on the new ways where his life had led him. Java&mdash;had Insley ever
+been in Java? He must show him the moonstone he got there and tell him
+the story they told him about it. But the queerest moonstone story was
+one he'd got in Lucknow&mdash;so he goes on, and sends Bayless for a cabinet,
+and from one precious stone and another he just naturally drew out
+romances and adventures, as if he was ravelling the stones out into
+them. And then he begun taking down some of his old books. And when it
+come to books, the appeal to Insley was like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> an appeal of friends, and
+he burrowed into them musty parchments abundant.</p>
+
+<p>"'By George,' Insley says once, 'I didn't dream there were such things
+in Friendship Village.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Next thing you'll forget they're in the world,' says Alex,
+significant. 'Believe me, a man like you ought not to be down here, or
+over to Indian Mound, either. It's an economic waste. Nature has fitted
+you for her glorious present and you're living along about four decades
+ago. Don't you think of that?...'</p>
+
+<p>"Then the telephone on the library table rang and he answered a call
+from the city. 'Oh, buy it in, buy it in, by all means,' he directs.
+'Yes, cable to-night and buy it in. That,' he says, as he hung up, 'just
+reminds me. There's a first night in London to-night that I've been
+promising myself to see.... What a dog's life a business man leads. By
+the way,' he goes on, 'I've about decided to put in one of our plants
+around here somewhere&mdash;a tannery, you know. I've been off to-day looking
+over sites. I wonder if you can't give me some information I'm after
+about land around Indian Mound. I'm not saying anything yet,
+naturally&mdash;they'll give other people a bonus to establish in their
+midst, but the smell of leather is too much for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> them. We always have to
+surprise them into it. But talk about the ultimate good of a town ... if
+a tannery isn't that, what is it?'</p>
+
+<p>"It was after nine o'clock when I got the books set right&mdash;I loved to
+handle them, and there was some I always looked in before I put them up
+because some of the pictures give me feelings I remembered, same as
+tasting some things will&mdash;spearmint and caraway and coriander. Insley,
+of course, walked down with me. Alex wanted to send us in the
+automobile, but I'm kind of afraid of them in the dark. I can't get it
+out of my head that every bump we go over may be bones. And then I guess
+we both sort of wanted the walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley was like another man from the one that had come into the library
+that afternoon, or had been talking to us at Mis' Emmons's the night
+before. Down in the village, on Mis' Emmons's hearth, with Robin sitting
+opposite, it had seemed so easy to know ways to do, and to do them.
+Everything seemed possible, as if the whole stiff-muscled universe could
+be done things to if only everybody would once say to it: <i>Our</i>
+universe. But now, after his time with Alex, I knew how everything had
+kind of <i>tightened</i>, closed in around him, shot up into high walls.
+Money, tanneries, big deals by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> cable, moonstones from Java, they almost
+made me slimpse too, and think, What's the use of believing Alex
+Proudfit and me belong to the same universe? So I guessed how Insley was
+feeling, ready to believe that he had got showed up to himself in his
+true light, as a young, emotioning creature who dreams of getting
+everybody to belong together, and yet can't find no good way. And Alex
+Proudfit's parting words must of followed him down the drive and out on
+to the Plank Road:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Take my advice. Don't spend yourself on this blessed little hole. It's
+dear to me, but it <i>is</i> a hole ... eh? You won't get any thanks for it.
+Ten to one they'll turn on you if you try to be one of them. Get out of
+here as soon as possible, and be in the real world! This is just
+make-believing&mdash;and really, you know, you're too fine a sort to throw
+yourself away like this. Old Nature will take care of the town in good
+time without you. Trust her!'</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes something happens to make the world seem different from what
+we thought it was. Them times catch all of us&mdash;when we feel like we'd
+been let down gentle from some high foot-path where we'd been going
+along, and instead had been set to walk a hard road in a silence that
+pointed its finger at us. If we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> get really knocked down sudden from a
+high foot-path, we can most generally pick ourselves up and rally. But
+when we've been let down gentle by arguments that seem convincing, and
+by folks that seem to know the world better than we do, then's the time
+when there ain't much of any rally to us. If we're any good, I s'pose we
+can climb back without rallying. Rallying gives some spring to the
+climb, but just straight dog-climbing will get us there, too.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a lovely July night, with June not quite out of the world yet.
+There was that after-dark light in the sky that makes you feel that the
+sky is going to stay lit up behind and shining through all night, as if
+the time was so beautiful that celestial beings must be staying awake to
+watch it, and to keep the sky lit and turned down low.... We walked
+along the Plank Road pretty still, because I guessed how Insley's own
+thoughts was conversation enough for him; but when we got a ways down,
+he kind of reached out with his mind for something and me being near by,
+his mind clutched at me.</p>
+
+<p>"'What if it <i>is</i> so, Miss Marsh?' he says. 'What if the only thing for
+us to do is to tend to personal morality and an occasional lift to an
+under dog or two&mdash;"if he deserves it." What if that's all&mdash;they meant us
+to do?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p><p>"It's awful hard giving a reason for your chief notions. It's like
+describing a rose by the tape-measure.</p>
+
+<p>"'Shucks!' I says only. 'Look up at the stars. I don't believe it.'</p>
+
+<p>"He laughed a little, and he did look up at them, but still I knew how
+he felt. And even the stars that night looked awful detached and able to
+take care of themselves. And they were a-shining down on the Plank Road
+that would get to be Daphne Street and go about its business of leading
+to private homes&mdash;<i>private</i> homes. The village, that little cluster of
+lights ahead there, seemed just shutting anybody else out, going its own
+way, kind of mocking anybody for any idea of getting really inside it.
+It was plain enough that Insley had nothing to hope for from Alex
+Proudfit. And Alex's serene sureness that Nature needed nobody to help,
+his real self-satisfied looking on at processes which no man could
+really hurry up&mdash;my, but they made you feel cheap, and too many of
+yourself, and like none of you had a license to take a-hold. For a
+second I caught myself wondering. Maybe Nature&mdash;stars and streets and
+processes&mdash;<i>could</i> work it out without us.</p>
+
+<p>"Something come against my foot. I pushed at it, and then bent over and
+touched it. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> was warm and yieldy, and I lifted it up. And it was a
+puppy that wriggled its body unbelievable and flopped on to my arm its
+inch and a quarter of tail.</p>
+
+<p>"'Look at,' I says to Insley, which, of course, he couldn't do; but I
+put the little thing over into his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, little brother,' says he. 'Running away?'</p>
+
+<p>"We was just in front of the Cadozas', a tumble-down house halfway
+between Proudfit House and the village. It looked like the puppy might
+belong there, so we turned in there with it. I'd always sort of dreaded
+the house, setting in back among lilacs and locusts and never lit up.
+When I stopped to think of it, I never seemed to remember much about
+those lilacs and locusts blooming&mdash;I suppose they did, but nobody caught
+them at it often. Some houses you always think of with their lilacs and
+locusts and wisteria and hollyhocks going all the time; and some you
+never seem to connect up with being in bloom at all. Some houses you
+always seem to think of as being lit up to most of their windows, and
+some you can't call to mind as showing any way but dark. The Cadozas'
+was one of the unblossoming, dark kind, and awful ramshackle, besides.
+I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> always use' to think it looked like it was waiting for some kind of
+happening, I didn't know what. And sometimes when I come by there in the
+dark, I used to think: It ain't happened yet.</p>
+
+<p>"We went around to the back door to rap, and Mis' Cadoza opened it&mdash;a
+slovenly looking woman she is, with no teeth much, and looking like what
+hair she's got is a burden to her. I remember how she stood there
+against a background of mussy kitchen that made you feel as if you'd
+turned something away wrong side out to where it wasn't meant to be
+looked at.</p>
+
+<p>"'Is it yours, Mis' Cadoza?' I says, Insley holding out the puppy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Murder, it's Patsy,' says Mis' Cadoza. 'Give 'm here&mdash;he must of
+followed Spudge off. Oh, it's you, Miss Marsh.'</p>
+
+<p>"Over by the cook stove in the corner I see past her to something that
+made me bound to go inside a minute. It was a bed, all frowzy and
+tumbled, and in it was laying a little boy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' I says, 'I heard Eph was in bed. What's the matter with him?'
+And I went right in, past his mother, like I was a born guest. She drew
+off, sort of grudging&mdash;she never liked any of us to go there, except
+when some of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> died, which they was always doing. 'Come in and see
+Eph, Mr. Insley,' I says, and introduced him.</p>
+
+<p>"The little boy wasn't above eight years old and he wasn't above six
+years big.... He was laying real still, with his arms out of bed, and
+his little thin hands flat down on the dark covers. His eyes, looking up
+at us, watching, made me think of some trapped thing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, little brother,' says Insley, 'what's the trouble?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Cadoza come and stood at the foot of the bed and jerked at the top
+covers.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've put him in the bed,' she says, 'because I'm wore out lifting him
+around. An' I've got the bed out here because I can't trapse back an'
+forth waitin' on him.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Is he a cripple?' asks Insley, low. I liked so much to hear his
+voice&mdash;it was as if it lifted and lowered itself in his throat without
+his bothering to tell it which kind it was time to do. And I never heard
+his voice make a mistake.</p>
+
+<p>"'Cripple?' says Mis' Cadoza, in her kind of undressed voice. 'No. He
+fell in a tub of hot water years ago, and his left leg is witherin' up.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Let me see it,' says Insley, and pulled the covers back without
+waiting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p><p>"There ain't nothing more wonderful than a strong, capable, quick human
+hand doing something it knows how to do. Insley's hands touched over the
+poor little leg of the child until I expected to see it get well right
+there under his fingers. He felt the cords of the knee and then looked
+up at the mother.</p>
+
+<p>"'Haven't they told you,' he says, 'that if he has an operation on his
+knee, you can have a chance at saving the leg? I knew a case very like
+this where the leg was saved.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I ain't been to see nobody about it,' says Mis' Cadoza, leaving her
+mouth open afterwards, like she does. 'What's the good? I can't pay for
+no operation on him. I got all I can do to keep 'm alive.'</p>
+
+<p>"Eph moved a little, and something fell down on the floor. Mis' Cadoza
+pounced on it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't I forbid you?' she says, angry, and held out to us what she'd
+picked up&mdash;a little dab of wet earth. 'He digs up all my house plants,'
+she scolds, like some sort of machinery grating down on one place
+continual, 'an' he hauls the dirt out and lays there an' makes
+<i>figgers</i>. The idear! Gettin' the sheets a sight....'</p>
+
+<p>"The child looked over at us, defiant. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> spoke for the first time, and
+I was surprised to hear how kind of grown-up his voice was.</p>
+
+<p>"'I can get 'em to look like faces,' he says. 'I don't care what <i>she</i> says.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Show us,' commands Insley.</p>
+
+<p>"He got back the bit of earth from Mis' Cadoza, and found a paper for
+the crumbs, and pillowed the boy up and sat beside him. The thin, dirty
+little hands went to work as eager as birds pecking, and on the earth
+that he packed in his palm he made, with his thumb nail and a pen handle
+from under his pillow, a face&mdash;a boy's face, that had in it something
+that looked at you. 'But I can never get 'em to look the same way two
+times,' he says to us, shy.</p>
+
+<p>"'He's most killed my Lady Washington geranium draggin' the clay out
+from under the roots,' Mis' Cadoza put in, resentful.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley sort of sweeps around and looks acrost at her, deep and gentle,
+and like he understood about her boy and her geranium considerable
+better than she did.</p>
+
+<p>"'He won't do it any more,' he says. 'He'll have something better.'</p>
+
+<p>"The boy looked up at him. 'What?' he asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Clay,' says Insley, 'in a box. With things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> for you to make the clay
+like. Do you want that?'</p>
+
+<p>"The boy kind of curled down in his pillow and come as near to shuffling
+as he could in the bed, and he hadn't an idea what to say. But I tell
+you, his eyes, they wasn't like any trapped thing any more; they was
+regular <i>boy's</i> eyes, lit up about something.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mrs. Cadoza,' Insley says, 'will you do something for me? We're trying
+to get together a little shrubbery, over at the college. May I come in
+and get some lilac roots from you some day?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Cadoza looked at him&mdash;and looked. I don't s'pose it had ever come
+to her before that anybody would want anything she had or anything she
+could do.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, sure,' she says, only. 'Sure, you can, Mr. What's-name.'</p>
+
+<p>"And then Insley put out his hand, and she took it, I noted special. I
+donno as I ever see anybody shake hands with her before, excep' when
+somebody was gettin' buried out of her house.</p>
+
+<p>"When we got out on the road again, I noticed that Insley went swinging
+along so's I could hardly keep up with him; and he done it sort of
+automatic, and like it was natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> to him. I didn't say anything. If
+I've learned one thing living out and in among human beings, it's that
+if you don't do your own keeping still at the right time, nobody else is
+going to do it for you. He spoke up after a minute like I thought he
+would; and he spoke up buoyant&mdash;kind of a reverent buoyant:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't believe we're discharged from the universe, after all,' he
+says, and laughed a little. 'I believe we've still got our job.'</p>
+
+<p>"I looked 'way down the Plank Road, on its way to its business of being
+Daphne Street, and it come to me that neither the one nor the other
+stopped in Friendship Village. But they led on out, down past the wood
+lots and the Pump pasture and across the tracks and up the hill, and
+right off into that sky that somebody was keeping lit up and turned down
+low. And I said something that I'd thought before:</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't it,' I says, 'like sometimes everybody in the world come and
+stood right close up beside of you, and spoke through the walls of you
+for something inside of you to come out and be there with them?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's it,' he says, only. 'That's it.' But I see his mind nipped onto
+what mine meant, and tied it in the right place.</p>
+
+<p>"When we got to Mis' Emmons's corner, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> turned off from Daphne Street
+to go that way, because I'd told her I'd look in that night and see what
+they'd bought in town. It was late, for the village, but Mis' Emmons
+never minded that. The living-room light was showing through the
+curtains, and Insley, saying good night to me, looked towards the
+windows awful wistful. I guessed why. It was part because he felt as if
+he must see Robin Sidney and they must talk over together what Alex
+Proudfit had said to him. And part it was just plain because he wanted
+to see her again.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why don't you come in a minute,' I says, 'and ask after Christopher?
+Then you can see me home.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Wouldn't they mind it being late?' he asks.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help smiling at that. Once Mis' Emmons had called us all up
+by telephone at ten o'clock at night to invite us to her house two days
+later. She explained afterwards that she hadn't looked at the clock for
+a week, but if she had, she might have called us just the same. 'For my
+life,' she says, 'I <i>can't</i> be afraid of ten o'clock. Indeed, I rather
+like it.' I told him this, while we was walking in from her gate.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mrs. Emmons,' he says, when she come to the door, 'I've come because I
+hear that you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> like ten o'clock, and so do I. I wanted to ask if you've
+ever been able to make it last?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' she says. 'I prefer a new one every night&mdash;and this one to-night
+is an exceptionally good one.'</p>
+
+<p>"She always answered back so pretty. I feel glad when folks can. It's
+like they had an extra brain to 'em.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley went in, and he sort of filled up the whole room, the way some
+men do. He wasn't so awful big, either. But he was pervading.
+Christopher had gone to bed, and Robin Sidney was sitting there near a
+big crock of hollyhocks&mdash;she could make the centre and life of a room a
+crock full of flowers just as you can make it a fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come in,' she says, 'and see what we bought Christopher. I wanted to
+put him in black velvet knickerbockers or silver armour, but Aunt
+Eleanor has bought chiefly khaki middies. She's such a sensible
+relative.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What are we going to do with him?' Insley asks. I loved the way he
+always said 'we' about everything. Not 'they' or 'you,' but always,
+'What are <i>we</i> going to do.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll keep him awhile,' Mis' Emmons says, 'and see what develops. If I
+weren't going to Europe this fall&mdash;but something may happen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> Things do.
+Calliope,' she says to me, 'did I buy what I ought to have bought?'</p>
+
+<p>"I went over to see the things spread out on the table, and Insley
+turned round to where Robin was. I don't really believe he had been very
+far away from where she was since the night before, when Christopher
+come. And he got right into what he had to say, like he was impatient
+for the sympathy in her eyes and in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'I must tell you,' he says. 'I could hardly wait to tell you. Isn't it
+great to be knocked down and picked up again, without having to get back
+on your own feet. I&mdash;wanted to tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell me,' she says. And she looked at him in her nice, girl way that
+lent him her eyes in good faith for just a minute and then took them
+back again.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've been to see Alex Proudfit,' he said. 'I've dined with him.'</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think she said anything at all, but Insley went on, absorbed in
+what he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"'I talked with him,' he says, 'about what we talked of last night&mdash;the
+things to do, here in the village. I thought he might care&mdash;I was
+foolish enough for that. Have you ever tried to open a door in a solid
+wall? When<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> I left there, I felt as if I'd tried just that. Seriously,
+have you ever tried to talk about the way things are going to be and to
+talk about it to a perfectly satisfied man?'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin leaned forward, but I guess he thought that was because of her
+sympathy. He went right on:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I want never to speak of this to anyone else, but I can't help telling
+you. You&mdash;understand. You know what I'm driving at. Alex Proudfit is a
+good man&mdash;as men are counted good. And he's a perfect host, a
+fascinating companion. But he's a type of the most dangerous selfishness
+that walks the world&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin suddenly laid her hand, just for a flash, on Insley's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"'You mustn't tell me,' she says. 'I ought to have told you before. Alex
+Proudfit&mdash;I'm going to be Alex Proudfit's wife.'</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<p>"In the next days things happened that none of us Friendship Village
+ladies is likely ever to forget. Some of the things was nice and some
+was exciting, and some was the kind that's nice after you've got the
+introduction wore off; but all of them was memorable. And most all of
+them was the kind that when you're on the train looking out the car
+window, or when you're home sitting in the dusk before it's time to
+light the lamp, you fall to thinking about and smiling over, and you
+have them always around with you, same as heirlooms you've got ready for
+yourself.</p>
+
+<p>"One of these was the Fourth of July that year. It fell a few days after
+Alex Proudfit come, and the last of the days was full of his guests
+arriving to the house party. The two Proudfit cars was racking back and
+forth to the station all day long, and Jimmy Sturgis, he went near crazy
+with getting the baggage up. I never see such a lot of baggage. 'Land,
+land,' says Mis' Toplady, peeking out her window at it, 'you'd think
+they was all trees and they'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> come bringing extra sets of branches,
+regular forest size.' Mis' Emmons and Robin and Christopher went up the
+night before the Fourth&mdash;Mis' Emmons was going to do the chaperoning,
+and Alex had asked me to be up there all I could to help him. He knows
+how I love to have a hand in things. However, I couldn't be there right
+at first, because getting ready for the Fourth of July was just then in
+full swing.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what it is to want to do over again something that you
+ain't done for years and years? I don't care what it is&mdash;whether it's
+wanting to be back sitting around the dinner table of your home when you
+was twelve, and them that was there aren't there now; or whether it's
+rocking in the cool of the day on the front porch of some old house that
+got tore down long ago; or whether it's walking along a road you use' to
+know every fence post of; or fishing from a stream that's dried up or
+damned these twenty years; or eating spice' currants or pickle' peaches
+that there aren't none put up like them now; or hearing a voice in a
+glee club that don't sing no more, or milking a dead cow that <i>wasn't</i>
+dead on the spring mornings you mean about&mdash;no, sir, I don't care what
+one of them all it happens to be, if you know what it is to want to do
+it again and can't, 'count of death and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>distance and long-ago-ness,
+then I tell you you know one of the lonesomest, hurtingest feelings the
+human heart can, sole outside of the awful things. And that was what had
+got the matter with me awhile ago.</p>
+
+<p>"It had come on me in the meeting of townspeople called by Silas Sykes a
+few weeks before, to discuss how Friendship Village should celebrate the
+Fourth. We hadn't had a Fourth in the village in years. Seeing the
+Fourth and the Cemetery was so closely connected, late years, Sodality
+had took a hand in the matter and had got fire-crackers and pistols
+voted out of town, part by having family fingers blowed off and clothes
+scorched full of holes, and part through Silas and the other dealers
+admitting they wan't no money in the stuff and they'd be glad to be
+prevented by law from having to sell it. So we shut down on it the year
+after little Spudge Cadoza bit down on a cap to see if it'd go off, and
+it done so. But we see we'd made the mistake of not hatching up
+something to take the place of the noise, because the boys and girls all
+went off to the next-town Fourths and come home blowed up and scorched
+off, anyway. And some of the towns, especially Red Barns, that we can
+see from Friendship Village when it's clear, was feeling awful touchy
+and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>chip-shouldered towards us, and their two weekly papers was saying
+we borrowed our year's supply of patriotism off the county, and sponged
+on public spirit, and like that. So the general Friendship feeling was
+that we'd ought to have a doings this year, and Postmaster Sykes, that
+ain't so much public spirited as he is professional leading
+citizen,&mdash;platform introducer of all visiting orators and so on,&mdash;he
+called a mass-meeting to decide what to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes, she was awful interested, too, through being a born leader
+and up in arms most of the time to do something new. And this year she
+was anxious to get up something fancy to impress her niece with&mdash;the new
+niece that was coming to visit her, and that none of us had ever see,
+and that the Sykes's themselves had only just developed. Seems she was
+looking for her family tree and she wrote to Mis' Sykes about being
+connect'. And the letter seemed so swell, and the address so
+mouth-melting and stylish that Mis' Sykes up and invited her to
+Friendship Village to look herself up in their Bible, Born and Died
+part.</p>
+
+<p>"The very night of that public mass-meeting Miss Beryl Sessions&mdash;such
+was the niece's name&mdash;come in on the Through, and Mis' Sykes, she
+snapped her up from the supper table to bring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> her to the meeting and
+show her off, all brimming with the blood-is-thicker-than-water
+sentiments due to a niece that looked like that. For I never see
+sweller. And being in the Glee Club I set where I got a good view when
+Mis' Sykes rustled into the meeting, last minute, in her best black
+cashmere, though it was an occasion when the rest of us would wear our
+serges and alapacas, and Mis' Sykes knew it. All us ladies see them both
+and took in every stitch they had on without letting on to unpack a
+glance, and we see that the niece was wearing the kind of a dress that
+was to ours what mince-pie is to dried apple, and I couldn't blame Mis'
+Sykes for showing her off, human.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas had had Dr. June open the meeting with prayer, and I can't feel
+that this was so much reverence in Silas as that he isn't real
+parliamentary nor yet real knowledgeable about what to do with his
+hands, and prayer sort of broke the ice for him. That's the way Silas
+is.</p>
+
+<p>"'Folks,' says he, 'we're here to consider the advisability of bein'
+patriotic this year. Of having a doings that'll shame the other towns
+around for their half-an'-half way of giving things. Of making the
+glorious Fourth a real business bringer. Of having a speech that'll
+bring in the country trade&mdash;the Honourable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> Thaddeus Hyslop has been
+named by some. And of getting our city put in the class of the wide
+awake and the hustlers and the up-to-date and doing. It's a grand chance
+we've passed up for years. What are we going to do for ourselves this
+year? To decide it is the purpose of this mass-meetin'. Sentiments are
+now in order.'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas set down with a kitterin' glance to his new niece that he was
+host and uncle of and pleased to be put in a good light before, first
+thing so.</p>
+
+<p>"Several men hopped up&mdash;Timothy Toplady saying that Friendship Village
+was a city in all but name and numbers, and why not prove it to the
+other towns? Jimmy Sturgis that takes tintypes, besides running the 'bus
+and was all primed for a day full of both&mdash;'A glorious Fourth,' says he,
+'would be money in our pockets.' And the farm machinery and furniture
+dealers, and Gekerjeck, that has the drug store and the ice-cream
+fountain, and others, they spoke the same. Insley had to be to the
+college that night, or I don't believe the meeting would have gone the
+way it did go. For the first line and chorus of everything that all the
+men present said never varied:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'The Fourth for a business bringer.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p><p>"It was Threat Hubbelthwait that finally made the motion, and he wasn't
+real sober, like he usually ain't, but he wound up on the key-note:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I sold two hundred and four lunches the last Fourth we hed in
+Friendship Village,' says he, pounding his palm with his fist, 'an' I
+move you that we celebrate this comin' Fourth like the blazes.'</p>
+
+<p>"And though Silas softened it down some in putting it, still that was
+substantially the sentiment that went through at that mass-meeting, that
+was real pleased with itself because of.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, us ladies hadn't taken no part. It ain't our custom to appear
+much on our feet at public gatherings, unless to read reports of a
+year's work, and so that night we never moved a motion. But we looked at
+each other, and us ladies has got so we understand each other's
+eyebrows. And we knew, one and all, that we was ashamed of the men and
+ashamed of their sentiments. But the rest didn't like to speak out,
+'count of being married to them. And I didn't like to, 'count of not
+being.</p>
+
+<p>"But when they got to discussing ways and means of celebrating, a woman
+did get onto her feet, and a little lilt of interest run round the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> room
+like wind. It was Miss Beryl Sessions, the niece, that stood up like
+you'd unwrapped your new fashion magazine and unrolled her off'n the
+front page.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wonder,' says she&mdash;and her voice went all sweet and chirpy and
+interested, 'whether it would amuse you to know some ways we took to
+celebrate the Fourth of July last year at home ...' and while the men
+set paying attention to her appearance and thinking they was paying
+attention to her words alone, she went on to tell them how 'at home' the
+whole town had joined in a great, Fourth of July garden party on the
+village 'common,' with a band and lanterns and fireworks at night, and a
+big marquee in the middle, full of ice-cream. 'We made it,' she wound
+up, 'a real social occasion, a town party with everybody invited. And
+the business houses said that it paid them over and over.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course that went with the men. Land, but men is easy tamed, so
+be the tameress is somebody they ain't used to and is gifted with a good
+dress and a kind of a 'scalloped air. But when she also has some idea of
+business they go down and don't know it. 'Why, I should think that'd
+take here like a warm meal,' says Timothy Toplady, instant&mdash;and I see
+Mis' Amanda Toplady's chin come home to place like she'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> heard Timothy
+making love to another woman. 'Novel as the dickens,' says Simon
+Gekerjeck. 'Move we adopt it.' And so they done.</p>
+
+<p>"While they was appointing committees I set up there in the Glee Club
+feeling blacker and blacker. Coming down to the meeting that night, I
+recollect I'd been extra gentle in my mind over the whole celebration
+idea. Walking along in the seven-o'clock light, with the sun shining
+east on Daphne Street and folks all streaming to the town-meeting, and
+me sensing what it was going to be for, I'd got all worked up to 'most a
+Declaration of Independence lump in my throat. When I went in the door
+to the meeting, little Spudge Cadoza and some other children was hanging
+around the steps and Silas Sykes was driving them away; and it come to
+me how deathly ridiculous that was, to be driving <i>children</i> away from a
+meeting like that, when children is what such meetings is for; and I'd
+got to thinking of all the things Insley was hoping for us, and I'd been
+real lifted up on to places for glory. And here down had come the men
+with their talk about a <i>paying</i> Fourth, and here was Miss Beryl
+Sessions showing us how to celebrate in a way that seemed to me real
+sweet but not so very patriotic. It was then that all of a sudden it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+seemed to me I'd die, because I wanted so much to feel the way I'd use
+to feel when it was going to be the Fourth o' July. And when they sung
+'Star Spangled Banner' to go home on and all stood up to the sentiment,
+I couldn't open my mouth. I can't go folks that stands up and carols
+national tunes and then talks about having a Fourth that'll be a real
+business bringer.</p>
+
+<p>"'What'd you think of the meeting?' says Mis' Toplady, low, to me on the
+way out.</p>
+
+<p>"'I think,' says I, frank, 'it was darn.'</p>
+
+<p>"'There's just exactly what we all think,' says Mis' Toplady, in a
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"But all the same, preparations was gone into head first. Most of us was
+put on to from one to five committees&mdash;I mean most of them that works.
+The rest of the town was setting by, watching it be done for them,
+serene or snarling, according to their lights. Of course us ladies
+worked, not being them that goes to a meeting an' sets with their mouths
+shut and then comes out and kicks at what the meetin' done. Yet, though
+we wan't made out of that kind of meal, we spoke our minds to each
+other, private.</p>
+
+<p>"'What under the canopy <i>is</i> a marquee?' asks Mis' Amanda Toplady, when
+we met at her house to plan about refreshments.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke right up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, it's a finger ring,' she says. 'One of them with stones running
+the long way. The minister's wife's got a blue stone one....'</p>
+
+<p>"'Finger ring!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, scornful. 'It's a title. That's
+what it is. From England.'</p>
+
+<p>"We looked at them both, perplexish. Mis' Holcomb is always up on
+things&mdash;it was her that went into short sleeves when the rest of us was
+still crocheting cuff turnovers, unconscious as the dead. But Mis'
+Uppers had been the Mayor's wife, and though he'd run away, 'count o'
+some money matter, still a title is a title, an' we thought Mis' Uppers
+had ought to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, she spoke up timid. 'I
+see,' she says, 'in the <i>Caterer's Gazette</i> a picture called "Marquee
+Decorated for F&ecirc;te." The picture wan't nothing but a striped tent. Could
+a tent have anything to do with it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Pity sakes, no,' says Mis' Uppers. 'This is somethin' real city done,
+Abagail.'</p>
+
+<p>"We worked on what we could, but we all felt kind of lost and left out
+of it, and like we was tinkering with tools we didn't know the names<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> of
+and a-making something we wasn't going to know how to use. And when the
+article about our Fourth flared out in the <i>Friendship Daily</i> and Red
+Barns and Indian Mound weeklies, we felt worse than we had before:
+'Garden Party.' 'All Day F&ecirc;te.' '<i>Al Fresco</i> Celebration,' the editors
+had wrote it up.</p>
+
+<p>"'All <i>what</i>?' says Mis' Uppers, listening irritable to the last one. 'I
+can't catch that word no more'n a rabbit.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's a French word,' Mis' Holcomb told her, superior. 'Seems to me
+I've heard it means a failure. It's a funny way to put it, ain't it? I
+bet, though, that's what it'll be.'</p>
+
+<p>"But the men, my, the men thought they was doing things right. The
+Committee on Orator, with Silas for rudder, had voted itself Fifty
+Dollars to squander on the speech, and they had engaged the Honourable
+Thaddeus Hyslop, that they'd hoped to, and that was formerly in our
+legislature, to be the orator of the day; they put up a platform and
+seats on the 'common'&mdash;that wan't nothing but the market where loads of
+wood stood to be sold; they was a-going to cut evergreens and plant them
+there for the day; the Committee on Fireworks was a-going to buy set
+pieces for the evening; they was a-going to raise Ned. Somebody that was
+on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> one of the committees wanted to have some sort of historic scenes,
+but the men wouldn't hear to it, because that would take away them that
+had to do the business in the stores; no caluthumpians, no grand basket
+dinner&mdash;just the garden party, real sweet, with Miss Beryl Sessions and
+a marquee full of ice-cream that the ladies was to make.</p>
+
+<p>"'It sounds sort of sacrilegious to me,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'connectin'
+the Fourth up with society and secular doin's. When I was young, my
+understandin' of a garden party would of been somethin' worldly. Now it
+seems it's patriotic. Well, I wonder how it's believed to be in the
+sight of the Lord?'</p>
+
+<p>"But whether it was right or whether it was wrong, none of it rung like
+it had ought to of rang. They wan't no <i>glow</i> to it. We all went around
+like getting supper on wash-day, and not like getting up a meal for
+folks that meant a lot to us. It wan't going to be any such Fourth as
+I'd meant about and wanted to have come back. The day come on a pacing,
+and the nearer it come, the worse all us ladies felt. And by a few days
+before it, when our final committee meeting come off in Abagail Arnold's
+home bakery, back room, 'count of being central, we was all blue as the
+grave, and I donno but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> bluer. We set waiting for Silas that was having
+a long-distance call, and Abagail was putting in the time frosting dark
+cakes in the same room. We was most all there but the niece Miss Beryl
+Sessions. She had gone home, but she was coming back on the Fourth in an
+automobile full o' city folks.</p>
+
+<p>"'The <i>marquee's</i> come,' says Mis' Holcomb, throwing out the word
+clickish.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody said anything. Seems it <i>was</i> a tent all along.</p>
+
+<p>"'Silas has got in an extra boy for the day,' says Mis' Sykes,
+complacent. 'It's the littlest Cadoza boy, Spudge. He's goin' to walk up
+an' down Daphne Street all day, with a Prize Coffee board on his back.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Where's Spudge's Fourth comin' in?' I couldn't help askin'.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes stared. She always could look you down, but she's got a much
+flatter, thicker stare since her niece come. 'What's them kind o' folks
+<i>for</i> but such work?' says she, puckering.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I donno, I donno,' says I. 'I thought mebbe they was partly made
+to thank the Lord for bein' born free.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How unpractical you talk, Calliope,' she says.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p><p>"'I donno that word,' says I, reckless from being pent up. 'But it
+seems like a liberty-lovin' people had ought to hev <i>one</i> day to love
+liberty on an' not tote groceries and boards and such.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Don't it!</i>' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, explosive.</p>
+
+<p>"'What you talking?' says Mis' Sykes, cold. 'Don't you know the Fourth
+of July can be made one of the best days of the year for your own town's
+good? What's that if it ain't patriotic?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's Yankee shrewd,' says I, snapping some, 'that's what it is. It
+ain't Yankee spirited, by a long shot.'</p>
+
+<p>"'"<i>By a long shot</i>,"' quotes Mis' Sykes, withering. She always was
+death on wording, and she was far more death after her niece come. But I
+always thought, and I think now, that correcting your advisary's grammar
+is like telling him there's a smooch on his nose, and they ain't either
+of them parliamental <i>or</i> decent.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Uppers sighed. 'The whole thing,' says she, candid, 'sounds to me
+like Fourth o' July in Europe or somewheres. No get-up-an'-get anywheres
+to it. What do they do in Europe on the Fourth o' July, anyway?' she
+wondered. 'I donno's I ever read.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p><p>"'I donno, either,' says Mis' Holcomb, dark, 'but I bet you it's one of
+these All Frost celebrations&mdash;or whatever it is they say.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady set drying her feet by Abagail's stove, and she looked
+regular down in the mouth. 'Well, sir,' she said, 'a Fourth o' July all
+rosettes an' ribbins so don't sound to me one bit like the regular
+Fourth at all. It don't sound to me no more'n the third&mdash;or the fifth.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was getting that same homesick feeling that I'd had off and on all
+through the getting ready, that hankering for the old kinds of Fourths
+of Julys when I was a little girl. When us girls had a quarter apiece to
+spend, and father'd cover the quarter with his hands on the gate-post
+for us to guess them; and when the boys picked up scrap-iron and sold
+old rubbers to get their Fourth money. It wan't so much what we used to
+do that I wanted back as it was the <i>feeling</i>. Why, none of our spines
+use' to be laid down good and flat in our backs once all day long. And I
+wisht what I'd wisht more than once since the mass-meeting, that some of
+us ladies had of took hold of that Fourth and had run it so's 'twould of
+been like you mean 'way inside when you say 'The Fourth of July'&mdash;and
+that death and distance and long-ago-ness is awful in the way of.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p><p>"'We'd ought to of had a grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods,' I
+says, restless.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' a p'rade,' says Mis' Toplady. 'I donno nothin' that makes me feel
+more patriotic than the minute before the p'rade comes by.'</p>
+
+<p>"'An' children in the Fourth somehow,' Mis' Uppers says. 'Land, children
+is who it's for, anyhow,' she says, like I'd been thinking; 'an' all
+we've ever done for 'em about it is to leave 'em kill 'emselves with
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was there, just there, and before Mis' Sykes could dicker a
+reply that in come tearing her husband from his long-distance
+telephoning, and raced into the room like he hadn't a manner in his kit.</p>
+
+<p>"'We're all over with,' Silas shouts. 'It's all done for! Thaddeus
+Hyslop is smashed an' bleedin'. He can't come. We ain't got no speech.
+His automobile's turned over on top of his last speakin' place.
+Everybody else that ain't one-horse is sure to be got for somewheres
+else. Our Fourth of July is rooned. We're done for. The editor's gettin'
+it in the <i>Weekly</i> so's to warn the county. We'll be the Laughing Stock.
+Dang the luck!' says Silas; 'why don't some o' you say somethin'?'</p>
+
+<p>"But it wasn't all because Silas was doing it all that the men didn't
+talk, because when he'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> stopped, they all stood there with their mouths
+open and never said a word. Seems to me I did hear Timothy Toplady bring
+out, 'Blisterin' Benson,' but nobody offered nothing more fertile. That
+is, nobody of the men did. But 'most before I got my thoughts together I
+heard two feet of a chair come down onto the floor, and Mis' Amanda
+Toplady stood up there by Abagail's cook stove, and she took the griddle
+lifter and struck light on the side of the pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hurrah!' she says. 'Now we can have a real Fourth. A Fourth that does
+as a Fourth is.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What you talkin', Amanda Toplady?' says Silas, crisp; and ''Mandy,
+what the blazes do you mean?' says Timothy, her lawful lord. But Mis'
+Toplady didn't mind them, nor mind Mis' Sykes, that was staring at her
+flat and thick.</p>
+
+<p>"'I mean,' says Mis' Toplady, reckless, 'I been sick to death of the
+idea of a Fourth with no spirit to it. I mean I been sick to death of a
+Fourth that's all starched white dresses an' company manners an' no
+hurrahs anywheres about it. An' us ladies, most all of us, feels the
+same. We didn't like to press in, bein' you men done the original
+plannin', an' so not one of us has said "P'rade," nor nothin' else to
+you. But now that your orator has fell through on himself, you men just
+leave us ladies in on this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> thing to do more'n take orders, an' you
+needn't be the Laughin' Stock o' nothin' an' nobody. I guess you'll all
+stand by me. What say, ladies?'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, you'd ought to of heard us. We joined in like a patch of
+grasshoppers singing. They wasn't one of us that hadn't been dying to
+get our hands on that Fourth and make it a Fourth full of unction and
+oil of joy, like the Bible said, and must of meant what we meant.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, ladies,' I remember I says, fervent, 'I feel like we could make a
+Fourth o' July just like stirrin' up a white cake, so be we was let.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What d' you know about managin' a Fourth?' snarls Silas. 'You'll have
+us all in the hole. You'll have us shellin' out of our own pockets to
+make up&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady whirled on him. 'Would you druther have Red Barns an'
+Indian Mound a-jumpin' on you through the weekly press for bein'
+bluffers, an' callin' us cheap an' like that, or would you druther not?'
+she put it to him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dang it,' says Silas, 'I never tried to do a thing for this town that
+it didn't lay down an' roll all over me. I wish I was dead.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You wan't tryin' to do this thing for this town,' says Mis' Toplady
+back at him, like the wind. 'You was tryin' to do it for the <i>stores</i>
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> this town, an' you know it. You was tryin' to ride the Fourth for a
+horse to the waterin' trough o' good business, an' you know it, Silas
+Sykes,' says she, 'an' so was Jimmy and Threat an' all of you. The hull
+country tries to get behind the Fourth of July an' make money over its
+back like a counter. It ain't what was meant, an' us ladies felt it all
+along. An' neither was it meant for a garden party day alone, though
+<i>that</i>,' says Mis' Toplady, gracious, 'is a real sweet side idea. An'
+Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Sessions had ought to go on an' run that part of it,
+bein' the&mdash;tent's here,' she could <i>not</i> bring herself to use that other
+word. 'But,' she says, 'that ain't all of a real Fourth, nor yet a
+speech ain't, though he did use to be in the legislature. Them things
+alone don't make a real flag, liberty-praisin' Fourth, to me nor to none
+of us.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Silas, sour, 'what you goin' to <i>do</i> if the men decides to
+let you try this?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That ain't the way,' says Mis' Toplady, like a flash; 'it ain't for
+the men to <i>let us do</i> nothin'. It's for us all to do it together, yoke
+to yoke, just like everything else ought to be done by us both, an' no
+talk o' "<i>runnin</i>'" by either side.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But what's the idee&mdash;what's the idee?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> says Silas. 'Dang it all,
+somebody's got to hev an idee.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Us ladies has got 'em,' says Mis' Toplady, calm. 'An',' says she, 'one
+o' the first of 'em is that if we have anything to do with runnin' the
+Fourth of our forefathers, then after 10 <span class="smaller">A.M.</span>, all day on that day,
+every business house in town has got to shut down.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What?' says Silas, his voice slippin'. 'Gone crazy-headed, hev ye?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, Silas,' says Mis' Toplady, 'nor yet hev we gone so graspin' that
+we can't give up a day's trade to take notice of our country.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Lord Harry,' says Silas, 'you can't get a dealer in town to do it, an'
+you know it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, yes, you can, Silas,' says somebody, brisk. And it was Abagail,
+frosting dark cakes over by the side of the room. 'I was goin' to shut
+up shop, anyway, all day on the Fourth,' Abagail says.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' lose the country trade in lunches?' yells Silas. 'Why, woman,
+you'd be Ten Dollars out o' pocket.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I wan't never one to spend the mornin' thankin' God an' the afternoon
+dippin' oysters,' says Abagail. And Silas scrunched. He done that one
+year when his Thanksgiving oysters come late, and he knew he done it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p><p>"Well, they went over it and over it and tried to think of some other
+way, and tried to hatch up some other speaker without eating up the
+whole Fifty Dollars in telephone tolls, and tried most other things. And
+then we told them what we'd thought of different times, amongst us as
+being features fit for a Fourth in the sight of the Lord and the sight
+of men. And they hemmed and they hawed and they give in about as
+graceful as a clothes-line winds up when you've left it out in the
+sleet, but they did give in and see reason. Timothy last&mdash;that's quite
+vain of being firm.</p>
+
+<p>"'If we come out with a one-horse doin's, seems like it'd be worse than
+sittin' down flat-foot failed,' he mourns, grieving.</p>
+
+<p>"Amanda, his wife, give him one of her looks. 'Timothy,' says she,
+'when, since you was married to me, did I ever fail to stodge up a
+company dinner or a spare bed or a shroud when it was needed sudden?
+When did any of us ladies ever fail that's here? Do you sp'ose we're any
+more scant of idees about our own nation?'</p>
+
+<p>"And Timothy had to keep his silence. He knew what she said was the Old
+Testament truth. But I think what really swung them all round was the
+thought of Red Barns and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> Indian Mound. Imagination of what them two
+weekly papers would say, so be we petered out on our speech and didn't
+offer nothing else, was too much for flesh and blood to bear. And the
+men ended by agreeing to seeing to shutting every business house in
+Friendship Village and they went off to do it,&mdash;resolved, but groaning
+some, like men will.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes, she made some excuse and went, too. 'I'll run the garden
+party part,' says she. 'My niece an' I'll do that, an' try our best to
+get some novelty into your Fourth. An' we'll preside on the marquee,
+like we'd agreed. More I don't say.'</p>
+
+<p>"But the rest of us, we stayed on there at Abagail's, and we planned
+like mad.</p>
+
+<p>"We didn't look in no journal nor on no woman's page for something new.
+We didn't rush to our City relations for novelties. We didn't try for
+this and that nor grasp at no agony whatever. We just went down deep
+into the inside of our understanding and thought what the Fourth was and
+how them that made it would of wanted it kept. No fingers blowed off nor
+clothes scorched up, no houses burned down, no ear-drums busted
+out&mdash;none of them would of been in <i>their</i> programme, and they wan't in
+ours. Some of the things that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> was in ours we'd got by hearing Insley
+tell what they was doin' other places. Some o' the things he suggested
+to us. Some o' the things we got by just going back and back down the
+years an' <i>remembering</i>&mdash;not so much what we'd done as the way we use'
+to feel, long ago, when the Fourth was the Fourth and acted like it knew
+it. Some of the things we got by just reaching forward and forward, and
+seeing what the Fourth is going to mean to them a hundred years from
+now&mdash;so be we do our part. And some of the things we got through sheer
+make-shift woman intelligence, that put its heads together and used
+everything it had, that had anything to do with the nation, or the town,
+or with really living at all the way that first Fourth of July meant
+about, 'way down inside.</p>
+
+<p>"Before it was light on the morning of the Fourth, I woke up, feeling
+all happy and like I wanted to hurry. I was up and dressed before the
+sun was up, and when I opened my front door, I declare it was just like
+the glory of the Lord was out there waiting for me. The street was
+laying all still and simple, like it was ready and waiting for the
+light. Early as it was, Mis' Holcomb was just shaking her breakfast
+table-cloth on her side stoop, and she waved it to me, big and billowy
+and white,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> like a banner. And I offs with my apron and waved it back,
+and it couldn't of meant no more to either of us if we had been shaking
+out the folds of flags. It was too early for the country wagons to be
+rattling in yet, and they wan't no other sounds&mdash;except a little bit of
+a pop now and then over to where Bennie Uppers and little Nick Toplady
+was up and out, throwing torpedoes onto the bricks; and then the birds
+that was trilling an' shouting like mad, till every tree all up and down
+Daphne Street and all up and down the town and the valley was just one
+living singing. And all over everything, like a kind of a weave to it,
+was that something that makes a Sunday morning and some holiday mornings
+better and sweeter and <i>goldener</i> than any other day. I ain't got much
+of a garden, not having any real time to fuss in it, but I walked out
+into the middle of the little patch of pinks and parsley that I have
+got, and I says 'way deep in me, deeper than thinking: 'It don't make no
+manner of differ'nce how much of a fizzle the day ends up with, this,
+here and now, is the way it had ought to start.'</p>
+
+<p>"Never, not if I live till beyond always, will I forget how us ladies'
+hearts was in our mouths when, along about 'leven o'clock, we heard the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+Friendship Village Stonehenge band coming fifing along, and we knew the
+parade was begun. We was all on the market square&mdash;hundreds of us, seems
+though. Red Barns and Indian Mound had turned out from side to side of
+themselves, mingling the same as though ploughshares was
+pruning-hooks&mdash;or whatever that quotation time is&mdash;both towns looking
+for flaws in the day, like enough, but both shutting up about it,
+biblical. Even the marquee, with its red and white stripes, showing
+through the trees, made me feel good. 'Land, land,' Mis' Toplady says,
+'it looks kind of homey and old-fashioned, after all, don't it? I mean
+the&mdash;tent,' she says&mdash;she would <i>not</i> say the other word; but then I
+guess it made her kind of mad seeing Mis' Sykes bobbing around in there
+in white duck an' white shoes&mdash;her that ain't a grandmother sole because
+of Nature and not at all through any lack of her own years. Everything
+was all seeming light and confident&mdash;but I tell you we didn't feel so
+confident as we'd meant to when we heard the band a-coming to the tune
+o' 'Hail, Columbia! Happy Land.' And yet now, when I look back on that
+Independence Day procession, it seems like regular floats is no more
+than toy doings beside of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p><p>"What do you guess us ladies had thought up for our procession,&mdash;with
+Insley back of us, letting us think we thought it up alone? Mebbe you'll
+laugh, because it wan't expensive to do; but oh; I think it was nice.
+We'd took everything in the town that done the town's work, and we'd run
+them all together. We headed off with the fire-engine, 'count of the
+glitter&mdash;and we'd loaded it down with flags and flowers, and the hook
+and ladder and hose-carts the same, wheels and sides; and flags in the
+rubber caps of the firemen up top. Then we had the two big sprinkling
+carts, wound with bunting, and five-foot flags flying from the seats.
+Then come all the city teams drawn by the city horses&mdash;nice, plump
+horses they was, and rosettes on them, and each man had decorated his
+wagon and was driving it in his best clothes. Then come the steam roller
+that Friendship Village and Red Barns and Indian Mound owns together and
+scraps over some, though that didn't appear in its appearance, puffing
+along, with posies on it. Then there was the city electric light repair
+wagon, with a big paper globe for an umbrella, and the electric men
+riding with their leggings on and their spurs, like they climb the
+poles; and behind them the telephone men was riding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>&mdash;because the town
+owns its own telephone, too&mdash;and then the four Centrals, in pretty
+shirtwaists, in a double-seated buggy loaded with flowers&mdash;the telephone
+office we'd see to it was closed down, too, to have its Fourth, like a
+human being. And marching behind them was the city waterworks men, best
+bib and tucker apiece. And then we hed out the galvanized garbage wagon
+that us ladies hed bought ourselves a year ago, and that wasn't being
+used this year count of the city pleading too poison poor; and it was
+all scrubbed up and garnished and filled with ferns and drove by its own
+driver and the boy that had use' to go along to empty the cans. And then
+of course they was more things&mdash;some of them with day fireworks shooting
+up from them&mdash;but not the hearse, though we had all we could do to keep
+Timothy Toplady from having it in, 'count of its common public office.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and then we'd done an innovation&mdash;an' this was all Insley's idea,
+and it was him that made us believe we could do it. Coming next, in
+carriages and on foot, was the mayor and the city council and every last
+man or woman that had anything to do with running the city life. They
+was all there&mdash;city treasurer, clerk of the court, register of deeds,
+sheriffs, marshals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> night-watchmen, health officer, postmaster, janitor
+of the city hall, clerks, secretaries, stenographers, school board, city
+teachers, and every one of the rest&mdash;they was all there, just like they
+had belonged in the p'rade the way them framers of the first Fourth of
+July had meant they should fit in: Conscience and all. But some of them
+servants of the town had made money off'n its good roads, and some off'n
+its saloons, and some off'n getting ordinances repealed, and some off'n
+inspecting buildings and sidewalks that they didn't know nothing about,
+and some was making it even then by paving out into the marsh; and some
+in yet other ways that wasn't either real elbow work nor clean head
+work. What else could they do? We'd ask' them to march because they
+represented the town, and rather'n own they <i>didn't</i> represent the town,
+there they was marching; but if some of them didn't step down Daphne
+Street feeling green and sick and sore and right down schoolboy ashamed
+of themselves, then they ain't got the human thrill in them that somehow
+I <i>cannot</i> believe ever dies clear out of nobody. They was a lump in my
+throat for them that had sold themselves, and they was a lump for them
+that hadn't&mdash;but oh, the differ'nce in the lumps.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p><p>"'Land, land,' I says to Mis' Toplady, 'if we ain't done another thing,
+we've made 'em remember they're servants to Friendship Village&mdash;like
+they often forget.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't we?' she says, solemn. 'Ain't we?'</p>
+
+<p>"And then next behind begun the farm things: the threshin' machines and
+reapers and binders and mowers and like that, all drawn by the farm
+horses and drove by their owners and decorated by them, jolly and gay;
+and, too, all the farm horses for miles around&mdash;we was going to give a
+donated surprise prize for the best kep' and fed amongst them. And last,
+except for the other two bands sprinkled along, come the leading
+citizens, and who do you guess <i>they</i> was? Not Silas nor Timothy nor
+Eppleby nor even Doctor June, nor our other leading business men and our
+three or four professionals&mdash;no, not them; but the real, true, leading
+citizens of Friendship Village and Indian Mound and Red Barns and other
+towns and the farms between&mdash;the <i>children</i>, over two hundred of them,
+dressed in white if they had it and in dark if they didn't, with or
+without shoes, in rags or out of them, village-tough descended or with
+pew-renting fathers, all the same and together, and carrying a flag and
+singing to the tops of their voices 'Hail, Columbia,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> that the bands
+kept a-playing, some out of plumb as to time, but all fervent and
+joyous. It was us women alone that got up that part. My, I like to think
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>"They swung the length of Daphne Street and twice around the market
+square, and they come to a halt in front of the platform. And Doctor
+June stood up before them all, and he prayed like this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Lord God, that let us start free an' think we was equal, give us to
+help one another to be free an' to get equal, in deed an' in truth.'</p>
+
+<p>"And who do you s'pose we hed to read the Declaration of Independence?
+Little Spudge Cadoza, that Silas had been a-going to hev walk up and
+down Daphne Street with a board on his back&mdash;Insley thought of him, and
+we picked him out a-purpose. And though he didn't read it so thrilling
+as Silas would of, it made me feel the way no reading of it has ever
+made me feel before&mdash;oh, because it was kind of like we'd snapped up the
+little kid and set him free all over again, even though he wasn't it but
+one day in the year. And it sort of seemed to me that all inside the
+words he read was trumpets and horns telling how much them words was
+<i>going</i> to mean to him and his kind before he'd had time to die. And
+then the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> Glee Club struck into 'America,' and the whole crowd joined in
+without being expected, and the three bands that was laying over in the
+shade hopped up and struck in, too&mdash;and I bet they could of heard us to
+Indian Mound. Leastways to Red Barns, that we can see from Friendship
+Village when it's clear.</p>
+
+<p>"The grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods stays in my head as one
+picture, all full of veal loaf and 'scalloped potato and fruit salad and
+nut-bread and deviled eggs and bake' beans and pickle' peaches and layer
+cake and drop sponge-cake and hot coffee&mdash;the kind of a dinner that
+comes crowding to your thought whenever you think 'Dinner' at your
+hungriest. And after we'd took care of everybody's baskets and set them
+under a tree for a lunch towards six, us ladies went back to the market
+square. And over by the marquee we see the men gathered&mdash;all but Insley,
+that had slipped away as quick as we begun telling him how much of it
+was due to him. Miss Beryl Sessions had just arrived, in a automobile,
+covered with veils, and she was introducing the other men to her City
+friends. Us ladies sort of kittered around back of them, not wanting to
+press ourselves forward none, and we went up to the door of the marquee
+where, behind the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> refreshment table, Mis' Sykes was a-standing in her
+white duck.</p>
+
+<p>"'My,' says Mis' Holcomb to her, 'it's all going off nice so far, ain't
+it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'They ain't a great deal the matter with it,' says Mis' Sykes, snappy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Uppers, grieving, 'the parade an' the
+basket dinner seemed to me both just perfect.'</p>
+
+<p>"'The parade done well enough,' says Mis' Sykes, not looking at her. 'I
+donno much about the dinner.'</p>
+
+<p>"And all of a sudden we recollected that she hadn't been over to the
+grand basket dinner at all.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Toplady, blank, 'ain't you et nothin'?'</p>
+
+<p>"'My niece,' says Mis' Sykes, dignified, 'didn't get here till now. Who
+was I to leave in the <i>tent</i>? I've et,' says she, cold, 'two dishes of
+ice-cream an' two chocolate nut-cakes.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady just swoops over towards her. 'Why, my land,' she says,
+hearty, 'they's stuff an' to spare packed over there under the trees.
+You go right on over and get your dinner. Poke right into any of our
+baskets&mdash;ours is grouped around mine that's tied with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> a red bandanna to
+the handle. And leave us tend the marquee. What say, ladies?'</p>
+
+<p>"And I don't think she even sensed she used that name.</p>
+
+<p>"When she'd gone, I stood a minute in the marquee door looking off
+acrost the market square, hearing Miss Beryl Sessions and the men
+congratulating each other on the glorious Fourth they was a-having, and
+the City folks praising them both sky high.</p>
+
+<p>"'Real nice idee it was,' says Silas, with his hands under his best coat
+tails. 'Nice, tastey, up-to-date Fourth. And cheap to do.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, we all hung out for a good Fourth this year,' says Timothy,
+complacent.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's a simply lovely idea,' says Miss Beryl Sessions, all sweet and
+chirpy and interested, 'this making the Fourth a county party and
+getting everybody in town, so. But tell me: Whatever made you close your
+shops? I thought the Fourth could always be made to pay for itself over
+and over, if the business houses went about it right.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, well,' says Silas, lame but genial, 'we closed up to-day. We kind
+o' thought we would.'</p>
+
+<p>"But I stood looking off acrost the market square, where the children
+was playing, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> quoits was being pitched, and the ball game was going
+to commence, and the calathumpians was capering, and most of Red Barns
+and Indian Mound and Friendship Village was mingling, lion and lamb; and
+I looked on along Daphne Street, where little Spudge Cadoza wasn't
+walking with a Prize Coffee board on his back,&mdash;and all of a sudden I
+felt just the way I'd wanted to feel, in spite of all the distance and
+long-ago-ness. And I turned and says to the other women inside the
+marquee:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Seems to me,' I says, 'as if the Fourth of July <i>had</i> paid for itself,
+over and over. Oh, don't it to you?'</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+<p>"The new editor of the <i>Friendship Village Evening Daily</i> give a fine
+write-up of the celebration. He printed it on the night after the
+Fourth, not getting out any paper at all on the day that was the day;
+but on the night after that, the news columns of his paper fell flat and
+dead. In a village the day following a holiday is like the hush after a
+noise. The whole town seems like it was either asleep or on tiptoe. And
+in Friendship Village this hush was worse than the hush of other years.
+Other years they'd usually been accidents to keep track of, and mebbe
+even an amputation or two to report. But this Fourth there was no
+misfortunes whatever, nor nothing to make good reading for the night of July 6.</p>
+
+<p>"So the editor thought over his friends and run right down the news
+column, telling what there <i>wasn't</i>. Like this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center">"'<span class="smcap">Supper Table Jottings</span></p>
+
+<p>"'Postmaster Silas Sykes is well.</p>
+
+<p>"'Timothy Toplady has not had a cold since before Christmas.
+Prudent Timothy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p><p>"'Jimmy Sturgis has not broken his leg yet this year as he did
+last. Keep it up, Jimmy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Eppleby Holcomb has not been out of town for quite a while.</p>
+
+<p>"'None of the Friendship ladies has given a party all season.</p>
+
+<p>"'The First Church is not burnt down nor damaged nor repaired.
+Insurance $750.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nothing local is in much of any trouble.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nobody is dead here to-day except the usual ones.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nobody that's got a telephone in has any company at the present
+writing. Where is the old-time hospitality?</p>
+
+<p>"'Subscriptions payable in advance.</p>
+
+<p>"'Subscriptions payable in advance.</p>
+
+<p>"'Subscriptions payable in advance.'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"It made quite some fun for us, two or three of us happening in the
+post-office store when the paper come out&mdash;Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady
+and me. But we took it some to heart, too, because to live in a town
+where they ain't nothing active happening all the time is a kind of
+running account of everybody that's in the town. And us ladies wan't
+that kind.</p>
+
+<p>"All them locals done to Silas Sykes, though, was to set him fussing
+over nothing ever happening to him. Silas is real particular about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> his
+life, and I guess he gets to thinking how life ain't so over-particular
+about him.</p>
+
+<p>"'My dum,' he says that night, 'that's just the way with this town. I
+always calculated my life was goin' to be quite some pleasure to me. But
+I don't see as it is. If I thought I was going to get sold in my death
+like I've been in my life, I swan I'd lose my interest in dyin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Timothy Toplady was over in behind the counter picking out her
+butter, and she whirled around from sampling the jars, and she says to
+Mis' Sykes and me:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Ladies,' she says, 'le's us propose it to the editor that seems to
+have such a hard job, that us members of Sodality take a hold of his
+paper for a day and get it out for him and put some news in it, and sell
+it to everybody, subscribers and all, that one night, for ten cents.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Silas Sykes looks up and stopped winking and breathing, in a way
+she has when she sights some distant money for Sodality.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, land,' she says, 'I bet they'd go like hot cakes.'</p>
+
+<p>"But Silas he snorts, scorching.</p>
+
+<p>"'Will you ladies tell me,' he says, 'where you going to <i>get</i> your news
+to put in your paper? The Fourth don't come along every day. Or less you
+commit murder and arson and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>runaways, there won't be any more in your
+paper than they is in its editor's.'</p>
+
+<p>"That hit a tender town-point, and I couldn't stand it no longer. I
+spoke right up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I donno, I donno, Silas,' I says. 'They's those in this town
+that's doin' the murderin' for us, neat an' nice, right along,' I told
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mean to say?' snapped Silas.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mean to say,' says I, 'most every grocery store in this town an' most
+every milkman an' the meat market as well is doin' their best to drag
+the health out o' people's systems for 'em. Us ladies is more or less
+well read an' knowledgeable of what is goin' on in the world outside,' I
+says to Silas that ain't, 'an' we know a thing or two about what ought
+to be clean.'</p>
+
+<p>"Since Insley come, we had talked a good deal more about these things
+and what was and what shouldn't be; and especially we had talked it in
+Sodality, on account of our town stores and social ways and such being
+so inviting to disease and death. But we hadn't talked it official,
+'count of Sodality being for Cemetery use, and talking it scattering we
+hadn't been able to make the other men even listen to us.</p>
+
+<p>"'Pack o' women!' says Silas, now, and went off to find black molasses
+for somebody.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Toplady sampled her butter, dreamy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Rob Henny's butter here,' she says, 'is made out of cow sheds that I
+can't bear to think about. An' Silas knows it. Honest,' she says, 'I'm
+gettin' so I spleen against the flowers in the fields for fear Rob
+Henny's cows'll get holt of 'em. I should think the <i>Daily</i> could write
+about that.'</p>
+
+<p>"I remember how us three women looked at each other then, like our
+brains was experimenting with our ideas. And when Mis' Toplady got her
+butter, we slipped out and spoke together for a few minutes up past the
+Town Pump. And it was there the plan come to a head and legs and arms.
+And we see that we had a way of picking purses right off of every day,
+so be the editor would leave us go ahead&mdash;and of doing other things.</p>
+
+<p>"The very next morning we three went to see the editor and get his
+consent.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's your circulation, same as City papers print to the top of the
+page?' Mis' Toplady asks him, practical.</p>
+
+<p>"'Paid circulation or got-out circulation?' says the editor.</p>
+
+<p>"'Paid,' says Mis' Toplady, in silver-dollar tones.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah, well, <i>paid for</i> or subscribed for?' asks the editor.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p><p>"'Paid for,' says Mis' Toplady, still more financial.</p>
+
+<p>"'Six hundred and eighty paid for,' the editor says, 'an' fifty-two
+that&mdash;mean to pay.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My!' says Mis' Toplady, shuddering. 'What business is! Well, us ladies
+of the Sodality want to run your paper for one day and charge all your
+subscribers ten cents extra for that day's paper. Will you?'</p>
+
+<p>"The editor, he laughed quite a little, and then he looked thoughtful.
+He was new and from the City and young and real nervous&mdash;he used to pop
+onto his feet whenever a woman so much as come in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"'Who would collect the ten cents?' says he.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sodality,' says Mis' Toplady, firm. 'Ourself, cash an' <i>in advance</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"The editor nodded, still smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"'Jove,' he said, 'this fits in remarkably well with the fishing I've
+been thinking about. I confess I need a day. I suppose you wouldn't want
+to do it this week?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady looked at me with her eyebrows. But I nodded. I always
+rather hurry up than not.</p>
+
+<p>"'So be we had a couple o' hours to get the news to happenin',' says
+she, 'that had ought to do us.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p><p>"The editor looked startled.</p>
+
+<p>"'News!' said he. 'Oh, I say now, you mustn't expect too much. I ought
+to warn you that running a paper in this town is like trying to raise
+cream on a cistern.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady smiled at him motherly.</p>
+
+<p>"'You ain't ever tried pouring the cream into the cistern, I guess,' she
+says.</p>
+
+<p>"So we settled it into a bargain, except that, after we had planned it
+all out with him and just as we was going out the door, Mis' Toplady
+thought to say to him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'You know, Sodality don't know anything about it yet, so you'd best not
+mention it out around till this afternoon when we vote to do it. We'll
+be up at eight o'clock Thursday morning, rain or shine.'</p>
+
+<p>"There wasn't ever any doubt about Sodality when it see Sixty Dollars
+ahead&mdash;which we would get if everybody bought a paper, and we was
+determined that everybody should buy. Sodality members scraps among
+themselves personal, but when it comes to raising money we unite yoke to
+yoke, and all differences forgot. It's funny sometimes at the meetings,
+funny and disgraceful, to hear how we object to each other, especially
+when we're tired, and then how we all unite together on something for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+the good of the town. I tell you, it makes me feel sometimes that the
+way ain't so much to try to love each other,&mdash;which other folks'
+peculiarities is awful in the way of,&mdash;but for us all to pitch in and
+love something altogether, your town or your young folks, or your
+cemetery or keeping something clean or making somethin' look nice&mdash;and
+before you know it you're loving the folks you work with, no matter how
+peculiar, or even more so. It's been so nice since we've been working
+for Cemetery. Folks that make each other mad every time they try to talk
+can sell side by side at the same bazaar and count the money mutual.
+There's quite a few disagreements in Sodality, so we have to be real
+careful who sets next to who to church suppers. But when we pitch in to
+work for something, we sew rags and 'scallop oysters in the same pan
+with our enemies. Don't it seem as if that must mean something?
+Something big?</p>
+
+<p>"Sodality voted to publish the paper, all right, and elected the
+officers for the day: Editor, Mis' Postmaster Sykes, 'count of her
+always expecting to take the lead in everything; assistant editor, me,
+'count of being well and able to work like a dog; business manager and
+circulation man, Mis' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, 'count of no dime
+ever getting away from her unexpected. And the reporters was to be most
+of the rest of the Sodality: Mis' Timothy Toplady, the three Liberty
+girls, Mis' Mayor Uppers, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, Mis' Threat
+Hubbelthwait, an' Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery. It was
+hard for Abagail to get away from her cook stove and her counter, so we
+fixed it that she was to be let off any other literary work along of her
+furnishing us our sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs that day noon. It was
+quite a little for Abagail to do, but she's always real willing, and we
+didn't ask coffee of her. Mis' Sturgis, her that is the village invalid,
+we arranged should have charge of the Woman's Column, and bring down her
+rocking chair and make her beef broth right there on the office
+wood-stove.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess we was all glad to go down early in the morning that day,
+'count of not meeting the men. One and all and with one voice the
+Friendship men had railed at us hearty.</p>
+
+<p>"'Pack o' women!' says Silas Sykes, over and over.</p>
+
+<p>"'You act like bein' a woman an' a wife was some kind o' nonsense,' says
+Mis' Sykes back at him, majestic. 'Well, I guess bein' yours is.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p><p>"'Land, Amandy,' says Timothy Toplady, 'you women earn money so
+<i>nervous</i>. Why don't you do it regular an' manly?'</p>
+
+<p>"Only Eppleby Holcomb had kept his silence. Eppleby sees things that the
+run of men don't see, or, if they did see them, they would be bound to
+stick them in their ledgers where they would never, never belong.
+Eppleby was our friend, and Sodality never had truer.</p>
+
+<p>"So though we went ahead, the men had made us real anxious. And most of
+us slipped down to the office by half past seven so's not to meet too
+many. The editor had had a column in the paper about what we was goin'
+to do&mdash;'Loyal to our Local Dead' he headed it, and of course full half
+the town was kicking at the extra ten cents, like full half of any town
+can and will kick when it's asked to pay out for its own good, dead or
+alive. But we was leaving all that to Mis' Holcomb, that knows a thing
+or two about the human in us, and similar.</p>
+
+<p>"Extra-paper morning, when we all come in, Mis' Sykes she was sitting at
+the editor's desk with her big apron on and a green shade to cover up
+her crimping kids, and her list that her and Mis' Toplady and I had made
+out, in front of her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p><p>"'Now then, let's get right to work,' she says brisk. 'We ain't any too
+much time, I can tell you. It ain't like bakin' bread or gettin' the
+vegetables ready. We've all got to use muscles this day we ain't used to
+usin',' she says, 'an' we'd best be spry.'</p>
+
+<p>"So then she begun giving out who was to do what&mdash;assignments, the
+editor named it when he told us what to do. And I skipped back an' hung
+over the files, well knowing what was to come.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes stood up in her most society way, an'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Anybody want to back out?' says she, gracious.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land!' says everyone in a No-I-don't tone.</p>
+
+<p>"'Very well,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Mis' Toplady, you go out to Rob Henney's
+place, an' you go through his cow sheds from one end to the other an'
+take down notes so's he sees you doin' it. You go into his kitchen an'
+don't you let a can get by you. Open his churn. Rub your finger round
+the inside of his pans. An' if he won't tell you, the neighbours will.
+Explain to him you're goin' to give him a nice, full printed description
+in to-night's <i>Daily</i>, just the way things are. If he wants it changed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+any, he can clean all up, an' we'll write up the clean-up like a
+compliment.'</p>
+
+<p>"Just for one second them assembled women was dumb. But it hardly took
+them that instant to sense what was what. And all of a sudden, Mame
+Holcomb, I guess it was, bursted out in a little understanding giggle,
+and after a minute everybody joined in, too. For we'd got the whole
+world of Friendship Village where we wanted it, and every one of them
+women see we had, so be we wasn't scared.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mis' Uppers,' Mis' Sykes was going on, 'you go down to Betts's meat
+market. You poke right through into the back room. An' you tell Joe
+Betts that you're goin' to do a write-up of that room an' the alley back
+of it for the paper to-night, showin' just what's what. If so be he
+wants to turn in an' red it up this mornin', tell him you'll wait till
+noon an' describe it then, <i>providin'</i> he keeps it that way. An' you
+might let him know you're goin' to run over to his slaughterhouse an'
+look around while you're waitin', an' put that in your write-up, too.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Miss Hubbelthwait,' Mis' Sykes went on, 'you go over to the Calaboose.
+They won't anybody be in the office&mdash;Dick's saloon is that. Skip right
+through in the back part, an' turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> down the blankets on both beds an'
+give a thorough look. If it's true they's no sheets an' pillow-cases on
+the calaboose beds, an' that the blankets is only washed three times a
+year so's to save launderin', we can make a real interestin' column
+about that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Miss Merriman,' says Mis' Sykes to Mis' Fire Chief, 'I've give you a
+real hard thing because you do things so delicate. Will you take a walk
+along the residence part of town an' go into every house an' ask 'em to
+let you see their back door an' their garbage pail. Tell 'em you're
+goin' to write a couple of columns on how folks manage this. Ask 'em
+their idees on the best way. Give 'em to understand if there's a real
+good way they're thinkin' of tryin' that you'll put that in, providin'
+they begin tryin' right off. An' tell 'em they can get it carted off for
+ten cents a week if enough go in on it. An' be your most delicate, Mis'
+Fire Chief, for we don't want to offend a soul.'</p>
+
+<p>"Libby an' Viney Liberty Mis' Sykes sent round to take a straw vote in
+every business house in town to see how much they'd give towards
+starting a shelf library in the corner of the post-office store, a full
+list to be printed in order with the amount or else 'Not a cent'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> after
+each name. And the rest of Sodality she give urrants similar or even
+more so.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' all o' you,' says Mis' Sykes, 'pick up what you can on the way.
+And if anybody starts in to object, you tell 'em you have instructions
+to make an interview out of any of the interestin' things they say. And
+you might tell 'em you don't want they should be buried in a nice
+cemetery if they don't want to be.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, they started off&mdash;some scairt, but some real brave, too. And
+the way they went, we see every one of them meant business.</p>
+
+<p>"'But oh,' says Mis' Sturgis, fixing her medicine bottles outside on the
+window-sill, '<i>supposin'</i> they can't do it. <i>Supposin'</i> folks ain't nice
+to 'em. What'll we put in the paper then?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes drew herself up like she does sometimes in society.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' she says, 'supposin'. Are we runnin' this paper or ain't we?
+There's nothin' to prevent our writin' editorials about these things, as
+I see. Our husbands can't very well sue us for libel, because they'd hev
+to pay it themselves. Nor they can't put us in prison for debt, because
+who'd get their three meals? I can't see but we're sure of an
+interestin' paper, anyway.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then she looked over at me sort of sad.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p><p>"'Go on, Calliope,' says she, 'you know what you've got to do. Do it,'
+she says, 'to the bitter end.'</p>
+
+<p>"I knew, and I started out, and I made straight for Silas Sykes, and the
+post-office store. Silas wan't in the store, it was so early; but he had
+the floor all sprinkled nice, and the vegetables set out, all uncovered,
+close to the sidewalk; and everything real tasty and according to
+grocery-store etiquette. The boy was gone that day. And Silas himself
+was in the back room, sortin' over prunes.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hello, Calliope,' s'he. 'How's literchoor?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Honest as ever,' I says. 'Same with food?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Who says I ain't honest?' says Silas, straightening up, an' holding
+all his fingers stiff 'count of being sticky.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, I donno who,' says I. 'Had anybody ought to? How's business,
+Silas?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says he, 'for us that keeps ourselves up with the modern
+business methods, it's pretty good, I guess.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you mean pretty good, Silas, or do you mean pretty paying?' I ask'
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas put on his best official manner. 'Look at here,' s'e, 'what can I
+do for you? Did you want to buy somethin' or did you want your mail?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p><p>"'Oh, neither,' I says. 'I want some help from you, Silas, about the
+paper to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>"My, that give Silas a nice minute. He fairly weltered in satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"'Huh,' he says, elegant, 'didn't I tell you you was bitin' off more'n
+you could chew? Want some assistance from me, do you, in editin' this
+paper o' yours? Well, I suppose I can help you out a little. What is it
+you want me to do for you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'We thought we'd like to write you up,' I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas just swelled. For a man in public office, Silas Sykes feels about
+as presidential as anybody I ever see. If they was to come out from the
+City and put him on the front page of the morning paper, he's the kind
+that would wonder why they hadn't done it before.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sketch of my life?' s'e, genial. 'Little outline of my boyhood? Main
+points in my career?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' I says, 'no. We thought the present'd be about all we'd hev
+room for. We want to write up your business, Silas,' I says, 'in an
+advertising way.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh!' says Silas, snappy. 'You want me to pay to be wrote up, is that
+it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' I says, 'no; not if you don't want to.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> Of course everybody'll
+be buried in the Cemetery whether they give anything towards the fund
+for keeping it kep' up or not.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Lord Heavens,' says Silas, 'I've had that Cemetery fund rammed down my
+throat till I'm sick o' the thought o' dyin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"That almost made me mad, seeing we was having the disadvantage of doing
+the work and Silas going to get all the advantages of burial.</p>
+
+<p>"'Feel the same way about some of the Ten Commandments, don't you,
+Silas?' I says, before I knew it.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas just rared.</p>
+
+<p>"'The Ten Commandments!' says he, 'the Ten Commandments! Who can show me
+one I ain't a-keepin' like an old sheep. Didn't I honour my father an'
+mother as long as I had 'em? Did they ever buy anything of me at more
+than cost? Didn't I give 'em new clothes an' send 'em boxes of oranges
+an' keep up their life insurance? Do I ever come down to the store on
+the Sabbath Day? Do I ever distribute the mail then, even if I'm
+expectin' a letter myself? The Sabbath I locked the cat in, didn't I
+send the boy down to let it out, for fear I'd be misjudged if I done it?
+Who do I ever bear false witness against unless I know they've done what
+I say they've done? I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> can't kill a fly&mdash;an' I'm that tender-hearted
+that I make the hired girl take the mice out o' the trap because I can't
+bring myself to do it. So you might go through the whole list an' just
+find me workin' at 'em an' a-keepin' 'em. What do you mean about the Ten
+Commandments?' he ends up, ready to burst.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't ask me,' I says. 'I ain't that familiar with 'em. I didn't know
+anybody was. Go on about 'em. Take stealing&mdash;you hadn't got to that
+one.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Stealing</i>,' says Silas, pompous. 'I don't know what it is.'</p>
+
+<p>"And with that I was up on my feet.</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought you didn't,' says I. 'Us ladies of Sodality have all thought
+it over an' over again: That you don't know stealing when you see it.
+No, nor not even when you've done it. Come here, Silas Sykes!' I says.</p>
+
+<p>"I whipped by him into the store, and he followed me, sheer through
+being dazed, and keeping still through being knocked dumb.</p>
+
+<p>"'Look here,' I says, 'here's your counter of bakery stuff&mdash;put in to
+take from Abagail, but no matter about that now. Where do you get it?
+From the City, with the label stuck on. What's the bakery like where you
+buy it? It's under a sidewalk and dust dirty, and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> happen to know you
+know it. And look at the bread&mdash;not a thing over it, flies promenadin'
+on the crust, and you counting out change on an apple-pie the other
+day&mdash;I see you do it. Look at your dates, all uncovered and dirt from
+the street sticking to them like the pattern. Look at your fly-paper,
+hugged up against your dried-fruit box that's standing wide open. Look
+at you keeping fish and preserved fruit and canned stuff that you know
+is against the law&mdash;going to start keeping the law quick as you get
+these sold out, ain't you, Silas? Look at your stuff out there in front,
+full of street dirt and flies and ready to feed folks. And you keepin'
+the Ten Commandments like an old sheep&mdash;and being a church elder, and
+you might better climb porches and bust open safes. I s'pose you wonder
+what I'm sayin' all this to you for?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, ma'am,' says Silas, like the edge o' something, 'I don't wonder at
+your sayin' <i>anything</i> to anybody.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I've got more to say,' I says, dry. 'I've only give you a sample. An'
+the place I'm goin' to say it is <i>The Friendship Village Evening Daily</i>,
+<i>Extra</i>, to-night, in a descriptive write-up of you and your store. I
+thought it might interest you to know.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p><p>"'It's libel&mdash;it's libel!' says Silas, arms waving.</p>
+
+<p>"'All right,' says I, liberating a fly accidentally caught on a date.
+'Who you going to sue? Your wife, that's the editor? And everybody
+else's wife, that's doing the same thing to every behind-the-times
+dealer in town?'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas hung on to that straw.</p>
+
+<p>"'Be they doin' it to the others, too?' he asks.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I says, 'Silas, only&mdash;they ain't goin' to start writing up the
+descriptions till noon. And if you&mdash;and they all&mdash;want to clean up the
+temples where you do business and make them fit for the Lord to look
+down on and a human being to come into, you've got your chance. And
+seeing your boy is gone to-day, if you'll do it, I'll stay and help you
+with it&mdash;and mebbe make room for some of the main points in your career
+as well,' says I, sly.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas looked out the door, his arms folded and his beard almost
+pointing up, he'd made his chin so firm. And just in that minute when I
+was feeling that all the law and the prophets, and the health of
+Friendship Village, and the life of people not born, was hanging around
+that man's neck&mdash;or the principle of them, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>anyway&mdash;Silas's eye and mine
+fell on a strange sight. Across the street, from out Joe Betts's meat
+market come Joe Betts, and behind him his boy. And Joe begun pointing,
+and the boy begun taking down quarters of beef hung over the sidewalk.
+Joe pointed consid'able. And then he clim' up on his meat wagon that
+stood by the door, and out of the shop I see Mis' Mayor Uppers come,
+looking ready to drop. And she clim' up to the seat beside him&mdash;he
+reaching down real gentlemanly to help her up. And he headed his horse
+around on what I guessed was a bee-line for the slaughterhouse.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, at that, Silas Sykes put his hands on his knees and bent
+over and begun laughing. And he laughed like I ain't seen him since he's
+got old and begun to believe that life ain't cut after his own plan that
+he made. And I laughed a little, too, out of sheer being glad that a
+laugh can settle so many things right in the world. And when he sobered
+down a little, I says gentle:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Silas, I'll throw out the dates and the dusty lettuce. And we'll hev
+it done in no time. I'll be glad to get an early start on the write-up.
+I don't compose very ready,' I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"He was awful funny while we done the work. He was awful still, too.
+Once when I lit on a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> piece of salt pork that I knew, first look, was
+rusty, 'Them folks down on the flats buys it,' he says. 'They like it
+just as good as new-killed.' 'All right,' s'I, careless, 'I'll make a
+note of that to shine in my article. It needs humour some,' s'I. Then
+Silas swore, soft and under his breath, as an elder should, but quite
+vital. And he took the pork out to the alley barrel, an' I sprinkled
+ashes on it so's he shouldn't slip out and save it afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>"It was 'leven o'clock when we got done, me having swept out behind the
+counters myself, and Silas he mopped his face and stood hauling at his
+collar.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll get on my white kids now,' s'e, dry. 'I can't go pourin' kerosene
+an' slicin' cheese in this place barehanded any more. Gosh,' he says, 'I
+bet when they see it, they'll want to have church in here this comin'
+Sunday.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No need to be sacrilegious, as I know of, Silas,' s'I, sharp.</p>
+
+<p>"'No need to be livin' at all, as I see,' says Silas, morbid; 'just lay
+low an' other folks'll step in an' do it for you, real capable.'</p>
+
+<p>"I give him the last word. I thought it was his man's due.</p>
+
+<p>"When I got back to the office, Libby Liberty an' Mis' Toplady was there
+before me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> They was both setting on high stools up to the file shelf,
+with their feet tucked up, an' the reason was that Viney Liberty was
+mopping the floor. She had a big pail of suds and her skirt pinned up,
+and she was just lathering them boards. Mis' Sykes at the main desk was
+still labouring over her editorials, breathing hard, the boards steaming
+soap all around her.</p>
+
+<p>"'I couldn't stand it,' Viney says. 'How a man can mould public opinion
+in a place where the floor is pot-black gets me. My land, my ash house
+is a dinin' room side of this room, an' the window was a regular gray
+frost with dust. Ain't men the funniest lot of folks?' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Funny,' says I, 'but awful amiable if you kind of sing their key-note
+to 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes pulled my skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"'How was he?' she asks in a pale voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'He was crusty,' says I, triumphant, 'but he's beat.'</p>
+
+<p>"She never smiled. 'Calliope Marsh,' says she, cold, 'if you've sassed
+my husband, I'll never forgive you.'</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, men may be some funny, and often are. But women is odd as
+Dick's hatband and I don't know but odder.</p>
+
+<p>"'How'd you get on?' I says to Mis' Toplady and the Libertys. The
+Libertys they handed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> out a list on two sheets, both sides with sums
+ranging from ten to fifty cents towards a shelf library for public use;
+but Mis' Toplady, the tears was near streaming down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Rob Henney,' she says, mournful, 'gimme to understand he'd see me
+in&mdash;some place he hadn't ought to of spoke of to me, nor to no
+one&mdash;before I could get in his milk sheds.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What did you say to him?' I ask', sympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>"'I t-told him,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that lookin' for me wouldn't be the
+only reason he'd hev for goin' there. And then he said some more. He
+said he'd be in here this afternoon to stop his subscription off.'</p>
+
+<p>"'So you didn't get a thing?' I says, grieving for her, but Mis'
+Toplady, she bridled through her tears.</p>
+
+<p>"'I got a column!' she flashed out. 'I put in about the sheds, that the
+whole town knows, anyway, an' I put in what he said to me. An' I'm goin'
+to read it to him when he comes in. An' after that he can take his pick
+about havin' it published, or else cleanin' up an' allowin' Sodality to
+inspect him reg'lar.'</p>
+
+<p>"By just before twelve o'clock we was all back in the office, Mis' Fire
+Chief, Mis' Uppers, fresh from the slaughterhouse, and so on, all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> but
+Mame Holcomb that was out seeing to the circulation. And I tell you we
+set to work in earnest, some of us to the desks, and some of us working
+on their laps, and everybody hurrying hectic. The office was awful
+hot&mdash;Mis' Sturgis had built up a little light fire to heat up her beef
+broth, and she was stirring it, her shawl folded about her, in between
+writing receipts. But it made it real confusing, all of us doing our
+best so hard, and wanting to tell each other what had happened, and
+seeing about spelling and all.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, land,' says Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'you'd ought to <i>see</i> the
+Carters' back door. They wan't nobody to home there, so I just took a
+look, anyway, bein' it was for Sodality, so. They ain't no real garbage
+pail&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Who said, "Give me Liberty or give me Death?"' ask' Mis' Sykes,
+looking up kind o' glassy. 'Was it Daniel Webster or Daniel Boone?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ladies,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, when we'd settled down on Daniel
+Boone, 'if I ever do a crime, I won't stop short at stealin' somebody's
+cow an' goin' to calaboose. I'll do a whole beef corner, or some real
+United States sin, an' get put in a place that's clean. Why over to the
+calaboose&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p><p>"'Ugh!' says Mis' Uppers, 'don't say "beef" when I'm where I can hear.
+I donno what I'll do without my steak, but do it I will. Ladies, the
+cleanest of us is soundin' brass an' tinklin' cannibals. Why do they
+call 'em <i>tinklin'</i> cannibals?' she wondered to us all.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh&mdash;,' wailed Mis' Sturgis in the rocking-chair, 'some of you ladies
+give me your salad dressing receipt. Mine is real good on salad, but on
+paper it don't sound fit to eat. I don't seem to have no book-style
+about me to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How do you spell <i>embarrass</i>?' asked Libby Liberty. 'Is it an <i>r</i> an'
+two <i>s</i>'s or two <i>r</i>'s and an <i>s</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's two <i>s</i>'s at the end, so it must be one <i>r</i>,' volunteers Mis'
+Sykes. 'That used to mix me up some, too.'</p>
+
+<p>"Just then up come Abagail Arnold bringing the noon lunch, and she had
+the sandwiches and the eggs not only, but a pot of hot coffee thrown in,
+and a basket of doughnuts, sugared. She set them out on Mis' Sykes's
+desk, and we all laid down our pencils and drew up on our high stools
+and swing chairs, Mis' Sturgis and all, and nothing in the line of food
+had ever looked so welcoming.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, the eatableness of nice refreshments!' says Mis' Toplady, sighing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p><p>"'This is when it ain't victuals, its viands,' says Mis' Sykes, showing
+pleased.</p>
+
+<p>"But well do I remember, we wasn't started to eat, and Abagail still
+doing the pouring, when the composing room door opened&mdash;I donno <i>why</i>
+they called it that, for we done the composing in the office, and they
+only got out the paper in there&mdash;and in come the foreman, with an apron
+of bed-ticking. He was Riddy Styles, that we all knew him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Excuse me,' he says, hesitating, 'but us fellows thought we'd ought to
+mention that we can't get no paper out by quittin' time if we don't get
+a-hold of some copy pretty quick.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Copy o' what?' says Mis' Sykes, our editor.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, copy,' says Riddy. 'Stuff for the paper.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes looked at him, majestic.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Stuff</i>,' she says. 'You will please to speak,' she says, 'more
+respectfully than that to us ladies, Mr. Styles.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It was meant right,' says Riddy, stubborn. 'It's the word we always
+use.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It ain't the word you use, not with us,' says Mis' Sykes, womanly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Riddy, 'we'd ought to get to settin' up <i>somethin'</i> by
+half past twelve, if we start in on the dictionary.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p><p>"Then he went off to his dinner, and the other men with him, and Mis'
+Sykes leaned back limp.</p>
+
+<p>"'I been writin' steady,' she says, 'since half past eight o'clock this
+mornin', an' I've only got one page an' one-half composed.'</p>
+
+<p>"We ask' each other around, and none of us was no more then started, let
+be it was Mis' Toplady, that had got in first.</p>
+
+<p>"'Le's us leave our lunch,' says Mis' Sykes, then. 'Le's us leave it
+un-et. Abagail, you put it back in the basket an' pour the coffee into
+the pot. An' le's us <i>write</i>. Wouldn't we all rather hev one of our sick
+headaches,' she says, firm, 'than mebbe make ourselves the Laughing
+Stock? Ladies, I ask you.'</p>
+
+<p>"An' we woulded, one and all. Sick headaches don't last long, but
+laughed-at has regular right down eternal life.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it strange how slow the writing muscles and such is, that you
+don't use often? Pitting cherries, splitting squash, peeling potatoes,
+slicing apples, making change at church suppers,&mdash;us ladies is lightning
+at 'em all. But getting idees down on paper&mdash;I declare if it ain't more
+like waiting around for your bread to raise on a cold morning. Still
+when you're worried, you can press forward more than normal, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> among
+us we had quite some material ready for Riddy and the men when they came
+back. But not Mis' Sykes. She wan't getting on at all.</p>
+
+<p>"'If I could only <i>talk</i> it,' she says, grieving, 'or I donno if I could
+even do that. What I want to say is in me, rarin' around my head like
+life, an' yet I can't get it out no more'n money out of a tin bank. I
+shall disgrace Sodality,' she says, wild.</p>
+
+<p>"'Cheer up,' says Libby Liberty, soothing. 'Nobody ever reads the
+editorials, anyway. I ain't read one in years.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You tend to your article,' snaps Mis' Sykes.</p>
+
+<p>"I had got my write-up of Silas all turned in to Riddy, and I was
+looking longing at Abagail's basket, when, banging the door, in come
+somebody breathing like raging, and it was Rob Henney, that I guess we'd
+all forgot about except it was Mis' Toplady that was waiting for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Rob Henney always talks like he was long distance.</p>
+
+<p>"'I come in,' he says, blustering, 'I come in to quit off my
+subscription to this fool paper, that a lot o' fool women&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes looks up at him out from under her hand that her head was
+resting on.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go on out o' here, Mr. Henney,' she says<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> sharp to him, 'an' quit your
+subscription quiet. Can't you see you're disturbing us?' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"With that Mis' Toplady wheeled around on her high stool and looked at
+him, calm as a clock.</p>
+
+<p>"'Rob Henney,' says she, 'you come over here. I'll read you what I've
+wrote about you,' she told him.</p>
+
+<p>"The piece begun like this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Rob Henney, our esteemed fellow-townsman and milkman, was talked with
+this morning on his cow sheds. The reporter said to same that what was
+wanting would be visiting the stables, churn, cans, pans, and like that,
+being death is milked out of most cows if they are not kept clean and
+inspected regular for signs of consumption. Mr. Henney replied as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>"'First: That his cows had never been inspected because nothing of that
+kind had ever been necessary.</p>
+
+<p>"'Second: That he was in the milk business for a living, and did the
+town expect him to keep it in milk for its health?</p>
+
+<p>"'Third: That folks had been drinking milk since milk begun, and if the
+Lord saw fit to call them home, why not through milk, or even through
+consumption, as well as through pneumonia and others?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p><p>"'Fourth: That he would see the reporter&mdash;a lady&mdash;in the
+lake-that-burneth-with-fire before his sheds and churn and pans and cans
+should be put in the paper.</p>
+
+<p>"'Below is how the sheds, churn, pans, and cans look to-day....' And I
+tell you, Mis' Toplady, she didn't spare no words. When she meant What,
+she said What, elaborate.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know for a minute but we'd hev to mop Rob up off the clean
+floor. But Mis' Toplady she never forgot who she was.</p>
+
+<p>"'Either that goes in the paper to-night,' she says, 'or you'll clean up
+your milk surroundin's&mdash;pick your choice. An' Sodality's through with
+you if you don't, besides.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Put it in print! Put it in print, if you dast!' yells Rob,
+wind-milling his arms some.</p>
+
+<p>"'No need to make an earthquake o' yourself,' Mis' Toplady points out to
+him, serene.</p>
+
+<p>"And at that Rob adds a word intending to express a cussing idee, and he
+outs and down the stairs. And Mis' Toplady starts to take her article
+right in to Riddy. But in the door she met Riddy, hurrying into the
+office again. I never see anybody before that looked both red and
+haggard, but Riddy did. He come right to the point:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Some of you ladies has got to quit handing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> in&mdash;news,' he says,
+scrabbling for a word to please Mis' Sykes. 'We're up to our eyes in
+here now. An' there ain't enough room in the paper, either, not without
+you get out eight pages or else run a supplement or else throw away the
+whole patent inside. An' those ways, we ain't got enough type even if we
+had time to burn.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes pushed back her green shade, looking just <i>chased</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"'What does he mean?' she says. 'Can't he tend to his type and things
+with us doing all the work?'</p>
+
+<p>"Riddy took this real nettlish.</p>
+
+<p>"'I mean,' s'he, clear but brutal, 'you got to cut your stuff somewheres
+to the tune of a couple o' columns.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's hard to pick out which colour you'll take when you have a
+new dress only once in every so seldom; or which of your hens you'll
+kill when you know your chickens like you know your own mind; but these
+are nothing to the time we had deciding on what to omit out of the paper
+that night. And the decision hurt us even more than the deciding, for
+what we left out was Mis' Sturgis's two women's columns.</p>
+
+<p>"'We <i>can't</i> leave out meat nor milk nor cleanliness nor the library,'
+says Mis' Toplady, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>reasonable, 'because them are the things we live by.
+An' so with the other write-ups we got planned. But receipts and
+patterns an' moth balls is only kind o' decorations, seems though.
+Besides, we all know about 'em, an' it's time we stopped talkin' about
+'em, anyway.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sturgis she cried a little on the corner of her shawl.</p>
+
+<p>"'The receipts an' patterns an' moth balls is so w-womanly,' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady whirled round at her.</p>
+
+<p>"'If you know anything more womanly than conquerin' dirt an' disease an'
+the-dead-that-needn't-die,' s'she, 'I'll roll up my sleeves an' be into
+it. But it won't be eyelet embroidery nor yet boiled frostin'!'</p>
+
+<p>"After that they wrote in hasty peace, though four o'clock come racing
+across the day like a runaway horse, and us not out of its way. And a
+few minutes past, when Riddy was waiting in the door for Mis' Sykes's
+last page, somebody most knocked him over, and there come Mis' Holcomb,
+our circulation editor, purple and white, like a ghost.</p>
+
+<p>"'Lock the door&mdash;lock it!' she says. 'I've bolted the one to the foot of
+the stairs. Lock both outside ones an' lay yourselves low!' s'she.</p>
+
+<p>"Riddy an' I done the locking, me well <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>knowing Mis' Holcomb couldn't
+give a false alarm no more than a map could.</p>
+
+<p>"'What is it?' we says, pressing Mis' Holcomb to speak, that couldn't
+even breathe.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, ladies,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'they've rejoined us, or whatever it
+is they do. I mean they're going to rejoin us from gettin' out
+to-night's paper. The sheriff or the coroner or whoever it is they have,
+is comin' with injunctions&mdash;<i>is</i> that like handcuffs, do you know? An'
+it's Rob Henney's doin'. Eppleby told me. An' I run down the alley an'
+beat 'em to it. They're most here. Let's us slap into print what's wrote
+an' be ready with the papers the livin' minute we can.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes had shoved her green shade onto the back of her head, and
+her crimping pins was all showing forth.</p>
+
+<p>"'What good'll it do us to get the paper <i>out</i>?' says she, in a numb
+voice. 'We can't distribute 'em around to no one with the sheriff to the
+front door with them things to put on us.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Mis' Holcomb smiled, with her eyes shut, where she sat, breathing
+so hard it showed through.</p>
+
+<p>"'I come in the coal door, at the alley,' s'she. 'They'll never think o'
+that. Besides, the crowd'll be in front an' the carrier boys too, an'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+they'll want to show off out there. An' Eppleby knows&mdash;he told me to
+come in that way&mdash;an' he'll keep 'em interested out in front. Le's us
+each take the papers, an' out the coal door, an' distribute 'em around,
+ourselves, without the boys, an' collect in the money same time.'</p>
+
+<p>"And that was how we done. For when they come to the door and found it
+locked, they pounded a little to show who was who and who wan't and then
+they waited out there calm enough, thinking to stop us when the papers
+come down would be plenty time. They waited out there, calm and sure,
+while upstairs Bedlam went on, but noiseless. And after us ladies was
+done with our part, we sat huddled up in the office, soothing Mis'
+Sturgis and each other.</p>
+
+<p>"'In one sentence,' Mis' Holcomb says, 'Eppleby says Rob Henney was
+going to <i>put</i> injunctions on us. An' in the next he says he was goin'
+to <i>serve</i> 'em. What did he mean by that, do you s'pose?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I donno what he meant,' says Mis' Toplady, 'but I wouldn't have
+anything to do with <i>anything</i> Rob Henney served.'</p>
+
+<p>"That made us think of Abagail's lunch, laying un-et in the basket. They
+wasn't none of us felt like eating, but Mis' Sturgis says she bet if we
+didn't eat it, Abagail would feel she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> hadn't had no part in writing the
+paper like us, and so we broke off a little something once around; but
+food didn't have much fun for us, not then. And nothing did up to the
+minute the paper was done, and we was all ready to sly out the alley
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"With Sodality and Riddy Styles and the composing-room men we had above
+twenty carriers. Riddy and the men helped us, one and all, because of
+course the paper was a little theirs, too, and they was interested and
+liked the lark. Land, land, I ain't felt so young or so wicked as I done
+getting out that alley door. There's them I wish could see that there's
+just as much fun keeping secret about something that may be good as in
+being sly about something regular bad.</p>
+
+<p>"When we finally got outside it was suppertime and summer seeming, and
+the hour was all sweet and frank, and the whole village was buried in
+its evening fried mush and potatoes, or else sprinkling their front
+yards. I donno how it was with the others, but I know I went along the
+streets seeing through them little houses like they was glass, and
+seeing the young folks eating their suppers and growing up and getting
+ready to live and to <i>be</i>. And in us ladies' arms, in them heavy papers,
+it seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> to me we was carrying new life to them, in little ways&mdash;in
+little ways, but ways that was going to be big with meaning. And I felt
+as if something in me kind of snuggled up closer to the way things was
+meant to be.</p>
+
+<p>"Us that went west got clear the whole length of Daphne Street without
+anybody seeing what we was doing, or else believing that we was doing it
+orderly and legitimate. And away out by the Pump pasture, we started in
+distributing, and we come working down town, handing out papers to the
+residence part like mad and taking in dimes like wild. They was so many
+of us, and the <i>Evening Daily</i> office was so located, that by the time
+Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I come around the corner where the men
+and Rob Henney and the rejoiners and the carriers was loafing, waiting,
+smoking, and secure, we didn't have many papers left. And we three was
+the first ones back.</p>
+
+<p>"'Evenin' paper?' says Mis' Toplady, casual. '<i>Friendship Village
+Evenin' Daily, Extra?</i> All the news for a dime?'</p>
+
+<p>"Never have I see a man so truly flabbergasted as Rob Henney, and he did
+look like death.</p>
+
+<p>"'You're rejoined!' he yelled, or whatever it is they say&mdash;'you're
+rejoined by law from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> printin' your papers or from deestributin' the
+same.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Rob Henney,' says Mis' Toplady, 'no call to show fight like that.
+Half the town is readin' its papers by now. They've been out for
+three-quarters of an hour,' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"Then soft and faint and acrost the street, we heard somebody laugh, and
+then kind of spat hands; and we all looked up. And there in the open
+upstairs window of the building opposite, we see leaning out Eppleby
+Holcomb and Timothy Toplady and Silas Sykes. And when we crossed eyes,
+they all made a little cheer like a theatre; and then they come clumping
+down stairs and acrost to where we was.</p>
+
+<p>"'Won out, didn't you, by heck!' says Silas, that can only see that far.</p>
+
+<p>"'Blisterin' Benson,' says Timothy, gleeful. '<i>I</i> say we ain't got no
+cause to regret our wifes' brains.'</p>
+
+<p>"But Eppleby, he never said a word. He just smiled slow and a-looking
+past us. And we knew that from the beginning he had seen our whole plan,
+face to face.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and me, seeing how Rob Henney stood
+muttering and beat, and seeing how the day had gone, and seeing what was
+what in the world and in all outside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> of it, we looked at each other,
+dead tired, and real happy, and then we just dragged along home to our
+kitchens and went to cooking supper. But oh, it wasn't our same old
+kitchens nor it wasn't our same old Friendship Village. We was in places
+newer and better and up higher, where we see how things are, and how
+life would get more particular about us if we'd get particular about
+some more of life.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+<p>"Well, of course then we had Sixty Dollars or so to spend, and Sodality
+never could rest a minute when it had money to do with if it wasn't
+doing it, any more than it could rest when it had something to do and no
+money to do with. It made a nice, active circle. Wishing for dreams to
+come true, and then, when they do come true, making the true things
+sprout more dreams, is another of them circles. I always think they're
+what keeps us a-going, not only immortal but busy.</p>
+
+<p>"And then with us there's another reason for voting our money prompt. As
+soon as we've made any and the news has got out around, it's happened
+two-three times that somebody has put in an application for a headstone
+for somebody dead that can't afford one. The first time that was done
+the application was made by the wife of a harness maker that had a
+little shop in the back street and had been saving up his money for a
+good tombstone. 'I ain't had much of a position here in life,' he used
+to say. 'I never was pointed out as a leading citizen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> But I'm goin' to
+fix it so's when I'm buried and folks come to the Cemetery, nobody'll
+get by my grave without noticin' my tombstone.' And then he took sick
+with inflammatory rheumatism, and if it didn't last him three years and
+et up his whole tombstone fund. He use' to worry about it considerable
+as the rheumatism kept reducing the granite inch after inch, and he
+died, thinking he wasn't going to have nothing but markers to him. So
+his old wife come and told Sodality, crying to think he wasn't going to
+seem no real true inhabitant of Cemetery, any more than he had of the
+village. And we felt so sorry for her we took part of the Thirty Dollars
+we'd made at the rummage sale and bought him a nice cement stone, and
+put the verse on to attract attention that he'd wrote himself:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">"'<span class="smaller">STOP. LOOK. LISTEN.</span><br /><br />
+<span class="smaller">HERE LAYS ME.</span><br /><br />
+<span class="smaller">MY GRAVE IS JUST AS BIG</span><br /><br />
+<span class="smaller">AS YOURS WILL BE.</span>'</p>
+
+<p>"Some was inclined to criticise Jeb for being so ambitious in death, and
+stopping to think how good a showing he could make. But I donno, I
+always sort of understood him. He wanted to be somebody. He'd used to
+try to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> have a voice in public affairs, but somehow what he proposed
+wasn't ever practical and never could get itself adopted. His judgment
+wasn't much, and time and again he'd voted against the town's good, and
+he see it afterward. He missed being a real citizen of his town, and he
+knew it, and he hankered to be a citizen of his Cemetery. And wherever
+he is now, I bet that healthy hankering is strained and purified and
+helping him ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"But our buying that stone for Jeb's widow's husband's grave let us in
+for perpetual applications for monuments; and so when we had any money
+we always went right to work and voted it for general Cemetery
+improvement, so there wasn't ever any money in the treasury for the
+applications. Anyway, we felt we'd ought to encourage self-made graves
+and not pauperize our corpses.</p>
+
+<p>"So the very next afternoon after we got our paper out, we met at Mis'
+Sykes's; and the day being mild and gold, almost all of Sodality turned
+out, and Mis' Sykes used both her parlours. It was funny; but such times
+there fell on them that sat Front Parlour a sort of
+what-you-might-call-distinction over them that sat Back Parlour. It's
+the same to our parties. Them that are set down to the dining-room table
+always seem a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> little more company than them that are served to the
+little sewing tables around in the open rooms, and we all feel it,
+though we all pretend not, as well-bred as we know how. I donno but
+there's something to it, too. Mis' Sykes, for instance, she always gets
+put to a dining table. Nobody would ever think of setting her down to a
+small one, no more than they would a Proudfit. But me, I generally get
+tucked down to a sewing table and in a rocking-chair, if there ain't
+enough cane seats to go around. Things often divide themselves true to
+themselves in this life, after all.</p>
+
+<p>"This was the last regular meeting before our Annual. The Annual, at
+Insley's suggestion, was going to be in the schoolhouse, and it was
+going to be an open evening meeting, with the whole town invited in and
+ice-cream served after. Regular meetings Sodality gives just tea;
+special meetings we give hot chocolate or ice-lemonade, or both if the
+weather is unsettled; for entertainments we have cut-up fruit and little
+bakery cakes; but to our Annual we mount up to ice-cream and some of our
+best cake makers' layer cake. And us ladies always dress according:
+afternoon home dresses to regular meetings; second best to specials;
+Sunday silks to entertainments; and straight going-out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> clothes for the
+Annual. It makes it real nice. Nobody need to come dressed wrong, and
+nobody can go away disappointed at what they've been fed.</p>
+
+<p>"The meeting that day all ought to have gone smooth enough, it being so
+nice that our paper had sold well and all, but I guess the most of us
+was too tired out to have tried to have a meeting so soon. Anyhow, we
+didn't seem to come together slippery and light-running, like we do some
+days; but instead I see the minute we begun to collect that we was all
+inclined to be heavy and, though not cross, yet frictionish.</p>
+
+<p>"For instance: Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss had come in a new red
+waist with black raspberry buttons. And it was too much for Mis' Fire
+Chief Merriman that's been turning her black poplin ever since the Fire
+Chief died.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dear me, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'I never see anybody have more
+dressy clothes. Did you put that on just for us?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Holcomb shut her lips tight.</p>
+
+<p>"'This is for home wear,' she says short, when she opened them.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mean to say you get a cooked supper in that rig?' says Mis' Merriman.
+'Fry meat in it, do you?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p><p>"'We don't eat as hearty as some,' says Mame. 'We don't insist on warm
+suppers. We feel at our house we have to keep our bills down.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Merriman straightened up, real brittle.</p>
+
+<p>"'My gracious,' she says, 'I guess I live as cheap as the best does.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I see you buying <i>shelled</i> nuts, just the same,' says Mis' Holcomb,
+'when shellin' 'em with your fingers cost twenty cents off.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I ain't never had my store-buyin' criticised before,' says Mis'
+Merriman, elbows back.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nor,' says Mis' Holcomb, bitter, 'have I ever before, in my twenty-six
+years of married life, ever been called <i>dressy</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Mis' Toplady, she sort of shouldered into the minute, big and
+placid and nice-feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mame,' she says, 'set over here where you can use the lead-pencil on
+my watch chain, and put down that crochet pattern I wanted, will you?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mame come over by her and took the pencil, Mis' Toplady leaning over
+so's she could use it; but before she put the crochet pattern down, Mame
+made one, experimental, on the stiff bottom of her work-bag, and Libby
+Liberty thought she'd make a little joking.</p>
+
+<p>"'S-sh-h,' says Libby, 'the authoress is takin' down notes.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Holcomb has had two-three poems in the <i>Friendship Daily</i>, and
+she's real sensitive over it.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd be polite if I couldn't be pleasant, Libby,' says Mame, acid.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm pleasant enough to pleasant folks,' snaps Libby, up in arms in a
+minute. Nothing whatever makes anybody so mad as to have what was meant
+playful took plain.</p>
+
+<p>"'I,' says Mis' Holcomb, majestic, 'would pay some attention to my
+company manners, no matter what I was in the home.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That makes me think,' puts in Mis' Toplady, hasty, 'speaking of
+company so, who's heard anything about the evenin' company up to
+Proudfits'?'</p>
+
+<p>"It was something all our heads was full of, being half the village had
+just been invited in to the big evening affair that was to end up the
+house party, and we'd all of pitched in and talked fast anyhow to take
+our minds off the spat.</p>
+
+<p>"'Elbert's comin' home to go to it an' to stay Sunday an' as much as he
+can spare,' says Mis' Sykes. Elbert is her son and all Silas Sykes ought
+to of been, Elbert is.</p>
+
+<p>"'Letty Ames is home for the party, too,' says Libby Liberty, speaking
+up in defence of their block, that Letty lives in. She's just <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>graduated
+at Indian Mound and has been visiting up the state.</p>
+
+<p>"My niece that had come on for a few days would be gone before the party
+come off, so she didn't seem worth mentioning for real news value at a
+time when everything was centring in an evening company at Proudfit
+House. No doubt about it, Proudfit House does give distinction to
+Friendship Village, kind of like a finishing school would, or a circus
+wintering in us.</p>
+
+<p>"'I heard,' says Mis' Jimmy Sturgis, 'that the hired help set up all
+night long cleanin' the silver. I shouldn't think <i>that</i> would of been
+necessary, with any kind of management behind 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You don't get much management now'-days,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait,
+sighing. 'Things slap along awful haphazard.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know I ain't the system to myself that I use' to have,' says Abagail
+Arnold. 'Why, the other day I found my soda in one butt'ry an' my bakin'
+powder in the other.'</p>
+
+<p>"'An' I heard,' says Mame Holcomb&mdash;that's one thing about Mame, you
+can't keep her mad. She'll flare up and be a tongue of flame one minute,
+and the next she's actin' like a friendly open fire on a family hearth.
+And I always trust that kind&mdash;I can't help it&mdash;'I heard,' she said,
+'that for the party that night the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>ice-cream is coming in forms,
+calla-lilies an' dogs an' like that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I heard,' says Mis' Uppers, 'that Emerel Daniel was invited up to help
+an' she set up nights and got her a new dress for helpin' in, and now
+little Otie's sick and she likely can't go near.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady looks over her glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"'Is Otie sick again?' says she. 'Well, if Emerel don't move out of
+Black Hollow, she'll lose him just like she done Abe. Can't she sell?'</p>
+
+<p>"Black Hollow is the town's pet breeding place for typhoid, that the
+ladies has been at the council to clean up for a year now. And nobody
+will buy there, so Emerel's had to live in her house to save rent.</p>
+
+<p>"'She's made her a nice dress an' she was so excited and pleased,' says
+Mis' Uppers, grieving. 'I do hope it was a dark shade so if bereavement
+follows&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'I suppose you'll have a new cloth, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis'
+Hubbelthwait, 'you're so up-to-date.' It's always one trouble with Mis'
+Hubbelthwait: she will flatter the flatterable. But that time it didn't
+work. Mis' Sykes was up on a chair fixing a window-shade that had flew
+up, and I guess she must have pinched her finger, she was so crispy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p><p>"'I thought I <i>had</i> things that was full stylish enough to wear,' she
+says stiff.</p>
+
+<p>"'I didn't mean harm,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, humble.</p>
+
+<p>"Just then we all got up to see out the window, for the Proudfit
+automobile drew up to Mis' Sykes's gate. They was several folks in it,
+like they had been most of the time during the house party, with
+everybody flying hither and yon; and they was letting Mis' Emmons out.
+It was just exactly like her to remember to come right out of the midst
+of a house party to a meeting of Sodality. That woman was pure gold.
+When they was a lot of things to choose about, she always seemed to let
+the pleasant and the light and the easy-to-do slip right through her
+fingers, that would close up by and by on the big real thing that most
+folks would pretend to try to catch <i>after</i> it had slipped through, and
+yet would be awful glad to see disappearing.</p>
+
+<p>"We didn't talk clothes any more after Mis' Emmons come in. Some way her
+clothes was so professional seeming, in colour and cut, that beside of
+her the rest of us never said much about ours; though I will say Mis'
+Emmons always wore her clothes like she was no more thinking about them
+than she would be thinking about morning housework togs.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p>"'Well-said, how's the little boy, Mis' Emmons?' asks Mis' Toplady,
+hearty. 'I declare I couldn't go to sleep a night or two ago for
+thinkin' about the little soul. Heard any sound out of his folks?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm going to tell you about that pretty soon,' Mis' Emmons
+answered&mdash;and it made my heart beat a little with wondering if she'd got
+her plans thought out, not only four-square, but tower-high. 'He is
+well&mdash;he wanted to come to the meeting. "I like ladies," he said, "when
+they look at me like loving, but not when they touch me much." Mr.
+Insley has him out walking.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Little soul,' says Mis' Toplady, again.</p>
+
+<p>"Out in the back parlour, some of us had been talking about Christopher
+already.</p>
+
+<p>"'I heard,' Mis' Merriman says, that wasn't to the church the night
+Christopher come, 'I heard that he didn't have much of any clothes on.
+An' that nobody could understand what he said. An' that nobody could get
+him to speak a word.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Pshaw,' Mis' Sturgis puts in, 'he was a nice-dressed little boy,
+though wet; an' quite conversational.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I think it's a great problem,' says Mis' Uppers. 'He's too young
+for the poorhouse and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> too old for the babies' home. Seems like they
+wasn't anything <i>to</i> do with him.'</p>
+
+<p>"There come a lull when Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in a ruffled lawn that
+had shrunk too short for anything but house wear, stood up by the piano
+and called the meeting to order. And when we'd got on down to new
+business, the purpose of the meeting and a hint of the pleasure was
+stated formal by Mis' Sykes herself. 'One thing why I like to preside at
+Sodality,' I heard her tell once, 'is, you do get your say whenever you
+want it, and nobody can interrupt you when you're in the chair.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ladies,' she says, 'we've seen from the treasurer's report we've got
+some Sixty-odd Dollars on hand. The question is, where shall we vote it
+to. Let the discussion be free.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke first, with a kind of a bright
+manner of having thought it all out over her dish pan and her bread pan.
+There is this about belonging to Sodality: We just live Sodality every
+day, around our work. We don't forget it except to meetings, same as
+some.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I just tell you what,' Mame says, 'I think now is our time to
+get a big monument for the middle of Cemetery that'll do some credit to
+the Dead. All our little local <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>headstones is quite tasty and shows our
+interest in them that's gone before; but not one of them is real
+up-to-date. Let's buy a nice monument that'll show from the railroad
+track.'</p>
+
+<p>"I spoke up short off from the back parlour, where I set 'scallopin' a
+bedspread about as big as the carpet.</p>
+
+<p>"'Who to?' I says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I donno's it makes much differ'nce,' Mis' Holcomb says, warming to
+her theme, 'so's it was some leadin' citizen. We might take a town vote
+on it.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sturgis set up straight, eyebrows up. I donno how it is, but Mis'
+Sturgis's pompadour always seems so much higher as soon as she gets
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, my gracious,' she says, 'we might earn quite a lot o' money that
+way. We might have a regular votin' contest on who that's dead should
+get the monument&mdash;so much a vote an' the names of the successful ones
+run every night in the <i>Daily</i>&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a, why do it for anybody dead?' says Libby Liberty. 'Why not get
+the monument here and have it on view an' then have folks kind of bid on
+it for their own, real votin' style. In the cities now everybody picks
+out their own monuments ahead of time. That would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> be doing for the
+Living, the way Mr. Insley said.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, there'd be hard feelin' that way,' spoke up Mis' Uppers, decided.
+'Whoever got it, an' got buried under it, never could feel it was his
+own stone. Everybody that had bought votes for themselves could come out
+walking in the Cemetery Sunday afternoons and could point out the
+monument and tell how much of a money interest they had in it. Oh, no, I
+don't think that'd do at all.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, stick to havin' it for the Dead, then,' Libby gives in. 'We've
+got to remember our constitution.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Amanda Toplady was always going down after something in the bottom
+of her pocket, set low in her full black skirt. She done this now, for a
+spool or a lozenger. And she says, meantime: 'Seems like that'd be awful
+irreverent, connectin' up the Dead with votes that way.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>My</i> notion,' says Mis' Sykes, with her way of throwin' up one corner
+of her head, 'it ain't one-tenth part as irreverent as forgettin' all
+about 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course it ain't,' agreed Mis' Hubbelthwait. 'Real, true irreverence
+is made up of buryin' folks and leavin' 'em go their way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> Why, I bet
+you there ain't any one of 'em that wouldn't be cheered up by bein'
+voted for.'</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help piping up again from the back parlour. 'What about them
+that don't get no votes?' I asks. 'What about them that is beat in death
+like they may of been in life? What's there to cheer them up? If I was
+them,' says I, 'I'd ha'nt the whole Sodality.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No need to be so sacrilegious in speakin' of the Dead as I know of,
+Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes that was in the chair and could rebuke at
+will.</p>
+
+<p>"That made me kind o' mad, and I answered back, chair or no chair: 'A
+thing is sacrilegious,' says I, 'according to which side of the fence
+you're on. But the fence it don't change none.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady looked over her glasses and out the window and like she
+see far away.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, land,' she says, 'I'd like to take that Sixty Dollars and hire
+some place to invite the young folks into evenings, that don't have no
+place to go on earth for fun. Friendship Village,' says she, 'is about
+as lively as Cemetery is for the young folks.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, but, Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes, reprovin', 'the young folks
+is alive and able to see to themselves. They don't come in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> Sodality's
+scope. Everything we do has got to be connect' with Cemetery.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I can't help it,' Mis' Toplady answers, 'if it is. I'd like to invite
+'em in for some good safe evenin's somewheres instead of leaving 'em
+trapse the streets. And if I had to have Cemetery in it somehow, I donno
+but I'd make it a lawn party and give it in Cemetery and have done with
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>"We all laughed, but I knew that underneath, Mis' Toplady was kind of
+half-and-half in earnest.</p>
+
+<p>"'The young folks,' says Mis' Sykes, mysterious, 'is going to be took
+care of by the proper means, very, very soon.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I donno,' says Mis' Holcomb, obstinate. 'I think the monument is a
+real nice idea. Grandfather Holcomb, now, him that helped draft the
+town, or whatever it is they do, I bet he'd be real pleased to be voted
+for.'</p>
+
+<p>"But Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, seems she couldn't forget the little way
+Mame had spoke to her before, and she leaned forward and cut her way
+into the talking.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'of course your Grandfather Holcomb can
+be voted on if he wants to and if he thinks he could get it. But dead
+though he is, what he done can't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> hold a candle to what Grandfather
+Merriman done. That man just about run this town for years on end.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I heard he did,' said Mame, short. 'Those was the days before things
+was called by their true names in politics and in graft and like that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm sure,' says Mis' Merriman, her voice slipping, 'Grandfather
+Merriman was an angel in heaven to his family. And he started the very
+Cemetery by bein' buried in it first himself, and he took a front lot&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ladies, ladies,' says Mis' Sykes, stern, 'we ain't votin' <i>yet</i>. Has
+anybody got anything else to offer? Let the discussion be free.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What do we get a monument for, anyway?' says Mis' Toplady, hemming
+peaceful. 'Why don't we stick the money onto the new iron fence for
+Cemetery, same as we've been trying to do for years?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's what I was thinking,' says Abagail Arnold, smiling. 'Whenever I
+make one of my layer cakes for Sodality Annual, and frost it white and
+make mounds of frosted nuts on top, I always wish Cemetery had a fence
+around so's I could make a frosting one on the edge of the cake,
+appropriate.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, but my land, Abagail,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'can't you see the
+differ'nce between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> workin' for a dead iron fence and working for the
+real, right down Dead that once was the living? Where's your humanity,
+I'd like to know, and your loyalty to Friendship Village inhabitants
+that was, that you set the old iron fence over against 'em. What's a
+fence beside folks?'</p>
+
+<p>"All this time Mis' Emmons, there in the front parlour, had just sat
+still, stitching away on some little garment or other, but now she
+looked up quick, as if she was going to speak. She even begun to speak
+with a 'Madame President' that covered up several excited beginnings.
+But as she done so, I looked through the folding doors and see her catch
+sight of somebody out in the street. And I looked out the bay-window in
+the back parlour and I see who it was: it was a man, carefully guiding a
+little bit of a man who was walking on the flat board top of the Sykes's
+fence. So, instead of speaking formal, all Mis' Emmons done was to make
+a little motion towards the window, so that her contribution to the
+debating was nothing but&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Madame President&mdash;look.'</p>
+
+<p>"We all looked, them in the out-of-range corners of the room getting up
+and holding their work in their aprons, and peering past;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> and us in the
+back parlour tried for glimpses out the side bay-window, past Mis'
+Sykes's big sword fern. And so the most of us see Insley walking with
+Christopher, who was footing it very delicate and grave, picking out his
+places to step as if a real lot depended on it.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's Chris,' says Mis' Emmons, simple, 'that's come to us.' And
+you'd of said she hardly spoke the 'us' real conscious of herself. She
+looked round at us all. 'Let's have him in for a minute,' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"'The little soul! Let's so do,' Mis' Amanda Toplady says, hearty.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Mis' Emmons that went to the door and called them, and I guess
+Insley, when he see her, must of wondered what made her face seem like
+that. He went on up town, and the little chap come trotting up the walk.</p>
+
+<p>"When Chris come in Mis' Sykes's front parlour among all the women,
+there run round that little murmuring sound that a crowd of women uses
+to greet the coming in their midst of any child. And I s'pose it was a
+little more so than ever for Chris, that they hadn't all seen
+yet&mdash;'count of so few being out the night he come and 'count of his
+having been up to Proudfit House 'most ever since. Us in the back
+parlour went crowding in the front, and some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> come down to the hall door
+to be the nearer. Mis' Amanda Toplady, hunting in her deep pocket, this
+time for a lozenger, says fervent above the rest:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'The little soul.'</p>
+
+<p>"And he did resemble one, standing there so shy and manly in his new
+little brown clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Emmons's eyes was bright, and I thought I see a kind of challenge
+in her way of drawing the child towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Chris,' she says, 'tell them what you had in your paper bag when you
+came to the church the other night.'</p>
+
+<p>"Chris remembered: Sugar rolls and cream-puffs and fruit-cake, he
+recites it grand. 'My supper,' he adds, no less grand. 'But that was
+'cause I didn't have my dinner nor my breakfast,' he explains, so's we
+wouldn't think he'd had too much at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'What was the matter with your foot?' Mis' Emmons goes on.</p>
+
+<p>"Christopher had a little smile that just about won you&mdash;a sort of
+abashed little smile, that begun over by one side of his mouth, and when
+he was going to smile that way he always started in by turning away his
+head. He done this now; but we could all hear what he said. It was:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p><p>"'My biggest toe went right through a hole, an' it choked me awful.'</p>
+
+<p>"About a child's foot hurting, or a little sore heel, there is something
+that makes mothers out of everybody, for a minute or two. The women all
+twittered into a little ripple of understanding. Probably to every woman
+there come the picture of the little cold, wet foot and the choked toe.
+I know I could see it, and I can see it yet.</p>
+
+<p>"'Lambin',' says Mis' Toplady, in more than two syllables, 'come here
+for a peppermint.'</p>
+
+<p>"Chris went right over to her. 'I been thirsty for a drink of water
+since all day,' he says confidential. 'Have you got one?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady went with the child, and then Mis' Emmons took something
+from her bag and held it up. It was Christopher's father's letter that
+he'd brought with him that night.</p>
+
+<p>"She read the letter out loud, in everybody's perfectly breathless
+silence that was broken only by Christopher laughing out in the kitchen.
+'My friends,' Mis' Emmons says when she'd got through, 'doesn't it seem
+to you as if our work had come to us? And that if it isn't Chris
+himself, at least it ought to be people, live people&mdash;and not an iron
+fence or even a monument that will show from the railroad track?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p><p>"And with that, standing in the doorway with my arms full of bedspread,
+I piped right up, just like I'd been longing to pipe up ever since that
+night at Mis' Emmons's when I'd talked with Insley:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir,' I says emphatic, 'it does. Without meaning to be
+sacrilegious in the least,' I says toward Mis' Sykes, 'I believe that
+the Dead is a lot better prepared to take care of themselves than a good
+many of the Living is.'</p>
+
+<p>"There was a kind of a little pause at this, all but Mis' Sykes. Mis'
+Sykes don't pause easy. She spoke right back, sort of elevating one
+temple:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'The object of this meeting as the chair understands it,' says she, 'is
+to discuss money spending, <i>not</i> idees.'</p>
+
+<p>"But I didn't pay no more attention than as if I'd been a speaker in
+public life. And Mis' Toplady and Christopher, coming back to the room
+just then, I spoke to him and took a-hold of his little shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"'Chris,' I says, 'tell 'em what you're going to be when you grow up.'</p>
+
+<p>"The little boy stood up with his back against the door-casing, and he
+spoke back between peppermints:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p><p>"'I'm going to drive the loads of hay,' he declares himself.</p>
+
+<p>"'A little bit ago,' I says to 'em, 'he was going to be a cream-puff
+man, and keep a church and manufacture black velvet for people's
+coffins. Think of all them futures&mdash;not to spend time on other
+possibilities. Don't it seem like we'd ought to keep him around here
+somewheres and help him decide? Don't it seem like what he's going to be
+is resting with us?'</p>
+
+<p>"But now Mis' Sykes spoke out in her most presidential tone.</p>
+
+<p>"'It would be perfectly impossible,' she says, 'for Sodality to spend
+its money on the child or on anybody else that's living. Our
+constitution says we shall work for Cemetery.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says I, rebellish, 'then let's rip up our old constitution and
+buy ourselves a new pattern.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes was getting to verge on mad.</p>
+
+<p>"'But Sodality ain't an orphan asylum, Calliope,' says she, 'nor none of
+us is that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't we&mdash;ain't we, Mis' Sykes?' I says. 'Sometimes I donno what we're
+for if we ain't that.'</p>
+
+<p>"And then I just clear forgot myself, in one of them times that don't
+let you get to sleep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> that night for thinking about, and that when you
+wake up is right there by the bed waiting for you, and that makes you
+feel sore when you think of afterwards&mdash;sore, but glad, too.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's it,' I says, 'that's it. I've been thinking about that a good
+deal lately. I s'pose it's because I ain't any children of my own to be
+so busy for that I can't think about their real good. Seems to me there
+ain't a child living no matter how saucy or soiled or similar, but could
+look us each one in the face and say, "What you doing for me and the
+rest of us?" And what could we say to them? We could say: "I'm buying
+some of you ginghams that won't shrink nor fade. Some of you I'm cooking
+food for, and some of you I'm letting go without it. And some of you I'm
+buying school books and playthings and some of you I'm leaving without
+'em. I'm making up some of your beds and teaching you your manners and
+I'm loving you&mdash;some of you. And the rest of you I'm leaving walk in
+town after dark with a hole in your stocking." <i>Where's the
+line&mdash;where's the line?</i> How do we know which is the ones to do for? I
+tell you I'm the orphan asylum to the whole lot of 'em. And so are you.
+And I move the Cemetery Improvement Sodality do something for this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+little boy. We'd adopt him if he was dead&mdash;an' keep his grave as nice
+and neat as wax. Let's us adopt him instead of his grave!'</p>
+
+<p>"My bedspread had slipped down onto the floor, but I never knew when nor
+did I see it go. All I see was that some of them agreed with me&mdash;Mis'
+Emmons and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Hubbelthwait and Libby and even Mame
+that had proposed the monument. But some of the others was waiting as
+usual to see how Mis' Sykes was going to believe, and Mis' Sykes she was
+just standing there by the piano, her cheeks getting pinker and pinker
+up high on her face.</p>
+
+<p>"'Calliope,' she said, making a gesture. 'Ladies! this is every bit of
+it out of order. This ain't the subject that we come together to
+discuss.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It kind of seems to me,' says I, 'that it's a subject we was born to
+discuss.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady sort of rolled over in her chair and looked across her
+glasses to Mis' Sykes.</p>
+
+<p>"'Madame President,' says she, 'as I understand it this fits in all
+right. What we're proposing is to spend Sodality's money on this little
+boy just the same as though he was dead. I move we do so.'</p>
+
+<p>"Two-three of 'em seconded it, but scairt and scattering.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p><p>"'Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Ladies! This is a good deal too
+headlong. A committee'd ought&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Question&mdash;question,' demands Mis' Emmons, serene, and she met my eye
+and smiled some, in that little <i>we</i>-understand look that can pierce
+through a roomful of people like the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mis' Emmons,' says Mis' Sykes, wildish. 'Ladies! Sodality has been
+organized over twenty years, doing the same thing. You can't change so
+offhand&mdash;' You can't help admiring Mis' Sykes, for she simply don't know
+when she's beat. But this time she had a point with her, too. 'If we
+want to vote to amend the constitution,' she said, 'you've got to lay
+down your wishes on the table for one week.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I daresay you have,' says Mis' Emmons, looking grave. 'Well, I move
+that we amend the constitution of this society, and I move that we do it
+next week at the open annual meeting of the Sodality.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Second the motion,' says I, with my feet on my white bedspread.</p>
+
+<p>"And somehow the phrase caught Christopher's ear, like a tune might to
+march by.</p>
+
+<p>"'Second a motion&mdash;second a motion!' he chants to himself, standing by
+Mis' Toplady's knee.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>VIII</h2>
+
+<p>"I had promised Insley to run in the Cadozas' after the meeting, and see
+the little boy; and Mis' Emmons having to go home before she started
+back to the Proudfits', Christopher walked along with me. When we got
+out to the end of Daphne Street, Insley overtook us on his way out to
+the Cadozas', too.</p>
+
+<p>"His shoes were some muddy, and I guessed that he had been where of late
+he'd spent as much time as he could spare, both when he was in the
+village and when he was over to Indian Mound. Without digging down into
+his eyes, the same as some do to folks that's in trouble, I had sensed
+that there had come down on him everybody's hour of cutting something
+out of life, which is as elemental a thing to do as dying is, and I
+donno but it's the same kind as dying is besides. And he had been taking
+his hour in the elemental way, wanting to be alone and to kind of get
+near to the earth. I mean tramping the hills, ploughing along the narrow
+paths close to the barb' wire fences, plunging into the little groves.
+The little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> groves have such an' I-know look of understanding all about
+any difficulty till you walk inside of them, when all to once they stop
+seeming to know about your special trouble and begin another kind of
+slow soothing, same as summing things up will soothe you, now and then.</p>
+
+<p>"Chris chattered to him, lovable.</p>
+
+<p>"'I had some peppermenges,' he says, 'and I like hot ice-cream, too.
+Don't you? Can you make that?' he inquires, slipping his hand in
+Insley's.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course this made a pang&mdash;when you're hurt, 'most everything makes a
+pang. And this must of brought back that one evening with Robin that he
+would have to remember, and all the little stupid jokes they'd had that
+night must of rose up and hit at him, with the awful power of the little
+things that don't matter one bit and yet that matter everything.</p>
+
+<p>"'What can <i>you</i> make, Chris?' Insley says to him. 'Can you make candy?
+And pull it&mdash;like this?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Once a lady stirred me some an' cut it up in squares,' Chris
+explained, 'but I never did make any. My mama couldn't make candy, I
+guess, but she could make all other things&mdash;pancakes an' mittens an'
+nice stove fires my mama could make. The bag we got the salt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> in&mdash;she
+made me two handkerchiefs out of that bag,' he ended proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Did she&mdash;did she?' Insley tempted him on.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' Chris went on, hopping beside him, 'but now I've got to hurry
+an' be a man, 'cause litty boys ain't very good things. Can you make
+po'try?' he wound up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Chris&mdash;can you?' Insley asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, when I was comin' along with my daddy that night I made one,'
+the child says. And when Insley questions him a little he got this much
+more out of him. 'It started, "Look at the trees so green an' fair,"' he
+says, 'but I forget the rest.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you want to be a poet when you grow up?' Insley ask' him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, I do,' the child says ready. 'I think I'll be that first an' then
+I'll be the President, too. But what I'd rather be is the sprinkler-cart
+man, wouldn't you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Conceivably,' Insley says, and by the look on his face I bet his hand
+tightened up on the child's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'At Sodality,' I says, 'he just told them he was going to drive loads
+of hay. He's made several selections.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at me over the child's head, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> I guess we was both
+thinking the same thing: Trust nature to work this out alone?
+'Conceivably,' again. But all of a sudden I know we both burned to help
+to do it. And as Insley talked to the child, I think some touch of his
+enterprise come back and breathed on him. In them few last days I
+shouldn't wonder if his work hadn't stopped soaring to the meaning of
+spirit and sunk down again to be just body drudgery. He couldn't ever
+help having his old possessing love of men, and his man's strong
+resolution to keep a-going, but I shouldn't wonder if the wings of the
+thing he meant to do had got folded up. And Christopher, here, was sort
+of releasing them out again.</p>
+
+<p>"'How's the little Cadoza boy?' I ask' him pretty soon.</p>
+
+<p>"'He's getting on,' he says. 'Dr. Barrows was down yesterday&mdash;he wants
+him for a fortnight or so at the hospital in town, where he can have
+good care and food. His mother doesn't want him to go. I hoped you'd
+talk with her.'</p>
+
+<p>"Before we got to the Cadoza house Insley looked over to me, enigmatish.
+'Want to see something?' he says, and he handed me a letter. I read it,
+and some of it I knew what it meant and some of it I didn't. It was
+from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> Alex Proudfit, asking him up to Proudfit House to the house party.</p>
+
+<p>" ... Ain't it astonishing how awful festive the word 'house party'
+sounds. 'Party' sounds festive, though not much more so than 'company'
+or 'gathering' that we use more common. 'Ball,' of course, is real
+glittering, and paints the inside of your head into pictures,
+instantaneous. But a house party&mdash;maybe it's because I never was to one;
+maybe it's because I never heard of one till late in life; maybe it's
+because nobody ever had one before in Friendship Village&mdash;but that word
+give me all the sensation that 'her golden coach' and 'his silver
+armour' and 'good fairy' used to have for me when I was a little girl.
+'House party!' Anything shiny might happen to one of them. It's like
+you'd took something vanishin', like a party, and just seized onto it
+and made it stay longer than Time and the World ever intended. It's like
+making a business of the short-lived.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, some of Alex's letter went about like this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Join us for the whole time, do,' it says, and it went on about there
+being rather an interesting group,&mdash;'a jolly individualist,' I recollect
+he says, 'for your special benefit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> He'll convert you where I couldn't,
+because he's kept his love for men and I haven't. And of course I've
+some women&mdash;pretty, bless them, and thank the Lord not one of them
+troubling whether she loves mankind or not, so long as men love her. And
+there you have Nature uncovered at her task! I shall expect you for
+every moment that you can spare....' I remember the wording because it
+struck me it was all so like Alex that I could pretty near talk to it
+and have it answer back.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell me,' Insley says, when I handed the letter back to him, 'you
+know&mdash;him. Alex Proudfit. Does he put all that on? Is it his mask? Does
+he feel differently and do differently when folks don't know?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' I says, slow, 'I donno. He gives the Cadozas their rent, but
+when Mis' Cadoza went to thank him, once, he sent down word for her to
+go and see his agent.'</p>
+
+<p>"He nodded, and I'd never heard him speak bitter before. 'That's it,' he
+says, 'that's it. That's the way we bungle things....'</p>
+
+<p>"We'd got almost to the Cadozas' when we heard an automobile coming
+behind us, and as we stood aside to let it go by, Robin's face flashed
+past us at the window. Mis' Emmons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> was with her, that Robin had come
+down after. Right off the car stopped and Robin jumped out and come
+hurrying back towards us. I'll never forget the minute. We met right in
+front of the old tumble-down Cadoza house with the lilacs so high in the
+front yard that the place looked pretty near nice, like the rest of the
+world. It was a splendid afternoon, one that had got it's gold persuaded
+to burst through a gray morning, like colour from a bunch of silver
+buds; and now the air was all full of lovely things, light and little
+wind and late sun and I donno but things we didn't know about. And
+everyone of them seemed in Robin's face as she came towards us, and
+more, too, that we couldn't name or place.</p>
+
+<p>"I think the mere exquisite girlishness of her come home to Insley as
+even her strength and her womanliness, that night he talked with her,
+had not moved him. I donno but in the big field of his man's dream, he
+had pretty near forgot how obvious her charm was. I'm pretty sure that
+in those days when he was tramping the hills alone, the thing that he
+was fighting with was that he was going to lose her companioning in the
+life they both dreamed. But now her hurrying so and her little faint
+agitation made her appeal a new thing, fifty times as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> lovely, fifty
+times as feminine, and sort of filling in the picture of herself with
+all the different kinds of women she was in one.</p>
+
+<p>"So now, as he stood there with her, looking down in her face, touching
+her friendly hand, I think that was the first real, overhauling minute
+when he was just swept by the understanding that his loss was so many
+times what he'd thought it was going to be. For it was her that he
+wanted, it was her that he would miss for herself and not for any dear
+plans of work-fellowship alone. She understood his dream, but there was
+other things she understood about, too. A man can love a woman for a
+whole collection of little dear things&mdash;and he can lose her and grieve;
+he can love her for her big way of looking at things, and he can lose
+her and grieve; he can love her because she is his work-fellow, and he
+can lose her and grieve. But if, on top of one of these, he loves her
+because she is she, the woman that knows about life and is capable of
+sharing all of life with him and of being tender about it, why then if
+he loses her, his grieving is going to be something that there ain't
+rightly no name for. And I think it was that minute there in the road
+that it first come to Insley that Robin was Robin, that of all the many
+women that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> was, first and most she was the woman that was capable
+of sharing with him all sides of living.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wanted ...' she says to him, uncertain. 'Oh, I wish very much that
+you would accept the invitation to some of the house party. I wanted to
+tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I can't do that,' he answers, short and almost gruff. 'Really I can't
+do that.'</p>
+
+<p>"But it seemed there was even a sort of nice childishness about her that
+you wouldn't have guessed. I always think it's a wonderful moment when a
+woman knows a man well enough to show some of her childishness to him.
+But a woman that shows right off, close on the heels of an introduction,
+how childish she can be, it always sort o' makes me mad&mdash;like she'd told
+her first name without being asked about it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Please,' Robin says, 'I'm asking it because I wish it very much. I
+want those people up there to know you. I want&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"He shook his head, looking at her, eyes, mouth, and fresh cheeks, like
+he wished he was able to look at her face <i>all at once</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"'At least, at least,' she says to him rapid, then, 'you must come to
+the party at the end. You know I want to keep you for my friend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>&mdash;I want
+to make you our friend. That night Aunt Eleanor is going to announce my
+engagement, and I want my friends to be there.'</p>
+
+<p>"That surprised me as much as it did him. Nobody in the village knew
+about the engagement yet except us two that knew it from that night at
+Mis' Emmons's. I wondered what on earth Insley was going to say and I
+remember how I hoped, pretty near fierce, that he wasn't going to smile
+and bow and wish her happiness and do the thing the world would have
+wanted of him. It may make things run smoother to do that way, but
+smoothness isn't the only thing the love of folks for folks knows about.
+I do like a man that now and then speaks out with the breath in his
+lungs and not just with the breath of his nostrils. And that's what
+Insley done&mdash;that's what he done, only I'm bound to say that I do think
+he spoke out before he knew he was going to.</p>
+
+<p>"'That would be precisely why I couldn't come,' he said. 'Thank you, you
+know&mdash;but please don't ask me.'</p>
+
+<p>"As for Robin, at this her eyes widened, and beautiful colour swept her
+face. And she didn't at once turn away from him, but I see how she stood
+looking at him with a kind of a sharp intentness, less of wonder than of
+stopping short.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p><p>"Christopher had run to the automobile and now he come a-hopping back.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin!' he called. 'Aunt Eleanor says you haf to be in a dress by
+dinner, and it's <i>now</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do come for dinner, Mr. Insley,' Mis' Emmons calls, as Robin and
+Christopher went to join him. 'We've got up a tableau or two for
+afterward. Come and help me be a tableau.'</p>
+
+<p>"He smiled and shook his head and answered her. And that reminded me
+that I'd got to hurry like wild, as usual. It was most six o'clock
+then,&mdash;it always <i>is</i> either most six o'clock or most noon when I get
+nearest to being interested,&mdash;and that night great things was going to
+be going on. Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and the School Board and I was
+going to have a tableau of our own.</p>
+
+<p>"But for all that I couldn't help standing still a minute and looking
+after the automobile. It seemed as bad as some kind of a planet,
+carrying Robin off for forever and ever. And I wasn't so clear that I
+fancied its orbit.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've got a whole string of minds not to go to that party myself,' I
+says, meditative.</p>
+
+<p>"But Insley never answered. He just come on around the Cadozas' house.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>IX</h2>
+
+<p>"I never speak much about my relations, because I haven't got many. If I
+did have, I suppose I should be telling about how peculiar they take
+their tea and coffee, and what they died of, and showing samples of
+their clothes and acting like my own immediate family made up life, just
+like most folks does. But I haven't got much of any relatives, nor no
+ancestors to brag about. 'Nothing for kin but the world,' I always say.</p>
+
+<p>"But back in the middle of June I had got a letter from a cousin, like a
+bow from the blue. And the morning I got it, and with it yet unopened in
+my hand, Silas Sykes come out from behind the post-office window and
+tapped me on the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"'Calliope,' he says, 'we've about made up our minds&mdash;the School Board
+an' some o' the leadin' citizens has&mdash;to appoint a Women's Evenin'
+Vigilance Committee, secret. An' we want you an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis'
+Sykes should be it.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p><p>"'Vigilance,' I says, thoughtful. 'I recollect missin' on the meanin'
+of that word in school. I recollect I called it "viligance" an' said it
+meant a 'bus. I donno if I rightly know what it means now, Silas.'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas cleared his throat an' whispered hoarse, in a way he's got:
+'Women don't have no call, much for the word,' he says. 'It means when
+you sic your notice onto some one thing. We want a committee of you
+women should do it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Notice <i>what</i>?' I says, some mystified. 'What the men had ought to be
+up to an' ain't?'</p>
+
+<p>"But customers come streaming into the post-office store then, and some
+folks for their mail, and Silas set a time a couple o' days later in the
+afternoon for Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and me to come down to the
+store and talk it over.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' you be here,' says Silas, beatin' it off with his finger. 'It's
+somethin' we got to do to protect our own public decency.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Public</i> decency,' I says over, thoughtful, and went out fingerin' my
+letter that was in a strange handwriting and that I was dying to read.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a couple of days later that I what-you-might-say finished that
+letter, and between times I had it on the clock-shelf and give every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+spare minute to making it out. Minerva Beach the letter was from&mdash;my
+cousin Minnie Beach's girl. Minnie had died awhile before, and Minerva,
+her daughter, was on her way West to look for a position, and should she
+spend a few days with me? That was what I made out, though I donno how I
+done it, for her writing was so big and so up-and-down that every letter
+looked like it had on corsets and high heels. I never see such a mess!
+It was like picking out a crochet pattern to try to read it.</p>
+
+<p>"I recollect that I was just finishing composing my letter telling her
+to come along, and hurrying so's to take it to mail as I went down to
+the Vigilance Committee meeting, when the new photographer in town come
+to my door, with his horse and buggy tied to the gate. J. Horace Myers
+was his name, and he said he was a friend of the Topladys, and he was
+staying with them while he made choice art photographs of the whole
+section; and he wanted to take a picture of my house. He was a dapper
+little man, but awful tired-seeming, so I told him to take the picture
+and welcome, and I put the stone dog on the front porch and looped the
+parlour curtains over again and started off for the meeting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p><p>"'I'll be up to show you the proofs in a few days,' he says as I was
+leaving. He was fixing the black cloth over his head, kind of listless
+and patient.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land!' I says, before I knew it, 'don't you get awful sick of takin'
+pictures of humbly houses you don't care nothin' about?'</p>
+
+<p>"He peeked out from under the black cloth sort of grateful. 'I do,' he
+says, simple,&mdash;'sick enough to bust the camera.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I should think you would,' I says hearty; and I went down Daphne
+Street with the afternoon kind of feeling tarnished. I was wondering how
+on earth folks go on at all that dislikes their work like that. There
+was Abe Luck, just fixing the Sykes's eaves-trough&mdash;what was there to
+<i>like</i> about fixing eaves-troughs and about the whole hardware business?
+Jimmy Sturgis coming driving the 'bus, Eppleby Holcomb over there
+registering deeds, Mis' Sykes's girl Em'ly washing windows,&mdash;what was
+there about any of it to <i>like</i> doing? I looked at Mis' Sykes's Em'ly
+real pitying, polishing panes outside, when Abe Luck come climbing down
+the ladder from the roof; and all of a sudden I see Abe stick his head
+through the rungs, and quick as a flash kiss Mis' Sykes's Em'ly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p><p>"'My land!' I started to think, 'Mis' Sykes had ought to discharge&mdash;'
+and then I just stopped short off, sudden. Her hating windows, and him
+hating eaves-troughs, and what else did either of them have? Nothing. I
+could sense their lives like I could sense my own&mdash;level and even and
+<i>darn</i>. And all at once I had all I could do to keep from being glad
+that Abe Luck had kissed Em'ly. And I walked like lightning to keep back
+the feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady was to the post-office store before me. It
+was a slack time of day, and Silas set down on a mail-bag and begun
+outlining the situation that he meant about.</p>
+
+<p>"'The School Board,' says Silas, important, 'has got some women's work
+they want done. It's a thing,' s'he, 'that women can do the best&mdash;I mean
+it's the girls an' boys, hangin' round evenin's&mdash;you know we've all
+talked about it. But somebody's got to get after 'em in earnest, an' see
+they don't disgrace us with their carryin' on in the streets, evenin's.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why don't the men do it?' I ask' him, wonderin', 'or is it 'count of
+offending some?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No such thing!' says Silas, touchy. 'Where's your delicate feelin's,
+Calliope? Women can do these things better than men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> This is somethin'
+delicate, that had ought to be seen to quiet. It ain't a matter for the
+authorities. It's women's work,' says he. 'It's women that's the
+mothers&mdash;it ain't the men,' says Silas, convincing.</p>
+
+<p>"But still I looked at him, real meditative. 'What started you men off
+on that tack at this time?' I ask' him, blunt&mdash;because young folks had
+been flooding the streets evenings since I could remember, and no
+Friendship Village man had ever acted like this about it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Silas, 'don't you women tell it out around. But the thing
+that's got us desperate is the schoolhouse. The entry to it&mdash;they've
+used it shameful. Peanut shucks, down-trod popcorn, paper bags, fruit
+peelin's&mdash;every mornin' the stone to the top o' the steps, under the
+archway, is full of 'em. An' last week the Board went up there early
+mornin' to do a little tinkerin', an' there set three beer bottles, all
+empty. So we've figgered on puttin' some iron gates up to the
+schoolhouse entry an' appointin' you women a Vigilance Committee to help
+us out.'</p>
+
+<p>"We felt real indignant about the schoolhouse. It stands up a little
+slope, and you can see it from 'most anywheres daytimes, and we all felt
+kind of an interest&mdash;though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> of course the School Board seemed to own it
+special.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady looked warm and worried. 'But what is it you want we
+should do, Silas?' she ask', some irritable. 'I've got my hands so full
+o' my own family it don't seem as if I could vigilance for nobody.'</p>
+
+<p>"'S-h-h, Mis' Toplady. <i>I</i> think it's a great trust,' says Mis' Silas
+Sykes.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is a great trust,' says Silas, warm, 'to get these young folks to
+stop gallivantin' an' set home where they belong.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How you going to get them to set home, Silas?' I ask', some puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Silas, 'that's where they ought to be, ain't it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' I says thoughtful, 'I donno's they had.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>What?</i>' says Silas, with horns on the word. 'What say, Calliope?'</p>
+
+<p>"'How much settin' home evenings did you do when you was young, Silas?'
+I says.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd 'a' been a long sight better off if I'd 'a' done more of it,' says
+Silas.</p>
+
+<p>"'However that is, you <i>didn't</i> set home,' I says back at him. 'Neither
+will young folks set there now, I don't believe.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Silas, '<i>anyhow</i>, they've got to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> get off'n the streets.
+We've made up our minds to that. They can't set on steps nor in
+stairways down town, nor in entries, nor to the schoolhouse. We've got
+to look out for public decency.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Public</i> decency,' says I, again. 'They can do what they like, so's
+public decency ain't injured, I s'pose, Silas?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No such thing!' shouts Silas. 'Calliope, take shame! Ain't we doin'
+our best to start 'em right?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's what I donno,' I answers him, troubled. 'Driving folks around
+don't never seem to me to be a real good start towards nowheres.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Amanda Toplady hitched forward in her chair and spoke for the
+first time&mdash;ponderous and decided, but real sweet, too. 'What I think is
+this,' she says. 'They won't set home, as Calliope says. And when we've
+vigilanced 'em off the streets, where are we goin' to vigilance 'em
+<i>to</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That ain't our lookout,' says Silas.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't it?' says Mis' Toplady. '<i>Ain't it?</i>' She set thinking for a
+minute and then her face smoothed. 'Anyhow,' she says, comfortable, 'us
+ladies'll vigilance awhile. It ain't clear in my mind yet what to do.
+But we'll do it, I guess.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p><p>"We made up that we three should come down town one night that week and
+look around and see what we see. We all knew&mdash;every woman in Friendship
+Village knew&mdash;how evenings, the streets was full of young folks, loud
+talking and loud laughing and carrying on. We'd all said to each other,
+helpless, that we <i>wisht</i> something could be done, but that was as far
+as anybody'd got. So we made it up that we three should be down town in
+a night or two, so's to get our ideas started, and Silas was to have
+Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb, that's on the School Board, down to
+the store so we could all talk it over together afterwards. But still I
+guess we all felt sort of vague as to what we was to drive <i>at</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"'It seems like Silas wanted us to unwind a ball o' string from the
+middle out,' says Mis' Toplady, uneasy, when we'd left the store.</p>
+
+<p>"A few days after that Minerva come. I went down to the depot to meet
+her, and I would of reco'nized her anywheres, she looked so much like
+her handwriting. She was dressed sort of tawdry swell. She had on a good
+deal. But out from under her big hat with its cheap plume that was goin'
+to shed itself all over the house, I see her face was little and young
+and some pretty and excited. Excited about life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> and new things and
+moving around. I liked her right off. 'Land!' thinks I, 'you'll try me
+to death. But, you poor, nice little thing, you can if you want to.'</p>
+
+<p>"I took her home to supper. She talked along natural enough, and seemed
+to like everything she et, and then she wiped the dishes for me, and
+looked at herself in the clock looking-glass all the while she was doing
+it. Then, when I'd put out the milk bottles, we locked up the back part
+of the house and went and set in the parlour.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd always thought pretty well of my parlour. It hasn't anything but a
+plush four-piece set and an ingrain and Nottinghams, but it's the
+<i>parlour</i>, and I'd liked it. But when we'd been setting there a little
+while, and I'd asked her about everybody, and showed her their pictures
+in the album, all of a sudden it seemed as if they wasn't anything to
+<i>do</i> in the parlour. Setting there and talking was nice, but I missed
+something. And I thought of this first when Minerva got up and walked
+kind of aimless to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"'How big is Friendship Village?' she ask'.</p>
+
+<p>"I told her, real proud.</p>
+
+<p>"'They can't be a great deal goin' on here, is they?' she says.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p><p>"'Land, yes!' I says. 'We're so busy we're nearly dead. Ladies' Aid,
+Ladies' Missionary, Cemetery Improvement Sodality, the rummage sale
+coming on, the bazaar, and I donno what all.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' she says, vague. 'Well&mdash;is they many young people?'</p>
+
+<p>"And when I'd told her, 'Quite a few,' she didn't say anything more&mdash;but
+just stood looking down the street. And pretty soon I says, 'Land! the
+parlour's kind o' stuffy to-night. Let's go out in the yard.' And when
+we'd walked around out there a minute, smelling in my pinks, I thought,
+'Land! it's kind o' dreary doin' this,' an' I says to her all of a
+sudden, 'Let's go in the house and make some candy.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, <i>let's</i>,' she says, like a little girl.</p>
+
+<p>"We went back in and lit the kitchen fire, and made butter-scotch&mdash;she
+done it, being real handy at it. She livened up and flew around and
+joked some, and the kitchen looked nice and messy and <i>used</i>, and we had
+a real good time. And right in the midst of it there come a rap at the
+side door and there stood the dapper, tired-looking little photograph
+man, J. Horace Myers, seeming as discouraged as he could.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p><p>"We spread out the proofs of the pictures of my house and spent some
+time deciding. And while we was deciding, he showed us some more
+pictures that he'd made of the town, and talked a little about them. He
+was a real pleasant, soft-spoken man, and he knew how to laugh and when
+to do it. He see the funny in things&mdash;he see that the post-office looked
+like a rabbit with its ears up; he see that the engine-house looked like
+it was lifting its eyebrows; and he see the pretty in things, too&mdash;he
+showed us a view or two he'd took around Friendship Village just for the
+fun of it. One was Daphne Street, by the turn, and he says: 'It looks
+like a deep tunnel, don't it? An' like you wanted to go down it?' He was
+a wonderful nice, neutral little man, and I enjoyed looking at his
+pictures.</p>
+
+<p>"But Minerva&mdash;I couldn't help watching her. She wasn't so interested in
+the pictures, and she wasn't so quick at seeing the funny in things, nor
+the pretty, either; but even the candy making hadn't livened her up the
+way that little talking done. She acted real easy and told some little
+jokes; and when the candy was cool, she passed him some; and I thought
+it was all right to do. And he sort of spruced up and took notice and
+quit being so down-in-the-mouth. And I thought, 'Land! ain't it funny
+how just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> being together makes human beings, be they agent or be they
+cousin, more themselves than they was before!'</p>
+
+<p>"Her liking company made me all the more sorry to leave Minerva alone
+that next evening, that was the night Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I
+was due to a tableau of our own in the post-office store. It was the
+night when the Vigilance Committee was to have its first real meeting
+with the School Board. But I lit the lamp for Minerva in the parlour,
+and give her the day's paper, and she had her sewing, and when Mis'
+Toplady and Mis' Sykes come for me, I went off and left her setting by
+the table. My parlour had been swept that day, and it was real tidy and
+quiet and lamp-lit; and yet when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and I
+stepped out into the night, all smelling of pinks and a new moon
+happening, and us going on that mission we wasn't none of us sure what
+it was, the dark and the excitement sort of picked me up and I felt like
+I never felt in my parlour in my life&mdash;all kind of young and free and
+springy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's us walk right down through town first,' says Mis' Toplady.
+'That's where the young folks gets to, seems though.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a, I don't see the necessity of that,' says Mis' Sykes. 'We've
+all three done that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> again and again. We know how it is down there
+evenings.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But,' says Mis' Toplady, in her nice, stubborn way, 'let's us, anyway.
+I know, when I walk through town nights, I'm 'most always hurrying to
+get my yeast before the store shuts, an' I never half look around.
+To-night let's <i>look</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we looked. Along by the library windows in some low stone ledges.
+In front of a store or two they was some more. Around the corner was a
+place where they was some new tombstones piled up, waiting for their
+folks. And half a block down was the canal bridge. And ledges and bridge
+and tombstones and streets was alive with girls and boys&mdash;little young
+things, the girls with their heads tied in bright veils and pretty
+ribbons on them, and their laughs just shrilling and thrilling with the
+sheer fun of <i>hanging around</i> on a spring night.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, '<i>what</i> is their mothers thinkin' of?'</p>
+
+<p>"But something else was coming home to me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I dunno,' I says, kind of scairt at the way I felt, 'if I had the
+invite, this spring night, all pinks and new moons, I donno but I'd go
+and hang over a tombstone with 'em!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Calliope!' says Mis' Sykes, sharp. But Mis'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> Toplady, she kind of
+chuckled. And the crowd jostled us&mdash;more young folks, talking and
+laughing and calling each other by nicknames, and we didn't say no more
+till we got up in the next block.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a vacant store there up towards the wagon shop, and a house or
+two, and that's where the open stairways was that Silas meant about.
+Everything had been shut up at six o'clock, and there, sure as the
+world, 'most every set of steps and every stairway had its couple,
+sitting and laughing and talking, like the place was differ'nt sofas in
+a big drawing-room, or rocks on a seashore, or like that.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mercy!' says Mis' Sykes. 'Such goin'-ons! Such bringin'-ups!'</p>
+
+<p>"Just then I recollect I heard a girl laugh out, pretty and pleased, and
+I thought I recognized Mis' Sykes's Em'ly's voice, and I thought I knew
+Abe Luck's answering&mdash;but I never said a word to Mis' Sykes, because I
+betted she wouldn't get a step farther than discharging Em'ly, and I was
+after more steps than that. And besides, same minute, I got the scent of
+the Bouncing Bet growing by the wagon shop; and right out of thin air,
+and acrost more years than I like to talk about, come the quick little
+feeling that made me know the fun, the sheer <i>fun</i>, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> Em'ly thought
+she was having and that she had the right to.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, well, whoever it is, maybe they're engaged,' says Mis' Toplady,
+soothin'.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, but the bad taste!' says Mis' Sykes, shuddering. Mis' Sykes is a
+good cook and a good enough mother, and a fair-to-middling housekeeper,
+but she looks hard on the fringes and the borders of this life, and to
+her 'good taste' is both of them.</p>
+
+<p>"They wasn't nobody on the wagon shop steps, for a wonder, and we set
+down there for a minute to talk it over. And while Mis' Toplady and Mis'
+Sykes was having it out between them, I set there a-thinking. And all of
+a sudden the night sort of stretched out and up, and I almost felt us
+little humans crawling around on the bottom of it. And one little bunch
+of us was Friendship Village, and in Friendship Village some of us was
+young. I kind of saw the whole throng of them&mdash;the <i>young</i> humans that
+would some day be the village. There they was, bottled up in school all
+day, or else boxed in a store or a factory or somebody's kitchen, and
+when night come, and summer come, and the moon come&mdash;land, land! they
+<i>wanted</i> something, all of them, and they didn't know what they wanted.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p><p>"And what had they got? There was the streets stretching out in every
+direction, each house with its parlour&mdash;four-piece plush set, mebbe, and
+ingrain and Nottinghams, and mebbe not even that, and mebbe the rest of
+the family flooding the room, anyway. And what was the parlour, even
+with somebody to set and talk to them&mdash;what was the parlour, compared to
+the <i>magic</i> they was craving and couldn't name? The feeling young and
+free and springy, and the wanting somehow to express it? Something to
+do, somewheres to go, something to see, somebody to be with and laugh
+with&mdash;no wonder they swept out into the dark in numbers, no wonder they
+took the night as they could find it. They didn't have no hotel piazza
+of their own, no boat-rides, no seashore, no fine parties, no
+automobiles&mdash;no nothing but the big, exciting dark that belongs to us
+all together. No wonder they took it for their own.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Friendship Village was no more than a great big ball-room with
+these young folks leaving the main floor and setting in the alcoves, to
+unseen music. If the alcoves had been all palms and expense and
+dressed-up chaperons on the edges, everything would of seemed right. As
+it was, it was all a danger that made my heart ache for them, and for us
+all. And yet it come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> from their same longing for fun, for joy&mdash;and
+where was they to get it?</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, ladies!' I says, out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, 'if
+only we had some place to invite 'em to!'</p>
+
+<p>"'They wouldn't come if we had,' says Mis' Sykes, final.</p>
+
+<p>"'Not come!' I says. 'With candy making and pictures and music and mebbe
+dancin'? Not come!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Dancin'!' says Mis' Toplady, low. 'Oh, Calliope, I donno as I'd go
+that far.'</p>
+
+<p>"'We've went farther than that long ago,' I says, reckless. 'We've went
+so far that the dangers of dancin' would be safe beside the dangers of
+what is.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But we ain't responsible for that,' says Mis' Sykes.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't we&mdash;<i>ain't we?</i>' I says, like Mis' Toplady had. 'Mis' Sykes, how
+much does Silas rent the post-office hall for, a night?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ten dollars, if he makes something; and five dollars at cost,' she
+says.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's it,' I says, groaning. 'We never could afford that, even to ask
+them in once a week. Oh, we'd ought to have some place open every night
+for them, and us ladies take turns doing the refreshments; but they
+ain't no place in town that belongs to young folks&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>"And all of a sudden I stopped, like an idee had took me from all four
+sides of my head at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, ladies,' I says, 'look at the schoolhouse, doing nothing every
+night out of the year and <i>built</i> for the young folks!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, well,' says Mis' Sykes, superior, 'you know the Board'd never
+allow 'em to use the schoolhouse <i>that</i> way. The Board wouldn't think of
+it!'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Whose</i> Board?' says I, stern. 'Ain't they our Board? Yours and mine
+and Friendship Village's? Come on&mdash;come on and put it to 'em,' I says,
+kind o' wild.</p>
+
+<p>"I was climbing down the steps while I spoke. And we all went down, me
+talking on, and Mis' Toplady catching fire on the minute, an' Mis' Sykes
+holding out like she does unless so be she's thought of an idea herself.
+But oh, Mis' Toplady, she's differ'nt.</p>
+
+<p>"'Goodness alive!' she said, 'why ain't some of us thought o' that
+before? Ain't it the funniest thing, the way folks can have a way out
+right under their noses, an' not sense it?'</p>
+
+<p>"I had never had a new-born notion come into my head so ready-made. I
+could hardly talk it fast enough, and Mis' Toplady same way, and we
+hurried back to the post-office store, Mis' Sykes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> not convinced but
+keeping still because us two talked it so hard.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas and Timothy and Eppleby Holcomb was setting in the back part of
+the post-office store waiting for us, and Mis' Toplady and I hurried
+right up to them.</p>
+
+<p>"'You tell, Calliope,' says Mis' Toplady. 'It's your idee.'</p>
+
+<p>"But first we both told, even Mis' Sykes joining in, shocked, about the
+doorway carryin' ons and all the rest. 'Land, land!' Mis' Toplady says,
+'I never had a little girl. I lost my little girl baby when she was
+eleven months. But I ain't never felt so like <i>shieldin'</i> her from
+somethin' as I feel to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's awful, awful!' says Timothy Toplady, decided. 'We've just got to
+get some law goin', that's all.'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas agreed, scowling judicial. 'We been talkin' curfew,' he says. 'I
+donno but we'll hev to get the curfew on 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Curfew!' says I. 'So you're thinking of curfewin' 'em off the streets.
+Will you tell me, Silas Sykes, where you're going to curfew 'em <i>to</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that's what I meant about vigilancin' 'em
+off somewheres. <i>Where to?</i> What say, Silas?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p><p>"'That ain't our concern, woman!' shouts Silas, exasperated by us
+harping on the one string. 'Them young folks has all got one or more
+parents. Leave 'em use 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, indeed,' says Mis' Sykes, nodding once, with her eyes shut brief.
+'An' young people had ought to be encouraged to do evening studyin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady jerked her head sideways. 'Evenin' fiddlestick!' she
+snaps, direct. 'If you've got a young bone left in your body, Mis'
+Sykes,' says she, 'you know you're talkin' nonsense.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't you no idees about how well-bred young ladies should conduct
+themselves?' says Mis' Sykes, in her most society way.</p>
+
+<p>"'I donno so much about well-bred young ladies,' says Mis' Toplady,
+frank. 'I was thinkin' about just girls. Human girls. An' boys the
+same.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Me, too,' I says, fervent.</p>
+
+<p>"'What you goin' to <i>do</i>?' says Silas, spreading out his hands stiff and
+bowing his knees. 'What's your idee? You've got to have a workin' idee
+for this thing, same as the curfew is.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Silas,' I says then, 'that's what we've got&mdash;that's what we've
+got. Them poor young things wants a good time&mdash;same as you and all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> of
+us did, and same as we do yet. Why not give 'em a place to meet and be
+together, normal and nice, and some of us there to make it pleasant for
+'em?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Heh!' says Silas. 'You talk like a dook. Where you goin' to <i>get</i> a
+place for 'em? Hire the opery-house, air ye?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, sir,' I says to him. 'Give 'em the place that's theirs. Give 'em
+the schoolhouse, open evenings, an' all lit up an' music an' things
+doin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My Lord heavens!' says Silas, that's an elder in the church and ain't
+no more control of his tongue than a hen. 'Air you crazy, Calliope
+Marsh? Plump, stark, starin' ravin'&mdash;why, woman alive, who's goin' to
+donate the light an' the coal? <i>You?</i>'</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought mebbe the building and the School Board, too, was <i>for</i> the
+good o' the young folks,' I says to him, sharp.</p>
+
+<p>"'So it is,' says Silas, 'it's for their <i>good</i>. It ain't for their
+foolishness. Can't you see daylight, Calliope?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Is arithmetic good an' morals <i>not</i>, Silas Sykes?' I says.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Timothy Toplady let loose: 'A school-buildin', Calliope',
+s'he,&mdash;'why, it's a dignified place. They must respect it, same as they
+would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> a church. Could you learn youngsters the Constitution of the
+United States in a room where they'd just been cookin' up cough drops
+an' hearin' dance tunes?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says I, calm, 'if you can't, I'd leave the Constitution of the
+United States <i>go</i>. If it's that delicate,' I says back at him, 'gimme
+the cough drops.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You're talkin' treason,' says Silas, hoarse.</p>
+
+<p>"Timothy groans. '<i>Dancin!</i>' he says. 'Amanda,' he says, 'I hope you
+ain't sunk so low as Calliope?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady wavered a little. She's kind of down on dancing herself.
+'Well,' she says, 'anyhow, I'd fling some place open and invite 'em in
+for <i>somethin'</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>I</i> ain't for this, Silas,' says Mis' Sykes, righteous. '<i>I</i> believe
+the law is the law, and we'd best use it. Nothin' we can do is as good
+as enforcin' the dignity of the law.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, <i>rot</i>!' says Eppleby Holcomb, abrupt. Eppleby hadn't been saying a
+word. But he looked up from the wood-box where he was setting, and he
+wrinkled up his eyes at the corners the way he does&mdash;it wasn't a real
+elegant word he picked, but I loved Eppleby for that 'rot.' 'Asking your
+pardon, Mis' Sykes,' he says, 'I ain't got so much confidence in
+enforcin' the law<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> as I've got in edgin' round an' edgin' round
+accordin' to your cloth&mdash;an' your pattern. An' your pattern.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Lord heavens!' says Silas, looking glassy, 'if this was Roosia, you
+an' Calliope'd both be hoofin' it hot-foot for Siberia.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was like arguing with two trees. They wasn't no use talking to
+either Silas or Timothy. I forget who said what last, but the meeting
+broke up, after a little, some strained, and we hadn't decided on
+anything. Us ladies had vigilanced one night to about as much purpose as
+mosquitoes humming. And I said good night to them and went on up street,
+wondering why God lets a beautiful, burning plan come waving its wings
+in your head and your heart if he don't intend you to make a way for
+yourself to use it.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, by the big evergreens a block or so from my house, I heard
+somebody laugh&mdash;a little, low, nice, soft, sort of foolish laugh, a
+woman's laugh, and a man's voice joined in with it, pleasant and sort of
+singing. I was right onto them before they see me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought it was a lonesome town,' says somebody, 'but I guess it
+ain't.'</p>
+
+<p>"And there, beside of me, sitting on the rail fence under the
+evergreens, was Minerva Beach,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> my own cousin, and the little, tired
+photograph-taking man. I had just bare time to catch my breath and to
+sense where the minute really belonged&mdash;that's always a good thing to
+do, ain't it?&mdash;and then I says, cool as you please:</p>
+
+<p>"'Hello, Minerva! My! ain't the night grand? I don't wonder you couldn't
+stay in the house. How do, Mr. Myers? I was just remembering my
+lemon-pie that won't be good if it sets till to-morrow. Come on in and
+let's have it, and make a little lemonade.'</p>
+
+<p>"Ordinarily, I think it's next door to immoral to eat lemon-pie in the
+evening; but I had to think quick, and it was the only thing like a
+party that I had in the butt'ry. Anyhow, I was planning bigger morals
+than ordinary, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I'd been sure before, but that made me certain sure. There
+had been my parlour and my porch, and them two young people was welcome
+to them both; but they wanted to go somewheres, natural as a bird
+wanting to fly or a lamb to caper. And there I'd been living in
+Friendship Village for sixty years or so, and I'd reco'nized the laws of
+housekeeping and debt paying and grave digging and digestion, and I'd
+never once thought of this, that's as big as them all.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it nice the way God has balanced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> towns! He never puts in a Silas
+Sykes that he don't drop in an Eppleby Holcomb somewheres to undo what
+the Silases does. It wasn't much after six o'clock the next morning, and
+I was out after kindling, when they come a shadow in the shed door, and
+there was Eppleby. He had a big key in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm a-goin' to the City, Calliope,' says he. 'Silas an' Timothy an' I
+are a-goin' up to the City on the Dick Dasher' (that's our daily
+accommodation train, named for the engineer). 'Silas and Timothy is set
+on buying the iron gates for the schoolhouse entry, an' I'm goin' along.
+He put the key in my hand, meditative. 'We won't be back till the ten
+o'clock Through,' he says, 'an' I didn't know but you might want to get
+in the schoolhouse for somethin' to-night&mdash;you an' Mis' Toplady.'</p>
+
+<p>"I must of stood staring at him, but he never changed expression.</p>
+
+<p>"'The key had ought to be left with some one, you know,' he says. 'I'm
+leavin' it with you. You go ahead. I'll go snooks on the blame. Looks
+like it was goin' to be another nice day, don't it?' he says, casual,
+and went off down the path.</p>
+
+<p>"For a minute I just stood there, staring down at the key in my hand.
+And then, 'Eppleby,' I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> sings after him, 'oh, Eppleby,' I says, 'I feel
+just like I was going to <i>crow</i>!'</p>
+
+<p>"I don't s'pose I hesitated above a minute. That is, my head may have
+hesitated some, like your head will, but my heart went right on ahead. I
+left my breakfast dishes standing&mdash;a thing I do for the very few&mdash;and I
+went straight for Mis' Toplady. And she whips off her big apron and left
+<i>her</i> dishes standing, an' off we went to the half a dozen that we knew
+we could depend on&mdash;Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that's going to
+be married again and has got real human towards other folks, like she
+wasn't in her mourning grief&mdash;we told 'em the whole thing. And we one
+and all got together and we see that here was something that could be
+done, right there and then, so be we was willing to make the effort, big
+enough and unafraid.</p>
+
+<p>"When I remember back, that day is all of a whirl to me. We got the
+notice in the daily paper bold as a lion, that there would be a party to
+the schoolhouse that night, free to everybody. We posted the notice
+everywheres, and sent it out around by word of mouth. And when we'd gone
+too far to go back, we walked in on Mis' Sykes&mdash;all but Abagail, that
+had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> pitched in to making the cakes&mdash;and we told her what we'd done, so
+she shouldn't have any of the blame.</p>
+
+<p>"She took it calm, not because calm is Christian, I bet, but because
+calm is grand lady.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's what I always said,' says she, 'would be the way, if the women
+run things.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Women don't run things,' says Mis' Toplady, placid, 'an' I hope to the
+land they never will. But I believe the time'll come when men an'
+women'll run 'em together, like the Lord meant, an' when women can see
+that they're mothers to all men an' not just to their little two-by-four
+families.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My duty to men is in my own home,' says Mis' Sykes, regal.</p>
+
+<p>"'So is mine,' says Mis' Toplady, 'for a beginning. But it don't stop in
+my wood box nor my clothes-basket nor yet in my mixin'-bowl.'</p>
+
+<p>"We went off and left her&mdash;it's almost impossible to federate Mis' Sykes
+into anything. And we went up to the building and made our preparations.
+And then we laid low for the evening, to see what it would bring.</p>
+
+<p>"I was putting on my hat that night in front of the hall-tree
+looking-glass when J. Horace Myers come up on the front porch to call
+for Minerva. He was all dressed up, and she come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> downstairs in a little
+white dimity she had, trimmed with lace that didn't cost much of
+anything, and looking like a picture. They sat down on the porch for a
+little, and I heard them talking while I was hunting one o' my gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't it the dandiest night!' says J. Horace Myers.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't it!' says Minerva. 'I should say. My! I'm glad I come to this
+town!'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm awful glad you did, too,' says J. Horace. 'I thought first it was
+awful lonesome here, but I guess&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'They're goin' to have music to-night,' says Minerva, irrelevant.</p>
+
+<p>"'Cricky!' says the little photograph man.</p>
+
+<p>"Minerva had her arm around a porch post and she sort of swung back and
+forth careless, and&mdash;'My!' she said, 'I just do love to go. Have you
+ever travelled anywheres?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Texas an' through there,' he says. 'I'm goin' again some day, when&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm goin' West now,' says Minerva. 'I just can't stand it long in one
+place, unless,' she added, 'it's <i>awful</i> nice.'</p>
+
+<p>"I'd found my glove, but I recollect I stood still, staring out the
+door. I see it like I never see it before&mdash;<i>They was living</i>. Them two
+young things out there on my porch, and all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> young folks of
+Friendship Village, they was just living&mdash;trying to find a future and a
+life of their own. They didn't know it. They thought what they wanted
+was a good time, like the pioneers thought they wanted adventure. But
+here they were, young pioneers of new villages, flocking together
+wherever they could, seeking each other out, just living. And us that
+knew, us that had had life, too, or else had missed it, we was just
+letting them live, haphazard. And us that had ought to of been mothers
+to the town young, no less than to our own young, had been leaving them
+live alone, on the streets and stairways and school entries of
+Friendship Village.</p>
+
+<p>"I know I fair run along the street to the schoolhouse. It seemed as if
+I couldn't get there quick enough to begin the new way.</p>
+
+<p>"The schoolhouse was lit up from cellar to garret and it looked sort of
+different and surprised at itself, and like it was sticking its head up.
+Maybe it sounds funny, but it sort of seemed to me the old brick
+building looked <i>conscious</i>, and like it had just opened its eyes and
+turned its face to something. Inside, the music was tuning up, the desks
+that was only part screwed down had been moved back; in one of the
+recitation-rooms we'd got the gas plates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> for the candy making, and
+Abagail was in there stirring up lemonade in a big crock, and the other
+ladies, with white aprons on, was bustling round seeing to cutting the
+cakes.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't a good seven-thirty before they begun coming in, the girls
+nipping in pretty dresses, the boys awkward and grinning, school-girls,
+shop-girls, Mis' Sykes's Em'ly an' Abe Luck and everybody&mdash;they come
+from all directions that night, I guess, just to see what it was like.</p>
+
+<p>"And when they got set down, I realized for the first time that the law
+and some of the prophets of time to come hung on what kind of a time
+they had that first night.</p>
+
+<p>"While I was thinking that, the music struck into a tune, hurry-up time,
+and before anybody could think it, there they were on their feet, one
+couple after another. And when the lilty sound of the dance and the
+sliding of feet got to going, like magic and as if they had dropped out
+of the walls, in come them that had been waiting around outside to see
+what we was really going to do. They come in, and they joined in and in
+five minutes the floor was full of them. And after being boxed in the
+house all day, or bottled in shops or polishing windows or mending
+eaves-troughs or taking photographs of humbly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> houses or doing I donno
+what-all that they didn't like, here they were, come after their good
+time and having it&mdash;<i>and having it</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady was peeking through a crack in the recitation-room door.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Dancin'!</i>' she says, with a little groan. 'I donno what my
+conscience'll say to me about this when it gets me alone.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, seeing to the frosting
+on the ends of her fingers, 'I feel like they'd been pipin' to me for
+years an' I'd never let 'em dance. An' now they're dancin' up here safe
+an' light an' with us. An' I'm glad of it, to my marrow.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' says Mis' Toplady, wiping her eyes. 'I donno but <i>my</i> marrow
+might get use' to it.'</p>
+
+<p>"Long about ten o'clock, when we'd passed the refreshments and everybody
+had carried their own plates back and was taking the candy out of the
+tins, I nudged Mis' Toplady and we slipped out into the schoolhouse
+entry and set down on the steps. We'd just heard the Through whistle,
+and we knew the School Board Iron Gate Committee was on it, and that
+they must of seen the schoolhouse lit from 'way acrost the marsh.
+Besides, I was counting on Eppleby to march them straight up there.</p>
+
+<p>"And so he done. Almost before I knew it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> they stepped out onto us,
+setting there in the starlight. I stood up and faced them, not from
+being brave, but from intending to jump <i>first</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"'Silas and Timothy,' I says, 'what's done is done, but the consequences
+ain't. The Women's Evening Vigilance Committee that you appointed
+yourself has tried this thing, and now it's for us all to judge if it
+works.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Heh!' says Silas, showing his teeth. 'Hed a little party, did you?
+Thought you'd get up a little party an' charge it to the Board, did you?
+Be su'prised, won't you, when you women get a bill for rent an' light
+for this night's performance?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Real surprised,' I says, dry.</p>
+
+<p>"'Amanda,' pipes up Timothy, 'air you a fool party to this fool doin's?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, shucks!' says Mis' Toplady, tired. 'I been doin' too real things
+to row, Timothy.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Nev' mind,' says Silas, pacific. 'When the new iron gates gets here
+for this here entry, we won't have no more such doin's as this. They're
+ordered,' says Silas, like a bombshell, 'to keep out the hoodlums.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Eppleby, that had been peeking through the schoolhouse window,
+whirled around.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' says he. 'Let's put up the gates to keep out the hoodlums. But
+what you going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> to do for the girls and boys of Friendship Village that
+ain't hoodlums? What you goin' to do for them? I want to tell you that I
+knew all about what was goin' on here to-night, and I give over the
+schoolhouse key myself. And now you look down there.'</p>
+
+<p>"It was Friendship Village he pointed to, laying all around the
+schoolhouse slope, little lights shining for homes. And Eppleby went on
+before Silas and Timothy could get the breath to reply:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'The town's nothin' but <i>roots</i>, is it?' Eppleby says. 'Roots, sendin'
+up green shoots to the top o' this hill to be trained up here into some
+kind of shape to meet life. What you doin' to 'em? Buildin' 'em a great,
+expensive schoolhouse that they use a few hours a day, part o' the year,
+an' the rest of the time it might as well be a hole in the ground for
+all the good it does anybody. An' here's the young folks, that you built
+it <i>for</i> chasin' the streets to let off the mere flesh-an'-blood energy
+the Lord has give to 'em. Put up your iron gates if you want to, but
+don't put 'em up till the evenin's over an' till there's been some sort
+o' doin's here like this to give 'em what's their right. Put up your
+iron gates, but shame on the schoolhouse that puts 'em up an' stops
+there! Open the buildin' in the name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> of public decency, but in the name
+of public decency, don't shut it up!'</p>
+
+<p>"Timothy was starting to wave his arms when Mis' Toplady stood up,
+quiet, on the bottom step.</p>
+
+<p>"'Timothy,' she says, 'thirty-five years ago this winter you an' I was
+keepin' company. Do you remember how we done it? Do you remember singin'
+school? Do you remember spellin' school? Did our straw ridin' an' sleigh
+ridin' to the Caledonia district schoolhouse for our fun ever hurt the
+schoolhouse, or do you s'pose we ever learnt any the less in it? Well, I
+remember; an' we both remember; an' answer me this: Do you s'pose them
+young things in there is any differ'nt than we was? An' what's the sin
+an' the crime of what they're doin' now? Look at 'em!'</p>
+
+<p>"She pushed open the door. But just while we was looking, the music
+struck up the 'Home Sweet Home' waltz, and they all melted into dancing,
+the ladies in white aprons standing by the recitation-room doors looking
+on.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Dancin'!</i>' says Timothy, shuddering&mdash;but looking, too.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' says Amanda, brave as you please, 'ain't it pretty? Lots
+prettier than chasin' up an' down Daphne Street. What say, Timothy?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p><p>"Eppleby give Silas a little nudge. 'Le's give it a trial,' he says.
+'This is the Vigilance Committee's idee. Le's give it a trial.'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas stood bitin' the tail of his beard. 'Go on to destruction if you
+want to!' he says. 'I wash my hands of you!'</p>
+
+<p>"'So do I,' says Timothy, echoish, 'wash mine.'</p>
+
+<p>"Eppleby took them both by the shoulders. 'Well, then, go on inside a
+minute,' he says to 'em. 'Don't let's leave 'em all think we got stole a
+march on by the women!'</p>
+
+<p>"And though it was that argument that made them both let Eppleby push
+them inside, still, when the door shut behind them, I knew there wasn't
+anything more to worry over. But me&mdash;I waited out there in the entry
+till the waltz was through. And it was kind of like the village down
+there to the foot of the hill was listening, quiet, to great councils.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>X</h2>
+
+<p>"Up to Proudfit House the conservatory wasn't set aside from everyday
+living for just a place to be walked through and looked at and left
+behind for something better. It was a glass regular room, full of green,
+but not so full that it left you out of account. Willow chairs and a
+family of books and open windows into the other rooms made the
+conservatory all of a piece with the house, and at one end the tile was
+let go up in a big You-and-me looking fireplace, like a sort of shrine
+for fire, I use' to think, in the middle of a temple to flowers, and
+like both belonged to the household.</p>
+
+<p>"On the day of the evening company at Proudfit House Robin was sitting
+with a book in this room. I'd gone up that day to do what I could to
+help out, and to see to Christopher some. Him I'd put to taking his nap
+quite awhile before, and I was fussing with the plants like I love to
+do&mdash;it seems as if while I pick off dead leaves and give the roots a
+drink I was kind of doing their thinking for them. When I heard Alex
+Proudfit coming acrost the library, I started to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> go, but Robin says to
+me, 'Don't go, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'stay here and do what you're
+doing&mdash;if you don't mind.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Land,' thinks I, turning back to the ferns, 'never tell me that young
+ladies are getting more up-to-date in love than they use' to be. My day,
+she would of liked that they should be alone, so be she could manage it
+without seeming to.'</p>
+
+<p>"I donno but I'm foolish, but it always seems to me that a minute like
+that had ought to catch fire and leap up, like a time by itself. In all
+the relationships of men and women, it seems like no little commonplace
+time is so vital as the minute when the man comes into a room where a
+woman is a-waiting for him. There is about it something of time to be
+when he'll come, not to gloat over his day's kill, or to forget his
+day's care, but to talk with her about their day of hardy work. Habitual
+arriving in a room again and again for ever can never quite take off,
+seems though, the edge of that coming back to where she is.... But
+somehow, that day, Alex Proudfit must have stepped through the door
+before the minute had quite caught fire, and Robin merely smiled up at
+him, calm and idle, from her low chair as he come to a chair beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tea, Robin Redbreast,' says he, 'is going to be here in a minute, with
+magnificent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>macaroons. But I think that you and I will have it by
+ourselves. Everybody is either asleep or pretending. I'm glad,' he tells
+her, 'you're the sort that can do things in the evening without resting
+up for from nine to ten hours preceding.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm resting now,' Robin said; 'this is quite heavenly&mdash;this green
+room.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at her, eager. 'Do you like it?' he asked. 'I mean the
+room&mdash;the house?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Enormously,' she told him. 'How could I help it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I wanted you to like it,' he says. 'We shall not be here much, you
+know, but we shall be here sometimes, and I'm glad if you feel the
+feeling of home, even with all these people about. It's all going very
+decently for to-night, thanks to Mrs. Emmons. Not a soul that we really
+wanted has failed us.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Except Mr. Insley,' Robin says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Except Insley,' Alex concedes, 'and I own I can't make him out. Not
+because he didn't come here. But because he seems so enthusiastic about
+throwing his life away. Very likely,' he goes on, placid, 'he didn't
+come simply because he wanted to come. Those people get some sort of
+medi&aelig;val renunciation mania, I believe. Robin,' he went on, 'where do
+you think you would like to live? Not to settle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> down, you know, but for
+the Eternal Place To Come Back To?'</p>
+
+<p>"'To come back to?' Robin repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"'The twentieth century home is merely that, you know,' Alex explained.
+'We're just beginning to solve the home problem. We've tried to make
+home mean one place, and then we were either always wanting to get away
+for a while, or else we stayed dreadfully put, which was worse. But I
+think now we begin to see the truth: Home is nowhere. Rather, it is
+everywhere. The thing to do is to live for two months, three months, in
+a place, and to get back to each place at not too long intervals. Home
+is where you like to be for the first two weeks. When that wears off,
+it's home no more. Then home is some other place where you think you'd
+like to be. We are becoming nomadic again&mdash;only this time we own the
+world instead of being at its feet for a bare living. You and I, Robin
+Redbreast, are going to be citizens of the whole world.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin looked over at him, reflective. And it seemed to me as if the
+whole race of women that have always liked one place to get in and be in
+and stay in spoke from her to Alex.</p>
+
+<p>"'But I've always had a little garden,' she says.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p><p>"'A little what?' Alex asks, blank.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, a garden,' she explains, 'to plant from year to year so that I
+know where things are going to come up.'</p>
+
+<p>"She was laughing, but I knew she meant what she said, too.</p>
+
+<p>"'My word,' Alex says, 'why, every place we take shall have a garden and
+somebody to grub about in it. Won't those and the conservatories do
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I like to get out and stick my hands in the spring-smelly ground,' she
+explains, 'and to remember where my bulbs are.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But I've no objection to bulbs,' Alex says. 'None in the world. We'll
+plant the bulbs and take a run round the world and come back to see them
+bloom. No?'</p>
+
+<p>"'And not watch them come up?' Robin says, so serious that they both
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"'We want more than a garden can give,' Alex says then, indulgent. 'We
+want what the whole world can give.'</p>
+
+<p>"She nodded. 'And what we can give back?' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"He leaned toward her, touched along her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"'My dear,' he said, 'we've got two of us to make the most of we can in
+this life: that's you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> and I. The world has got to teach us a number of
+things. Don't, in heaven's name, let's be trying to teach the wise old
+world.'</p>
+
+<p>"He leaned toward her and, elbow on his knee, he set looking at her. But
+she was looking a little by him, into the green of the room, and I guess
+past that, into the green of all outdoors. I got up and slipped out,
+without their noticing me, and I went through the house with one fact
+bulging out of the air and occupying my brain. And it was that sitting
+there beside him, with him owning her future like he owned his own,
+Robin's world was as different from Alex's as the world is from the
+Proudfits' conservatory.</p>
+
+<p>"I went up to Chris, in the pretty, pinky room next to Robin's and found
+him sitting up in bed and pulling the ties out of the down comforter, as
+hard as he could. I just stood still and looked at him, thinking how
+eating and drinking and creating and destroying seems to be the native
+instincts of everybody born. Destroying, as I look at it, was the weapon
+God give us so that we could eat and drink and create the world in
+peace, but we got some mixed up during getting born and we got to
+believing that destruction was a part of the process.</p>
+
+<p>"'Chris,' I says, 'what you pulling out?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p><p>"'I donno those names of those,' he says. 'I call 'em little pulls.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What are they for?' I ask' him.</p>
+
+<p>"'I donno what those are for,' he says, 'but they come out <i>slickery</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it funny? And ain't it for all the world the way Nature works,
+destroying what comes out <i>slickery</i> and leaving that alone that resists
+her? I was so struck by it I didn't scold him none.</p>
+
+<p>"After a while I took him down for tea. On the way he picked up a sleepy
+puppy, and in the conservatory door we met the footman with the little
+tea wagon and the nice, drowsy quiet of the house went all to pieces
+with Chris in it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Supper, supper&mdash;here comes supper on a wagon, runnin' on litty wheels
+goin' wound an a-w-o-u-n-d&mdash;' says he, some louder than saying and
+almost to shouting. He sat down on the floor and looked up expectant:
+'Five lumps,' he orders, not having belonged to the house party for
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell us about your day, Chris,' Robin asks. 'What did you do?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It isn't <i>by</i>, is it?' Chris says, anxious. 'To-day didn't stop yet,
+did it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Not yet,' she reassures him. 'Now is still now.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p><p>"'I want to-day to keep being now,' Chris said, 'because when it stops,
+then the bed is right there. It don't be anywhere near to-night, is it?'
+he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Not very near,' Robin told him. 'Well, then, what are you doing
+to-day?' she asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm to the house's party,' he explained. 'The house is having its
+party. An' I'm to it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you like this house, dear?' Robin asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's nice,' he affirmed. 'In the night it&mdash;it talks wiv its lights. I
+saw it. With my daddy. When I was off on a big road.' Chris looked at
+her intent, from way in his eyes. 'I was thinkin' if my daddy would
+come,' he says, patient.</p>
+
+<p>"Robin stoops over to him, quick, and he let her. He'd took a most
+tremendous fancy to her, the little fellow had, and didn't want her long
+out of his sight. 'Is that Robin?' he always said, when he heard anybody
+coming from any direction. She give him a macaroon, now, for each hand,
+and he run away with the puppy. And then she turned to Alex, her face
+bright with whatever she was thinking about.</p>
+
+<p>"'Alex,' she says, 'he's a dear little fellow&mdash;a dear little fellow. And
+all alone. I've wanted so much to ask you: Can't we have him for ours?'</p>
+
+<p>"Alex looks at her, all bewildered up in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> minute. 'How ours?' he asks.
+'Do you mean have him educated? That, of course, if you really want it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, no,' she says. '<i>Ours.</i> To keep with us, bring up, make. Let's let
+him be really ours.'</p>
+
+<p>"He just leaned back in the big chair, smiling at her, meditative.</p>
+
+<p>"'My dear Robin,' he says, 'it's a terrible responsibility to meddle
+that way with somebody's life.'</p>
+
+<p>"She looked at him, not understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's such an almighty assumption,' he went on, 'this jumping blithely
+into the office of destiny&mdash;keeping, bringing-up, making, as you
+say&mdash;meddling with, I call it&mdash;anybody's life.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Isn't it really meddling to let him be in a bad way when we can put
+him in a better one?' she asked, puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"'I love you, Robin,' says he, light, 'but not for your logic. No, my
+dear girl. Assuredly we will not take this child for ours. What leads
+you to suppose that Nature really wants him to live, anyway?'</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at him over my tea-cup, and for my life I couldn't make out
+whether he was speaking mocking or speaking plain.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p><p>"'If Chris is to be inebriate, criminal, vicious, even irresponsible,
+as his father must be,' Alex says, 'Nature wants nothing of the sort.
+She wants to be rid of him as quickly as possible. How do you know what
+you are saving?'</p>
+
+<p>"'How do you know,' Robin says, 'what you are letting go?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I can take the risk if Nature can,' he contends.</p>
+
+<p>"She sat up in her chair, her eyes bright as the daylight, and I thought
+her eagerness and earnestness was on her like a garment.</p>
+
+<p>"'You have nobody to refer the risk to,' Robin says, 'Nature has us. And
+for one, I take it. So far as Chris is concerned, Alex, if no one claims
+him, I want him never to be out of touch with me.'</p>
+
+<p>"But when a woman begins to wear that garment, the man that's in love
+with her&mdash;unless he is the special kind&mdash;he begins thinking how much
+sweeter and softer and <i>womaner</i> she is when she's just plain gentle.
+And he always gets uneasy and wants her to be the gentle way he
+remembers her being&mdash;that is, unless he's special, unless he's special.
+Like Alex got uneasy now.</p>
+
+<p>"'My heavens, dear,' he says&mdash;and I judged Alex had got to be one of
+them men that lays a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> lace 'dear' over a haircloth tone of voice, and so
+solemnly believes they're keeping their temper&mdash;'My heavens, dear, don't
+misunderstand me. Experiment as much as you like. Material is cheap and
+abundant. If you don't feel the responsibility, have him educated
+wherever you want to. But don't expect me to play father to him. The
+personal contact is going it a little too strong.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That is exactly what he most needs,' says Robin.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come, dear,' says Alex, 'that's elemental&mdash;in an age when everybody
+can do things better than one can do them oneself.'</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't say nothing, and just set there, with her tea. Alex was
+watching her, and I knew just about as sure what he was thinking as
+though I had been his own thought, oozing out of his mind. He was
+watching her with satisfaction, patterned off with a kind of quiet
+amusement and jabbed into by a kind of worryin' wonder. How exactly, he
+was thinking, she was the type everlasting of Wife. She was girlish, and
+in little things she was all I'll-do-as-you-say, and she was even shy;
+he believed that he was marrying a girl whose experience of the world
+was commendably slight, whose ideas about it was kind of
+vague&mdash;commendably again;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> and whose ways was easy-handled, like skein
+silk. By her little firmnesses, he see that she had it in her to be
+firm, but what he meant was that she should adopt his ideas and turn
+firm about them. He had it all planned out that he was going to
+embroider her brain with his notions of what was what. But all of a
+sudden, now and then, there she was confronting him as she had just done
+then with a serious, settled look of Woman&mdash;the Woman everlasting,
+wanting a garden, wanting to work, wanting a child....</p>
+
+<p>"In the doorway back of Alex, Bayless come in, carrying a tray, but it
+didn't have no card.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's somebody to speak with you a minute, Mr. Proudfit,' says Bayless.
+'It's Mr. Insley.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Have him come here,' Alex says. 'I hope,' he says, when the man was
+gone, 'that the poor fellow has changed his mind about our little
+festivities.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin sort of tipped up her forehead. 'Why <i>poor</i>?' she asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Poor,' says Alex, absent, 'because he lives in a pocket of the world,
+instead of wearing the world like a garment&mdash;when it would fit him.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was just setting my tea-cup down when she answered, and I recollect I
+almost jumped:</p>
+
+<p>"'He knows something better to do with the world than to wear it at
+all,' was what she said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p><p>"I looked over at her. And maybe it was because she was sort of
+indignant, and maybe it was because she thought she had dared quite a
+good deal, but all of a sudden something sort of seemed to me to set
+fire to the minute, and it leaped up like a time by itself as we heard
+Insley's step crossing the library and coming towards us....</p>
+
+<p>"When he come out where we were, I see right off how pale he looked.
+Almost with his greeting, he turned to Alex with what he had come for,
+and he put it blunt.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was leaving the Cadozas' cottage on the Plank Road half an hour
+ago,' he said. 'A little way along I saw a man, who had been walking
+ahead of me, stagger and sprawl in the mud. He wasn't conscious when I
+got to him. He was little&mdash;I picked him up quite easily and got him back
+into the Cadozas' cottage. He still wasn't conscious when the doctor
+came. He gave him things. We got him in bed there. And then he spoke. He
+asked us to hunt up a little boy somewhere in Friendship Village, who
+belonged to him. And he said the boy's name was Chris.'</p>
+
+<p>"It seemed like it was to Alex Proudfit's interested lifting of eyebrows
+rather than to Robin's exclamation of pity that Insley answered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p><p>"'I'm sorry it was necessary to trouble you,' he says, 'but Chris ought
+to go at once. I'll take him down now.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That man,' Robin says, 'the father&mdash;is he ill? Is he hurt? How badly
+is he off?'</p>
+
+<p>"'He's very badly off,' says Insley, 'done for, I'm afraid. It was in a
+street brawl in the City&mdash;it's his side, and he's lost a good deal of
+blood. He walked all the way back here. A few hours, the doctor thought
+it would be, at most.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin stood up and spoke like what she was saying was a
+take-for-granted thing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' she says, 'poor, poor little Chris. Alex, I must go down there
+with him.'</p>
+
+<p>"Alex looks over at her, incredulous, and spoke so: 'You?' says he.
+'Impossible.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was just getting ready to say that of course I'd go with him, if that
+was anything, when from somewheres that he'd gone with the puppy, Chris
+spied Insley, and come running to him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, you are to the house's party, too!' Chris cried, and threw himself
+all over him.</p>
+
+<p>"Robin knelt down beside the child, and the way she was with him made me
+think of that first night when she see him at the church, and when her
+way with him made him turn to her and talk with her and love her ever
+since.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p><p>"'Listen, dear,' she said. 'Mr. Insley came here to tell you something.
+Something about daddy&mdash;your daddy. Mr. Insley knows where he is, and
+he's going to take you to him. But he's very, very sick, dear
+heart&mdash;will you remember that when you see him? Remember Robin told you
+that?'</p>
+
+<p>"There come on his little face a look of being afraid that give it a
+sudden, terrible grown-up-ness.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sick like my mama was?' he asked in a whisper. 'And will he <i>go out</i>,
+like my mama?'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin put her arm about him, and he turned to her, clung to her.</p>
+
+<p>"'You come, too, Robin,' he said. 'You come, too!'</p>
+
+<p>"She got up, meeting Alex's eyes with her straight look.</p>
+
+<p>"'I must go, Alex,' she said. 'He wants me&mdash;needs me. Why, how could I
+do anything else?'</p>
+
+<p>"Alex smiles down at her, with his way that always seemed to me so much
+less that of living every minute than of watching it live itself about
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"'May I venture to remind you,' he says&mdash;like a little thin edge of
+something, paper, maybe, that's smooth as silk, but that'll cut neat and
+deep if you let it&mdash;'May I venture to remind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> you that your aunt is
+announcing our engagement to-night? I think that will have escaped your
+mind.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' Robin says, simple, 'it had. Everything had escaped my mind
+except this poor little thing here. Alex&mdash;it's early. He'll sleep after
+a little. But I must go down with him. What did you come in?' she asked
+Insley, quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"I told her I'd go down, and she nodded that I was to go, but Chris
+clung to her hand and it was her that he wanted, poor little soul, and
+only her. Insley had come up in the doctor's rig. She and I would join
+him with the child, she told him, at the side entrance and almost at
+once. There was voices in the house by then, and some of the young folks
+was coming downstairs and up from the tennis-court for tea. She went
+into the house with Chris. And I wondered if she thought of the thing I
+thought of and that made me glad and glad that there are such men in the
+world: Not once, not once, out of some felt-he-must courtesy, had Insley
+begged her not to go with him. He knew that she was needed down there
+with Chris and him and me&mdash;he knew, and he wouldn't say she wasn't.
+Land, land I love a man that don't talk with the outside of his head and
+let what he means lay cramped somewheres underneath,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> but that reaches
+down and gets up what he means, and holds it out, for you to take or to
+leave.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Emmons was overseeing the decorations in the dining room. The
+whole evening party she had got right over onto her shoulders the way
+she does everything, and down to counting the plates she was seeing to
+it all. We found her and told her, and her pity went to the poor fellow
+down there at the Cadozas' almost before it went to Chris.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go, of course,' she said. 'I suppose Alex minds, but leave him to me.
+I've got to be here&mdash;but it's not I Chris wants in any case. It's you.
+Get back as soon as you can, Robin.'</p>
+
+<p>"I must say Alex done that last minute right, the way he done
+everything, light and glossy. When Robin come down, I was up in the
+little seat behind the doctor's cart, and Alex stood beside and helped
+her. A servant, he said, would come on after us in the automobile with a
+hamper, and would wait at the Cadozas' gate until she was ready to come
+back. Somehow, it hadn't entered anybody's head, least of all, I guess,
+Alex's own, that he should come, too. He see us off with his manners on
+him like a thick, thick veil, and he even managed to give to himself a
+real dignity so that Robin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> said her good-by with a kind of wistfulness,
+as if she wanted to be reassured. And I liked her the better for that.
+For, after all, she <i>was</i> going&mdash;there was no getting back of that. And
+when a woman is doing the right thing against somebody's will, I'm not
+the one to mind if she hangs little bells on herself instead of going
+off with no tinkle to leave herself be reminded of, pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>"We swung out onto the open road, with Chris sitting still between the
+two of them, and me on the little seat behind. The sunset was flowing
+over the village and glittering in unfamiliar fires on the windows. The
+time was as still as still, in that hour 'long towards night when the
+day seems to have found its harbour it has been looking for and to have
+slipped into it, with shut sails&mdash;so still that Robin spoke of it with
+surprise. I forget just what she said. She was one of them women that
+can say a thing so harmonious with a certain minute that you never wish
+she'd kept still. I believe if she spoke to me when I was hearing music
+or feeling lifted up all by myself, I wouldn't mind it. What she'd say
+would be sure to fit what was being. They ain't many folks in anybody's
+life like that. I believe she could talk to me any time, sole unless
+it's when I first wake up in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>morning; then any talking always seems
+like somebody stumbling in, busy, among my sleeping brains.</p>
+
+<p>"For a minute Insley didn't say anything. I was almost sure he was
+thinking how unbelievable it was that he should be there, alone with
+her, where an hour ago not even one of his forbidden dreams could have
+found him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Beautifully still,' he answered, 'as if all the things had stopped
+being, except some great thing.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I wonder,' she says, absent, 'what great thing.' And all the time she
+seemed sort of relaxed, and resting in the sense&mdash;though never in the
+consciousness&mdash;that the need to talk and to be talked to, to suggest and
+to question, had found some sort of quiet, levelling process with which
+she was moving along, assentin'.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley stooped down, better to shield her dress from the mud there was.
+I see him look down at her uncovered hands laying on the robe, and then,
+with a kind of surprise, up at her face; and I knew how surprising her
+being near him seemed.</p>
+
+<p>"'That would be one thing for you,' he answered, 'and another for me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' she says, 'I think it's the same thing for us both.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p><p>"He didn't let himself look at her, but his voice&mdash;well, I tell you,
+his voice looked.</p>
+
+<p>"'What do you mean?' he says&mdash;just said it a little and like he didn't
+dare trust it to say itself any more.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, being able to help in this, surely,' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"I could no more of helped watching the two of them than if they had
+been angels and me nothing but me. I tried once or twice to look off
+across the fields that was smiling at each other, same as faces, each
+side of the road; but my eyes come back like they was folks and wanted
+to; and I set there looking at her brown hair, shining in the sun,
+without any hat on it, and at his still face that was yet so many kinds
+of alive. He had one of the faces that looked like it had been cut out
+just the way it was <i>a-purpose</i>. There wasn't any unintentional
+assembling of features there, part make-shift and part rank growth of
+his race. No, sir. His face had come to life by being meant to be just
+the way it was, and it couldn't have been better.... It lit up wonderful
+when he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' he said, 'a job is a kind of creation. It's next best to getting
+up a sunrise. Look here,' he remembered, late in the day, 'you'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> have
+no dinner. You can't eat with them in that place. And you ought to have
+rest before to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it funny how your voice gets away from you sometimes and goes
+dilly-nipping around, pretty near saying things on its own account? I
+use' to think that mebbe my voice didn't belong to the me I know about,
+but was some of the real me, inside, speaking out with my mouth for a
+trumpet. I donno but I think so yet. For sometimes your voice is a
+person and it says things all alone by itself. So his voice done then.
+The tender concern of it was pretty near a second set of words. It was
+the first time he had struck for her the great and simple note, the note
+of the caring of the man for the physical comfort of the woman. And
+while she was pretending not to need it, he turned away and looked off
+toward the village, and I was certain sure he was terrified at what
+might have been in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'I like to think of it down there,' he said, pretty near at random,
+'waiting to be clothed in a new meaning.'</p>
+
+<p>"'The village?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Everywhere,' he answered. 'Some of the meanings we dress things up in
+are so&mdash;dowdy. We wouldn't think of wearing them ourselves.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p><p>"She understood him so well that she didn't have to bother to smile.
+And I hoped she was setting down a comparison in her head: Between
+clothing the world in a new meaning, and wearing it for a garment.</p>
+
+<p>"Chris looked up in Insley's face.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm new,' he contributes, 'I'm new on the outside of me. I've got on
+this new brown middie.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I've been admiring it the whole way,' says Insley, hearty&mdash;and that
+time his eyes and Robin's met, over the little boy's head, as we stopped
+at the cottage gate.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>XI</h2>
+
+<p>"The lonesome little parlour at Mis' Cadoza's was so far past knowing
+how to act with folks in it, that it never changed expression when we
+threw open the shutters. Rooms that are used to folks always sort of
+look up when the shutters are opened; some rooms smile back at you; some
+say something that you just lose, through not turning round from the
+window quite quick enough. But Mis' Cadoza's parlour was such a poor
+folkless thing that it didn't make us any reply at all nor let on to
+notice the light. It just set there, kind of numb, merely enduring
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>"'You poor thing,' I thought, 'nobody come in time, did they?'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley picked out a cane-seat rocker that had once known how to behave
+in company, and drew it to the window. Ain't it nice, no matter what
+kind of a dumb room you've got into, you can open its window and fit the
+sky onto the sill, and feel right at home....</p>
+
+<p>"Robin sat there with Chris in her arms, waiting for any stir in the
+front bedroom. I went in the bedroom, while Dr. Heron told me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> about the
+medicine, and it seemed to me the bare floor and bare walls and
+dark-coloured bedcovers was got together to suit the haggardy unshaven
+face on the pillow. Christopher's father never moved. I set in the
+doorway, so as to watch him, and Insley went with the doctor to the
+village to bring back some things that was needed. And I felt like we
+was all the first settlers of somewheres.</p>
+
+<p>"Chris was laying so still in Robin's arms that several times she looked
+down to see if he was awake. But every time his eyes was wide and dark
+with that mysterious child look that seems so much like thought. It kind
+of hurt me to see him doing nothing&mdash;that's one of the parts about
+sickness and dying and some kinds of trouble that always twists
+something up in my throat: The folks that was so eager and able and
+flying round the house just being struck still and not able to go on
+with everyday doings. I know when Lyddy Ember, the dressmaker, died and
+I looked at her laying there, it seemed to me so surprising that she
+couldn't hem and fell and cut out with her thumb crooked like she
+done&mdash;and that she didn't know a dart from a gore; her hands looked so
+much like she knew how yet. It's like being inactive made death or grief
+double. And it's like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>working or playing around was a kind of life....
+The whole house seemed inactive and silence-struck, even to the kitchen
+where Mis' Cadoza and the little lame boy was.</p>
+
+<p>"Robin set staring into the lilacs that never seemed to bloom, and I
+wondered what she was thinking and mebbe facing. But when she spoke, it
+was about the Cadoza kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"'Miss Marsh,' she says, 'what kind of people must they be that can stay
+alive in a kitchen like that?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Pioneers,' I says. 'They's a lot of 'em pioneerin' away and not
+knowing it's time to stop.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But the dirt&mdash;' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"'What do you expect?' I says. 'They're emergin' out of dirt. But they
+<i>are</i> emergin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't it seem hopeless?' says she.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I donno,' I says; 'dirt gets to be apples&mdash;so be you plant 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"But the Cadoza kitchen <i>was</i> fearful. When we come through it, Mis'
+Cadoza was getting supper, and she'd woke up nameless smells of greasy
+things. There the bare table was piled with the inevitable mix-up of
+unwashed dishes that go along with the Mis' Cadozas of this world, so
+that you wonder how they ever got so much crockery together. There the
+floor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> wasn't swept, clothes was drying on a line over the stove, Spudge
+was eating his supper on the window-sill, and in his bed in the corner
+lay little Eph, so white and frail and queer-coloured that you felt you
+was looking on something bound not to last till much after you'd stopped
+looking. And there was Mis' Cadoza. When we had come through the
+kitchen, little Eph had said something glad at seeing Insley and hung
+hold of his hand and told him how he meant to model a clay Patsy,
+because it was Patsy, the dog, that had gone out in the dark and first
+brought Insley in to see him.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' when I'm big,' the child says, 'I'm going to make a clay <i>you</i>,
+Mr. Insley.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Cadoza had turned round and bared up her crooked teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't you be impident!' she had said, raspish, throwing her hand out
+angular.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Cadoza was like somebody that hadn't got outside into the daylight
+of <i>Yet</i>. She was ignorant, blind to life, with some little bit of a
+corner of her brain working while the rest lay stock-still in her skull;
+unclean of person, the mother to no end of nameless horrors of
+habit&mdash;and her blood and the blood of some creature like her had been
+poured into that poor little boy, sickly, bloodless, not ready for the
+struggle.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p><p>"'<i>Is</i> there any use trying to do anything with anybody like that?'
+says Robin.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Is</i> there?' says I, but I looked right straight at Christopher. If
+there wasn't no use trying to do anything with little Eph, with his
+mother out there in the kitchen, then what was the use of trying to do
+anything with Chris, with his father here in the front bedroom? Sick
+will, tainted blood, ruined body&mdash;to what were we all saving Chris?
+Maybe to misery and final defeat and some awful going out.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't know,' she says, restless. 'Maybe Alex is right....'</p>
+
+<p>"She looked out towards the lilac bushes again, and I knew how all of a
+sudden they probably dissolved away to be the fine green in the
+conservatory at Proudfit House, and how she was seeing herself back in
+the bright room, with its summer of leaves, and before the tea wagon,
+making tea for Alex lounging in his low chair, begging her not, in
+heaven's name, to try to teach the wise old world....</p>
+
+<p>" ... I knew well enough how she felt. Every woman in the world knows.
+In that minute, or I missed my guess, she was finding herself clinging
+passionate and rebellious to the mere ordered quiet of the life Alex
+would make for her; to the mere outworn routine, the leisure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> of long
+days in pretty rooms, of guests and house parties and all the little
+happy flummery of hospitality, the doing-nothingness, or the nice tasks,
+of travelling; the joy of sinking down quiet into the easy ways to do
+and be. Something of the sheer, clear, mere self-indulgence of the
+last-notch conservative was sweeping over her, the quiet, the order, the
+plain <i>safety</i> of the unchanging, of going along and going along and
+leaving things pretty much as they are, expecting them to work
+themselves out ... the lure of all keeping-stillness. And I knew she was
+wondering, like women do when they're tired or blue or get a big job to
+do or see a house like the Cadozas', why, after all, she shouldn't, in
+Alex's way, make herself as dainty in morals and intellect as she could
+and if she wanted to 'meddle,' to do so at arm's length, with some of
+the material that is cheap and abundant&mdash;like Chris....</p>
+
+<p>"'Maybe there isn't any use trying to do anything with Chris, either,' I
+says brutal. 'Mebbe Nature's way <i>is</i> best. Mebbe she knows best when to
+let them die off.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin's arms kind of shut up on the little kiddie. He looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Did you squeeze me on purpose?' he whispered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p><p>"She nodded at him.</p>
+
+<p>"'What for?' he asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Just loving,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"After that, we sat still for a long time. Insley came back with the
+medicine, and told me what to do if the sick man came to. Then he filled
+and lit the bracket lamp that seemed to make more shadows than light,
+and then he stopped beside Robin&mdash;as gentle as a woman over a plant&mdash;and
+asked her if she wanted anything. He come through the room several
+times, and once him and her smiled, for a still greeting, almost as
+children do. After a while he come with a little basket of food that he
+had had Abagail put up to the bakery, and we tried to eat a little
+something, all of us. And all the while the man on the bed lay like he
+was locked up in some new, thick kind of silence.</p>
+
+<p>"When eight o'clock had gone, we heard what I had been expecting to
+hear&mdash;the first wheels and footsteps on the Plank Road directed towards
+Proudfit House. And Insley come in, and went over to Robin, and found
+Chris asleep in her arms, and he took him from her and laid him on the
+sagging Brussels couch.</p>
+
+<p>"'You must go now,' he says to Robin, with his kind of still authority
+that wan't ordering nor schoolmastery, nor you-do-as-I-say, but was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+just something that made you want to mind him. 'I'll wake Chris and take
+him in at the least change&mdash;but you must go back at once.'</p>
+
+<p>"And of course I was going to stay. Some of my minds was perfectly
+willing not to be at the party in any case, and anyhow the rest of them
+wanted to stay with Chris.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley picked up some little belongings of hers, seeming to know them
+without being told, and because the time was so queer, and mebbe because
+death was in the next room, and mebbe for another reason or two, I could
+guess how, all the while he was answering her friendly questions about
+the little Cadoza boy&mdash;all that while the Personal, the <i>Personal</i>, like
+a living thing, hovered just beyond his words. And at last it just
+naturally came in and possessed what he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"'I can't thank you enough for coming down here,' he says. 'It's meant
+everything to Chris&mdash;and to me.'</p>
+
+<p>"She glanced up at him with her pretty near boyish frankness, that had
+in it that night some new element of confidence and charm and just being
+dear.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't thank me,' she says, 'it was mine to do, too. And besides, I
+haven't done anything. And I'm running away!'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p><p>"He looked off up the road towards where, on its hill, Proudfit House
+was a-setting, a-glowing in all its windows, a-waiting for her to come,
+and to have her engagement to another man announced in it, and then to
+belong up there for ever and ever. He started to say something&mdash;I donno
+whether he knew what or whether he didn't; but anyhow he changed his
+mind and just opened the door for her, the parlour door that I bet was
+as surprised to be used as if it had cackled.</p>
+
+<p>"The Proudfit motor had stood waiting at the gate all this while, and as
+they got out to it, Dr. Heron drove up, and with him was Mis'
+Hubbelthwait come to enquire. So Robin waited outside to see what Dr.
+Heron should say when he had seen Chris's father again, and I went to
+the door to speak to Mis' Hubbelthwait.</p>
+
+<p>"'Liquor's what ails him fast enough,' Mis' Hubbelthwait whispers&mdash;Mis'
+Hubbelthwait would of whispered in the middle of a forty-acre field if
+somebody had said either birth or death to her. 'Liquor's what ails him.
+I know 'em. I remember the nice, well-behaved gentleman that come to the
+hotel and only lived one night after. "Mr. Elder," I says to him,
+severe, "you needn't to tell me your stomach ain't one livin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> pickle,
+for I know it is!" An' he proved it by dyin' that very night. If he
+didn't prove it, I don't know what he did prove. "Alcoholism," Dr. Heron
+called it, but I know it was liquor killed him. No use dressin' up
+words. An' I miss my guess if this here poor soul ain't the self-same
+river to cross.'</p>
+
+<p>"She would have come in, but there's no call for the whole town to nurse
+a sick-bed, I always think&mdash;and so she sort of hung around a minute,
+sympathetic and mum, and then slimpsed off with very little starch to
+her motions, like when you walk for sick folks. I looked out to where
+Robin and Insley was waiting by the big Proudfit planet that was going
+to take her on an orbit of its own; and all of a sudden, with them in
+front of me and with what was behind me, the awful <i>good-byness</i> of
+things sort of shut down on me, and I wanted to do something or tell
+somebody something, I didn't know what, before it was too late; and I
+run right down to them two.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' I says, scrabblin' some for my words, 'I want to tell you
+something, both of you. If it means anything to either of you to know
+that there's a little more to me, for having met both of you&mdash;then I
+want you to know it. And it's true. You both&mdash;oh, I donno,' I says,
+'what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> it is&mdash;but you both kind of act like life was a person, and like
+it wasn't just your dinner to be et.... And I kind of know the person,
+too....'</p>
+
+<p>"I knew what I meant, but meant things and said things don't often match
+close. And yet I donno but they understood me. Anyway, they both took
+hold of a hand of mine, and said some little broke-off thing that I
+didn't rightly get. But I guess that we all knew that we all knew. And
+in a minute I went back in the house, feeling like I'd got the best of
+some time when I might of wished, like we all do, that I'd let somebody
+know something while then was then.</p>
+
+<p>"When I got inside the door, I see right off by Dr. Heron's face that
+there'd been some change. And sure enough there was. Chris's father had
+opened his eyes and had spoke. And I done what I knew Robin would have
+wanted; I wheeled round and went to the door and told her so.</p>
+
+<p>"'He's come to,' I says, 'and he's just asked for Chris.'</p>
+
+<p>"Sharp off, Robin turned to say something to the man waiting in the
+automobile. Insley tried to stop her, but she put him by. They come back
+into the cottage together, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> Proudfit automobile started steaming
+back to Proudfit House without her.</p>
+
+<p>"Once again Robin roused Chris, as she had roused him on the night when
+he slept on the church porch; she just slipped her hands round his
+throat and lifted his face, and this time she kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come with Robin,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Chris opened his eyes and for a minute his little senses come
+struggling through his sleep, and then with them come dread. He looked
+up in Robin's face, piteous.</p>
+
+<p>"'Did my daddy <i>go out</i>?' he asks, shrill, 'like my mama did?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, no, dear,' Robin said. 'He wants you to say good-by to him first,
+you know. Be still and brave, for Robin.'</p>
+
+<p>"There wasn't no way to spare him, because the poor little figure on the
+bed was saying his name, restless, to restless movements. I was in there
+by him, fixing him a little something to take.</p>
+
+<p>"'Where's Chris?' the sick man begged. 'Look on the church steps&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"They took Chris in the room, and Insley lifted him up to Robin's knee
+on the chair beside the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hello&mdash;my nice daddy,' Chris says, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> his little high voice, and
+smiles adorable. 'I&mdash;I&mdash;I was waitin' for you all this while.'</p>
+
+<p>"His father put out his hand, awful awkward, and took the child's arm
+about the elbow. I'll never forget the way the man's face looked. It
+didn't looked <i>used</i>, somehow&mdash;it looked all sort of bare and barren,
+and like it hadn't been occupied. I remember once seeing a brand-new
+house that had burned down before anybody had ever lived in it, and some
+of it stuck up in the street, nice new doors, nice hardwood stairway,
+new brick chimney, and everything else all blackened and spoiled and
+done for, before ever it had been lived in. That was what Chris's
+father's face made me think of. The outline was young, and the eyes was
+young&mdash;young and burning&mdash;but there was the man's face, all spoiled and
+done for, without ever having been used for a face at all.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hello, sonny,' he says, weak. 'Got a good home?'</p>
+
+<p>"'He's in a good home, with good people, Mr. Bartlett,' Insley told him.</p>
+
+<p>"'For keeps?' Chris's father asks, his eyes burning at Insley's over the
+boy's head.</p>
+
+<p>"'We shall look after him somehow, among us,' Robin says. 'Don't worry
+about him, Mr. Bartlett. He's all right.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p><p>"The father's look turned toward her and it sort of lingered there a
+minute. And then it lit up a little&mdash;he didn't smile or change
+expression, but his look lit up some.</p>
+
+<p>"'You're the kind of a one I meant,' he says. 'I wanted he should have a
+good home. I&mdash;I done pretty good for you, didn't I, Chris?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"Chris leaned way over and pulled at his sleeve. 'You&mdash;you&mdash;you come in
+our house, too,' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, sonny, no,' says the man. 'I guess mebbe I'm&mdash;goin' somewheres
+else. But I done well by you, didn't I? Your ma and I always meant you
+should hev a good home. I'm glad&mdash;if you've got it. It's nicer than
+bein' with me&mdash;ain't it? Ain't it?'</p>
+
+<p>"Chris, on Robin's knee, was leaning forward on the bed, his hand
+patting and pulling at his father's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'If you was here, then it is,' the child says.</p>
+
+<p>"At that his father smiled&mdash;and that was the first real, real look that
+had come into his face. And he looked around slow to the rest of us.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wasn't never the kind to hev a kid,' he says. 'The drink had me&mdash;had
+me hard. I knew I'd got to find somebody to show him&mdash;about growin' up.
+I'm glad you're goin' to.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p><p>"He shut his eyes and Chris threw himself forward and patted his face.</p>
+
+<p>"'Daddy!' he cried, 'I wanted to tell you&mdash;I had that hot ice-cream
+an'&mdash;an'&mdash;an' tea on a litty wagon....'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin drew him back, hushed him, looked up questioning to Insley. And
+while we all set there, not knowing whether to leave or to stay, the man
+opened his eyes, wide and dark.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wish't it had been different,' he said. 'Oh&mdash;<i>God</i>....'</p>
+
+<p>"Chris leans right over, eager, towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Didn't he say anything back?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'I guess so,' the man says, thick. 'I guess if you're a good boy, he
+did.' Then he turned his head and looked straight at Robin. 'Don't you
+forget about his throat, will you?' he says.
+'It&mdash;gets&mdash;sore&mdash;awful&mdash;easy....'</p>
+
+<p>"He stopped talking, with a funny upsetting sound in his voice. It
+struck me then, like it has since, how frightful it was that neither him
+nor Chris thought of kissing each other&mdash;like neither one had brought
+the other up to know how. And yet Chris kissed all of us when we asked
+him&mdash;just like something away back in him knew how, without being
+brought up to know.</p>
+
+<p>"He knew how to cry, though, without no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> bringing up, like folks do. As
+Robin come with him out of the room, Chris hid his face in her skirts,
+crying miserable. She set down by the window with him in her arms, and
+Insley went and stood side of them, not saying anything. I see them so,
+while Dr. Heron and I was busy for a minute in the bedroom. Then we come
+out and shut the door&mdash;ain't it strange, how one minute it takes so many
+people around the bed, and next minute, there's the one that was the one
+left in there all alone, able to take care of itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Heron went away, and Robin still set there, holding Chris. All of a
+sudden he put up his face.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin,' he says, 'did&mdash;did my daddy leave me a letter?'</p>
+
+<p>"'A letter?' she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"'To tell me what to do,' says the child. 'Like before. On the church
+steps.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No&mdash;why, no, Chris,' she answers him. 'He didn't have to do that, you
+know.'</p>
+
+<p>"His eyes was holding hers, like he wanted so much to understand.</p>
+
+<p>"'Then how'll I know?' he asks, simple.</p>
+
+<p>"It seemed to me it was like a glass, magnifying living, had suddenly
+been laid on life. Here he was, in the world, with no 'letter' to tell
+him what to do.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p><p>"All she done was just to lay her cheek right close to his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin is going to tell you what to do,' she says, 'till you are big
+enough to know.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley stood there looking at her, and his face was like something had
+just uncovered it. And the minute seemed real and simple and almost
+old&mdash;as if it had begun to be long, long before. It was kind of as if
+Robin's will was the will of all women, away back for ever and ever in
+time, to pour into the world their power of life and of spirit, through a child.</p>
+
+<p class="space-above">"Insley went out in the kitchen to see Mis' Cadoza about some
+arrangements&mdash;if 'Arrangements' means funerals, it always seems like the
+word was spelt different and stiffer&mdash;and we was setting there in that
+sudden, awful idleness that comes on after, when there was the noise of
+an automobile on the Plank Road, and it stopped to the cottage and Alex
+Proudfit come springing up to the front door. He pushed it open and come
+in the room, and he seemed to put the minute in capitals, with his voice
+and his looks and his clothes. I never see clothes so black and so white
+and so just-so as Alex Proudfit's could be, and that night they was more
+just-so than usual. That night, his hands, with their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> thick, strange
+ring, and his dark, kind of <i>even</i> face was like some fancy picture of a
+knight and a lover. But his face never seemed to me to be made very much
+a-purpose and just for him. It was rather like a good sample of a good
+brand, and like a good sample of any other good brand would have done
+him just as well. His face didn't fit him inevitable, like a cork to a
+bottle. It was laid on more arbitrary, like a window on a landscape, and
+you could have seen the landscape through any other window just as well,
+or better.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin!' he said, 'why did you let the car come back without you? We've
+been frantic with anxiety.'</p>
+
+<p>"She told him in a word or two what had happened, and he received it
+with his impressions just about half-and-half: one-half relief that the
+matter was well over and one-half anxiety for her to hurry up. Everyone
+was at the house, everyone was wondering. Mrs. Emmons was anxious....
+'My poor Robin, you've overtaxed your strength,' he ends. 'You'll look
+worn and not yourself to-night. It's too bad of it. Come, for heaven's
+sake, let's be out of this. Come, Calliope....'</p>
+
+<p>He asked her if she had anything to bring, and he gathered up what she
+told him was hers. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> got ready, too, so's to go up to Proudfit House to
+put Chris to bed and set by him awhile. And just as I was going out to
+let Insley know we was leaving, the door to the other room opened and
+there stood Mis' Cadoza. I see she'd twisted her hair over fresh and
+she'd put on a collar. I remember now the way I felt when she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've got the coffee pot on and some batter stirred up,' says she, kind
+of shame-faced. 'I thought mebbe some hot pan-cakes and somethin' hot to
+drink'd go good&mdash;with Mr. Insley an' all of you.'</p>
+
+<p>"Alex started to say something&mdash;heaven knows what&mdash;but Robin went right
+straight up to Mis' Cadoza&mdash;and afterwards I thought back to how Robin
+didn't make the mistake of being too grateful.</p>
+
+<p>"'How I'd like them!' she says, matter-of-fact. 'But I've got a lot of
+people waiting for me, and I oughtn't to keep them....'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley spoke up from where he was over on the edge of little Eph's bed,
+and I noticed Mis' Cadoza had tried to neaten up the kitchen some, and
+she'd set the table with oil-cloth and some clean dishes.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was afraid you'd all stay,' he says, 'and I do want all the
+pan-cakes. Hurry on&mdash;you're keeping back our supper.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p><p>"He nodded to Alex, smiled with us, and come and saw us out the door.
+Mis' Cadoza come too, and Robin and I shook hands with her for
+goodnight. And as Mis' Cadoza stood there in her own door, seeing us
+off, and going to be hostess out in her own kitchen, I wondered to
+myself if it was having a collar on, or what it was, that give her a
+kind of pretty near dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"I got in the front seat of the car. Chris was back in the tonneau
+between Robin and Alex, and as we started he tried to tell Alex what had
+happened.</p>
+
+<p>"'My&mdash;my&mdash;my daddy&mdash;&mdash;' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Poor little cuss,' says Alex. 'But how extremely well for the child,
+Robin, that the beggar died. Heavens, how I hate your going in these
+ghastly places. My poor Robin, what an experience for <i>to-night</i>! For
+our to-night....'</p>
+
+<p>"She made a sudden move, abrupt as a bird springing free of something
+that's holding it. She spoke low, but I heard every word of it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Alex,' she said, 'we've made a mistake, you and I. But it isn't too
+late to mend it now.'</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>XII</h2>
+
+<p>"'I hope, Calliope,' said Postmaster Silas Sykes to me, 'that you ain't
+in favour of women suffrage.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, Silas,' says I, 'I ain't.'</p>
+
+<p>"And I felt all over me a kind of a nice wild joy at saying a thing that
+I knew a male creature would approve of.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas was delivering the groceries himself that day, and accepting of a
+glass of milk in my kitchen doorway. And on my kitchen stoop Letty
+Ames&mdash;that had come home in time for the Proudfit party&mdash;was a-sitting,
+a-stitching away on a violet muslin breakfast-cap. It was the next day
+after the party and my regular wash-day and I was glad to be back in my
+own house, washing quiet, with Emerel Daniel to help me.</p>
+
+<p>"'At school,' says Letty, 'everybody was for it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know it,' says Silas, gloomy. 'The schools is goin' to the dogs,
+hot-foot. Women suffrage, tinkerin' pupils' teeth, cremation&mdash;I don't
+know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> what-all their holdin' out for. In my day they stuck to 'rithmetic
+and toed the crack.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That isn't up to date, Mr. Sykes,' says Letty, to get Silas riled.</p>
+
+<p>"It done it. He waved his left arm, angular.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bein' up to date is bein' up to the devil,' he begun, raspish, when I
+cut in, hasty and peaceful.</p>
+
+<p>"'By the way, Silas,' I says, 'speaking of dates, it ain't more'n a
+<i>year</i> past the time you aldermen was going to clear out Black Hollow,
+is it? Ain't you going to get it done <i>this</i> spring?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, dum it, no,' Silas says. 'They're all after us now to get to
+pavin' that new street.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That street off there in the marsh. I know they are,' I says innocent.
+'Your cousin's makin' the blocks, ain't he, Silas?'</p>
+
+<p>"Just then, in from the shed where she was doing my washing come Emerel
+Daniel&mdash;a poor little thing that looked like nothing but breath with the
+skin drawn over it&mdash;and she was crying.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'I guess you'll have to leave me go home. I
+left little Otie so sick&mdash;I hadn't ought to of left him&mdash;only I did want
+the fifty cents....'</p>
+
+<p>"'Otie!' I says. 'I thought Otie was getting better.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p><p>"'I've kept sayin' so because I was ashamed to let folks know,' Emerel
+says, 'an' me leavin' him to work. But I had to have the money&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Land,' I says, 'of course you did. Go on home. Silas'll take you in
+the delivery wagon, won't you, Silas? You're going right that way, ain't
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I wasn't,' says Silas, 'but I can go round that way to oblige.' That's
+just exactly how Silas is.</p>
+
+<p>"'Emerel,' I says, 'when you go by the Hollow, you tell Silas what you
+was tellin' me&mdash;about the smells from there into your house. Silas,' I
+says, 'that hole could be filled up with sand-bar sand dirt cheap, now
+while the river's low, and you know it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Woman&mdash;' Silas begins excitable.</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course you can't,' I saved him the trouble, 'not while the council
+is running pavement halfway acrost the swamp to graft off'n the Wooden
+Block folks. That's all, Silas. I know you, head and heart,' I says,
+some direct.</p>
+
+<p>"'You don't understand city dealin's no more'n&mdash;Who-a!' Silas yells,
+pretending his delivery horse needed him, and lit down the walk, Emerel
+following. Silas reminds me of the place in the atmosphere where a
+citizen ought to be, and ain't.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p><p>"Emerel had left the clothes in the bluing water, so I stood and talked
+with Letty a minute, stitching away on her muslin breakfast-cap.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd be for women voting just because Silas isn't,' she says, feminine.</p>
+
+<p>"'In them words,' says I to her, 'is some of why women shouldn't do it.
+The most of 'em reason,' I says, 'like rabbits!'</p>
+
+<p>"Letty sort of straightened up and looked at me, gentle. She just
+graduated from the Indian Mound School and, in spite of yourself, you
+notice what she says. 'You're mistaken, Miss Marsh,' says she, 'I
+believe in women voting because we're folks and mothers, and we can't
+bring up our children with men taking things away from 'em that we know
+they'd ought to have. I want to bring up my children by my votes as well
+as by my prayers,' says she.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Your</i> children!' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"I donno if you've ever noticed that look come in a girl's face when she
+speaks of her children that are going to be sometime? Up to that minute
+I'd 'a' thought Letty's words was brazen. But when I see how she looked
+when she said it, I sort of turned my eyes away, kind of half reverent.
+We didn't speak so when I was a girl. The most we ever heard mentioned
+like that was when our mothers showed us our first baby dress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> and told
+us that was for <i>our</i> baby&mdash;and then we always looked away, squeamish.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's kind of nice,' I says, slow, 'your owning up, out loud that
+way, that maybe you might possibly have&mdash;have one, sometime.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My mother has talked to me about it since I began to
+know&mdash;everything,' Letty said.</p>
+
+<p>"That struck awful near home.</p>
+
+<p>"'I always wisht,' I says, 'I'd talked with my mother&mdash;like that. I
+always wisht I'd had her tell me about the night I was born. I think
+everybody ought to know about that. But I remember when she begun to
+speak about it, I always kind of shied off. I should think it would of
+hurt her. But then,' I says, 'I never had any of my own. So it don't
+matter.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, yes, you have, Miss Marsh,' says Letty.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at her, blank.</p>
+
+<p>"'Every child that's born belongs to you,' says Letty to me, solemn.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go on,' says I, to draw her out. 'I wouldn't own most of the little
+jackanapesses.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But you <i>do</i>,' says Letty, 'and so do I! So does every woman, mother
+or not.'</p>
+
+<p>"She set the little violet muslin cap on her head to try it, and swept
+up and made me a little bow. Pretty as a picture she looked, and ready
+for loving.... I always wonder if things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> ain't sometimes arranged to
+happen in patterns, same as crystals. For why else should it be that at
+that instant minute young Elbert Sykes, Silas's son, that was home for
+the party and a little longer, come up to my door with a note from his
+mother&mdash;and see Letty in the violet cap, bowing like a rose?</p>
+
+<p>"While they was a-talking easy, like young folks knows how to do
+nowdays, I read the note; and it was about what had started Silas to
+talking suffrage. Mis' Sykes had opened her house to a suffrage meeting
+that evening, and Mis' Martin Lacy from the City was a-going to talk,
+and would I go over?</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, yes,' I says to Elbert. 'Tell her I'll come, just for something
+to do. I wonder if I can bring Letty, too?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mother'd be proud, I know,' says Elbert, looking at her like words,
+and them words a-praising. They had used to play together when they was
+little, but school had come in and kind of made them over.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>So</i>,' says he to Letty, bantering, 'you're in favour of women voting,
+are you?'</p>
+
+<p>"She broke off her thread and looked up at him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course I am,' she says, giving a cunning little kitten nod that run
+all down her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p><p>"'So you think,' says Elbert, 'that you're just as strong as I am&mdash;to
+carry things along? Mind you, I don't say as clever. You're easily that.
+But put it at just <i>strong</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"She done the little nod again, nicer than the first time.</p>
+
+<p>"'You talk like folks voted with their muscles,' says she. 'Well, I
+guess some men do, judging by the results.'</p>
+
+<p>"He laughed, but he went on.</p>
+
+<p>"'And you think,' he says, 'that you would be just as wonderful in
+public life as you would be in your home&mdash;your very own home?'</p>
+
+<p>"Letty put the last stitch in her muslin cap and she set it on her
+head&mdash;all cloudy and rose-budded, and land, land, she was lovely when
+she looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Surely,' she says from under the ruffle, with a little one-cornered
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"He laughed right into her eyes. 'I don't believe you think so,' he
+says, triumphant. And all of a sudden there come a-sticking up its head
+in his face the regular man look&mdash;I can't rightly name it, but every
+woman in the world knows it when she sees it&mdash;a kind of an <i>I'm the one
+of us two but don't let's stop pretending it's you</i> look.</p>
+
+<p>"When she see it, what do you suppose Letty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> done? First she looked
+down. Then she blushed. Then she shrugged up one shoulder and laughed,
+sort of little and low and soft. <i>And she kept still.</i> She was about as
+much like the dignified woman that had just been talking to me about
+women's duty as a bow of blue ribbon is like my work apron. And as plain
+as the blue on the sky, I see that <i>she liked the minute when she let
+Elbert beat her&mdash;liked it</i>, with a sort of a glow and a quiver.</p>
+
+<p>"He laughed again, and, 'You stay just the the way you are,' he says,
+and he contrived to make them common words sort of flow all over her
+like petting.</p>
+
+<p>"That evening, when we marched into the Sykes's house to the meeting, he
+spoke to her like that again. The men was invited to the meeting, too,
+but Mis' Sykes let it be known that they needn't to come till the coffee
+and sandwiches, thus escaping the speech. Mis' Sykes ain't in favour of
+suffrage, but she does love a new thing in town, and Mis' Martin Lacy
+was so well dressed and so soft-spoken that Mis' Sykes would of left her
+preach foot-binding in her parlour if she'd wanted to. Mis' Sykes is
+like that. Letty was about the youngest there, and she was about the
+prettiest I 'most ever saw; and when he'd got them all seated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> young
+Elbert Sykes, that was the only man there, just naturally gravitated
+over and set down by her, like the Lord meant. I love to see them little
+things happen, and I never smile at them, same as some. Because it's
+like I got a peek in behind the curtain and see the eternal purpose
+working away, quiet and still.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mis' Lacy, she talked, and she put things real sane and plain,
+barring I didn't believe any of what she said. And pretty soon I stopped
+trying to listen and I begun thinking about Emerel Daniel. I'd been down
+to see her just before supper, and I hadn't had her out of my head much
+of the time since. Emerel's cottage wasn't half a block from Black
+Hollow, the great low place beyond the river road that the town used as
+a dump. It was full of things without names, and take it on a day with
+the wind just right, Emerel had to keep her window shut on that side of
+her house. Water was standing in the hollow all the whole time. Flies
+and mosquitoes come from it by the flock and the herd. And when I'd held
+my nose and scud past it that afternoon to get to Emerel's, I'd almost
+run into Dr. Heron, just coming out from seeing Otie, and I burst right
+out with my thoughts all over him, and asked him if Black Hollow wasn't
+what was the matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> with Otie and if it wasn't all that was the matter
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Unquestionably,' says Dr. Heron. 'I told Mrs. Daniel six months ago
+that she must move.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says I, 'not having any of her other country homes open this
+year, Emerel had to stay where she was. And Otie with her. But what did
+you say to the council about filling in the hole?'</p>
+
+<p>"'The council,' says Dr. Heron, 'is paving the county swamp. There's a
+good crop of wooden blocks this year.'</p>
+
+<p>"'True enough,' says I, grim, 'and Otie is a-paying for it.'</p>
+
+<p>"That was exactly how the matter stood. And all the while Mis' Lacy was
+a-talking her women suffrage, I set there grieving for Emerel, and
+wondering how it was that Silas Sykes and Timothy Toplady and Jimmy
+Sturgis and even Eppleby Holcomb, that belonged to the common council,
+<i>could</i> set by and see Otie die, and more or less of the rest of us in
+the same kind of danger.</p>
+
+<p>"Next I knew, Mis' Lacy, that was all silky movements and a sweet voice,
+had got through her own talk and was asking us ladies to express
+ourselves. Everybody felt kind of delicate at first, and then Libby
+Liberty starts up and spoke her mind:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p><p>"'<i>I</i> believe all you've been a-saying,' she says, 'and I hev for
+twenty years. I never kill a hen without I realize how good the women
+can do a human being's work if they're put to it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I always think of that, too,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, quick, 'about
+the hotel....' She kind of stopped, but we all knew what she meant.
+Threat is seldom if ever sober, especially on election day; but he
+votes, and she only runs the hotel and keeps them both out of the
+poorhouse.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, look at me,' says Abagail Arnold, 'doin' work to oven and to
+counter, an' can't get my nose near nothin' public but my taxes.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course,' says Mis' Uppers, rocking, 'I've almost <i>been</i> the mayor
+of Friendship Village, bein' his wife, so. An' I must say he never done
+a thing I didn't think I could do. Or less it was the junketin' trips.
+I'd 'a' been down with one o' my sick headaches on every one o' them.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Men <i>know</i> more,' admitted Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'but I donno as
+they can <i>do</i> any more than us. When the Fire Chief was alive an'
+holdin' office an' entertaining politicians, I use' often to think o'
+that, when I had their hot dinner to get.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I s'pose men do know more than we do,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>reflective. 'I know Eppleby is lightnin'
+at figures, an' he can tell about time-tables, an' he sees sense to fine
+print parts o' the newspapers that looks like so many doctors'
+prescriptions to me. An' yet honestly, when it comes to some questions
+of sense, I've known Eppleby not to have any.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Jimmy, either,' says Mis' Sturgis, confidential. 'I donno. I've
+thought about that a good deal. It seems as if, if we got the chance, us
+women might not vote brilliant at first, but we would vote with our
+sense. The sense that can pick out a pattern and split a receipt, an'
+dress the children out o' the house money. I bet there's a lot o' that
+kind o' sense among women that don't get used up, by a long shot.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Timothy Toplady drew her shawl up her back, like she does.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a,' she says, 'Timothy's an awful good husband, but when I see
+some of the things he buys for the house, an' the way he gets took in on
+real estate, I often wonder if he's such a good citizen as he lets on.'</p>
+
+<p>"I kep' a-wondering why Letty didn't say something, and by and by I
+nudged her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go on, speak up,' I intimated.</p>
+
+<p>"And, same time, I heard Elbert Sykes, on the other side, say something
+to her, low. 'I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> could tell them,' he says to her, 'that to look like
+you do is better than being elected!'</p>
+
+<p>"And Letty&mdash;what do you s'spose?&mdash;she just glanced up at him, and made a
+little kind of a commenting wrinkle with her nose, and looked down and
+kept her silence. Just like he'd set there with a little fine chain to
+her wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"We talked some more and asked some questions and heard Mis' Lacy read
+some, and then it was time for the men. They come in together&mdash;six or
+eight of them, and most of them, as it happened, members of the common
+council. And when Mis' Sykes had set them down on the edge of the room,
+and before anybody had thought of any remark to pass, Mis' Lacy she
+spoke up and ask' the men to join in the discussion, and called on Mis'
+Sykes, that hadn't said nothing yet, to start the ball a-rolling.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Well</i>,' says Mis' Sykes, with her little society pucker, 'I must say
+the home and bring-up my children seems far, far more womanly to me than
+the tobacco smoke and whiskey of public life.'</p>
+
+<p>"She glanced over to the men, kind of with a way of arching her neck and
+they all gave her a sort of a little ripple, approving. And with this
+Mis' Toplady kind of tossed her head up.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p><p>"'Oh, well, I don't want the responsibility,' she says. 'Land, if I was
+a votin' woman, I should feel as if I'd got bread in the pan and cake in
+the oven and clothes in the bluin' water all the whole time.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He, he, he!' says Timothy, her lawful lord. And Silas and Jimmy
+Sturgis and the rest joined in, tuneful.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, she vied in, and done a small,
+careless laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, well, me, too,' she says, 'I declare, as I get older an' wake up
+some mornin's I feel like life was one big breakfast to get an' me the
+hired girl. If I had to vote besides, I donno what I <i>would</i> do.'</p>
+
+<p>"'An',' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'I always feel as if a politician was a
+disgrace to be, same as an actor, <i>unless</i> you got to be a big one. An'
+can us women ever be big ones even if we want? Which I'm sure I don't
+want,' she says, sidling a look towards the men's row.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, not only that,' says Abagail Arnold, 'but you'd feel so kind of
+sheepish votin' for the President, away off there in Washington. I
+always feel terrible sheepish even prayin' for him, let alone
+votin'&mdash;an' like it <i>couldn't</i> make no real difference.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, an' <i>ladies</i>!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> 'really it's bad enough to
+have been the wife of a mayor. If I had to vote an' was in danger of
+coming down with a nomination for somethin' myself, I couldn't get to
+sleep nights.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mercy,' said Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'a mayor is nothin' but a baby
+in public life compared to a fire chief. A mayor gets his night's rest.
+Could a woman ever chase to fires at three o'clock in the mornin'? An'
+if she votes, what's to prevent her bein' elected to some such job by
+main strength?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Or like enough get put on a jury settin' on a murderer, an' hev to
+look at dug-up bones an' orgins,' says Mis' Sturgis&mdash;her that's an
+invalid and gloomy by complexion.</p>
+
+<p>"And one and all, as they spoke, they looked sidewise to the men for
+their approval. And they got it.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's the ticket!' says Timothy Toplady, slapping his knee. 'I tell
+you, gentlemen, we've got a nice set of women folks here in this town.
+They don't prostitute their brains to no fool notions.'</p>
+
+<p>"There was a little hush, owing to that word that Timothy had used kind
+of uncalled for, and then a little quick buzz of talk to try to cover
+it. And in the buzz I heard Elbert saying to Letty:</p>
+
+<p>"'You <i>know</i> you think of yourself in a home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> afterward&mdash;and not around
+at polls and things, Letty.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You don't have to board at the polls because you vote there, you
+know,' Letty said; but she says it with a way, with a way. She said it
+like a pretty woman talking to a man that's looking in her eyes and
+thinking how pretty she is, and she knows he's thinking so. And you
+can't never get much real arguing done that way.</p>
+
+<p>"It always kind of scares me to see myself showed up&mdash;and now it was
+like I had ripped a veil off the whole sex, and off me, too. I see us
+face to face. Why was it that before them men had come in, the women had
+all talked kind of doubtful and suffrage-leaning, and then had veered
+like the wind the minute the men had come on the scene? Mis' Toplady had
+defied Timothy time after time, both public and private; Mis'
+Hubbelthwait bosses her husband not only drunk but sober; Mis' Sturgis
+don't do a thing Jimmy wants without she happens to want it too&mdash;and so
+on. Yet at the mention of this one thing, these women that had been
+talking intelligent and wondering open-minded had all stopped being the
+way they was and had begun to say things sole to please the men. Even
+Libby Liberty had kept still&mdash;her that has a regular tongue in her head.
+And Letty, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> believed in it all, and had talked to me so womanly
+that morning, she was listening and blushing for Elbert and holding her
+peace. And then I remembered, like a piece of guilt, sensing that nice,
+wild feeling I myself had felt that morning a-denying woman suffrage in
+the presence of Postmaster Silas Sykes. What in creation ailed us all?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>What in creation....</i> Them words sort of steadied me. It looked to me
+like it was creation itself that ailed us yet. Creation is a thing that
+it takes most folks a good while to recover from....</p>
+
+<p>" ... I remembered seeing Silas's delivery boy go whistling along the
+street one night, and pass a cat. The cat wasn't doing nothing active.
+It was merely idle. But the boy brought up a big shingle he was carrying
+and swished it through the air and says 'Z-t-t-t-t,' to the cat's heels,
+to see the cat take to them&mdash;which it done&mdash;like the cat immemorial has
+done for immemorial boys, delivery and other. And once, at dusk, a big,
+strange man with a gun on his shoulder passed me on Daphne Street, and
+when he done so, he says to me 'Z-t-t-t,' under his breath, just like
+the boy to the cat, and just like the untamed man immemorial has said
+when he got the chance. It seemed to me like men was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> created with, so
+to say, a shingle and a gun, for the hunting, and just as there is joy
+in their hunting, so there is a palpitatin' delight in being hunted and
+flattered by being caught and bound, hand and foot and mind.</p>
+
+<p>"'We like it&mdash;why, I tell you, we like it,' I says to myself, 'and us
+here in Mis' Sykes's parlour are burning with the old original,
+left-over fire, breathed at creation into women's breasts!'</p>
+
+<p>"And it seemed like I kind of touched hands with all the women that used
+to be. And I looked over to that row of grinning, tired men, not so very
+much dressed up, and I thought:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, you're the men of this world and we're the women, and there ain't
+no more thrilling fact in this universe. And why don't we all reco'nize
+it and shut up?'</p>
+
+<p>"That was what I was thinking over in my mind while Mis' Martin Lacy
+said good night to us and rushed off to catch her train for the City,
+hoping she had made us see some light. That was what I was still going
+over when Mis' Sykes called me to help with the refreshments. And then,
+just as I started out to the kitchen, the outside door that was part
+open was pushed in and somebody come in the room. It was Emerel Daniel,
+in calico and no hat. And as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> soon as we see her face, everybody stopped
+talking and stared. She was white as the table-cloth and shaking.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'won't one of you come down to the house?
+Otie's worse&mdash;I donno what it is. I donno what to do to take care of
+him.'</p>
+
+<p>"She broke down, poor, nervous little thing, and sort of swallowed her
+whole throat. And Mis' Toplady and we all rushed right over to her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Emerel,' Mis' Toplady says, 'I thought Otie was getting ever so
+much better. Is it the real typhoid, do you s'pose?' she ask' her.</p>
+
+<p>"Emerel looked over to me. 'Isn't it?' she says. And then I spoke right
+up with all there is to me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir,' I says, 'it is the real typhoid. And if you want to know
+what's giving it to him, ladies and gentlemen, ask the common council
+that's setting over there by the wall. Dr. Heron says that Black Hollow,
+that's a sink for the whole town, give it to him, and that nothing else
+did&mdash;piled full of diseases right in back of Emerel's house. And if you
+want to know who's responsible for his dying if he dies,' I says right
+out, 'look over in the same direction to the men that wouldn't vote to
+fill in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> Black Hollow with sand because they needed the money so bad
+for paving up half the county swamp.'</p>
+
+<p>"It was most as still in the room as when Timothy had said 'prostitute.'
+All but me. I went right on&mdash;nothing could of kept me still then.</p>
+
+<p>"'Us ladies,' I says, 'has tried for two years to get the Council to
+fill in that hole. We've said and said what would happen to some of us,
+what with our pumps so near the place, and what with flies from it
+visiting our dinner-table dishes, sociable and continual. What did you
+say to us? You said women hadn't no idee of town finances. Mebbe we
+ain't&mdash;mebbe we ain't. But we have got some idea of town humanity, if I
+do say it, that share in it. And this poor little boy has gone to work
+and proved it.'</p>
+
+<p>"With that, Emerel, who had been holding in&mdash;her that's afraid even to
+ask for starch if you forget to give it to her&mdash;she broke right down and
+leaned her head on her arm on the clock shelf:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' she says, 'all the years I been giving him his victuals and his
+bath and sewing his clothes up, I never meant it to come to this&mdash;for no
+reason. If Otie dies, I guess he needn't of&mdash;that's the worst. He
+needn't of.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Toplady put her arm right around Emerel and kind of poored her
+shoulder in that big, mother way she's got&mdash;and it was her that went
+with her, like it's always Mis' Toplady that does everything. And us
+ladies turned around and all begun to talk at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's plan out right here about taking things in to Emerel,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I've got some fresh bread out of the oven.
+I'll carry her a couple of loaves, and another couple next baking or
+two.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll take her in a hen,' says Libby Liberty, 'so be she'll kill it
+herself.'</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody else said a ham, and somebody some butter, and Libby threw in
+some fresh eggs, if she got any. Mis' Hubbelthwait didn't have much to
+do with, but she said she would take turns setting up with Otie. Mis'
+Sykes give a quarter&mdash;she don't like to bake for folks, but she's real
+generous with money. And Silas pipes in:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Emerel can have credit to the store till Otie begins to get better,'
+he said. 'I ain't been lettin' her have it. She's looked so peaked I
+been afraid she wan't a-goin' to be able to work, an' I didn't want she
+should be all stacked up with debts.'</p>
+
+<p>"But me, I set there a-thinking. And all of a sudden I says out what I
+thought: 'Ladies,' I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> says, 'and all of you: What to Emerel is hens and
+hams and credit? They ain't,' I says, 'nothing but patches and poultices
+on what's the trouble up to her house.'</p>
+
+<p>"Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying much, spoke up:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' he says, 'I know. You mean what good do they do to the boy.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I mean just that,' I says. 'What good is all that to Otie that's lying
+over by Black Hollow? And how does it keep the rest of the town safe?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Silas, eager, 'let's us get out the zinc wagon you ladies
+bought, and let's us go to collectin' the garbage again so that won't
+all be dumped in Black Hollow. And leave the ladies keep on payin' for
+it. It's real ladies' work, I think, bein' as it's no more'n a general
+scrapin' up of ladies' kitchens.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Letty Ames, that hadn't been saying anything, spoke up, to nobody
+in particular:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Otie's a dear little soul,' she said, 'a dear little soul!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't he?' says Marne Holcomb. 'Eppleby 'most always has a nut or
+somethin' in his pocket to give him as he goes by. He takes it like a
+little squirrel an' like a little gentleman.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He's awful nice when he comes in the shop,' said Abagail. 'He looks at
+the penny-apiece kind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> and then buys the two-for-a-cent, so's to give
+his mother one.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He knows how to behave in a store,' Silas admitted. 'I 'most always
+give him a coffee-berry, just to see him thank me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He come into the hotel one day,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'an' stood by
+me when I was bakin'. I give him a little wad of dough to roll.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I let him drive the 'bus one day, settin' on my knee,' says Jimmy
+Sturgis. 'He was a nice, careful, complete little cuss.'</p>
+
+<p>"Eppleby Holcomb nodded with his eyes shut.</p>
+
+<p>"'We don't like folks to swing on our front gate,' he says. 'He done it,
+but he marched right in and told us he'd done it. I give him a
+doughnut&mdash;an' he's kep' right on swingin' an' ownin' up an' eatin'
+doughnuts.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Even when he chased my chickens,' says Libby Liberty, 'he chased 'em
+like a little gentleman&mdash;<i>towards</i> the coop an' not down the road. I
+always noticed that about him.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' says Letty, again, 'he's a dear little soul. <i>What makes us let
+him die?</i>'</p>
+
+<p>"She said it so calm that it caught even my breath&mdash;and my breath, in
+these things, ain't easy caught. But I got it right back again, and I
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir. He was on the way to being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> somebody that Friendship Village
+could have had for the right kind of an inmate. And now he'll be nothing
+but a grave, that's no good to anybody. And Sodality,' I couldn't help
+adding, 'will likely pitch right in and take care of his grave,
+tasteful.'</p>
+
+<p>"And when I said that, it come over me how Emerel had dressed him and
+bathed him and made his clothes, and done washings, tireless, to get the
+fifty cents&mdash;besides bringing him into the world, tedious. And now it
+was all going for nothing, all for nothing&mdash;when we could of helped it.
+And I plumped out with what I'd said that morning to Silas:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Why don't you fill up Black Hollow with sand-bar sand out of the
+river, now it's so low? Then, even if it's too late for Otie, mebbe we
+can keep ourselves from murderin' anybody else.'</p>
+
+<p>"Them half a dozen men of the common council set still a minute, looking
+down at Mis' Sykes's parlour ingrain. And I looked over at them, and my
+heart come up in my throat and both of them ached like the toothache.
+Because all of a sudden it seemed to me it wasn't just Timothy and
+Eppleby and Silas and some more of the council setting there by the
+wall&mdash;but it was like, in them few men, tired and not so very well
+dressed, was setting the lawmakers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> of the whole world; and there in
+front of them, wasn't only Mis' Holcomb and Libby and Letty and me, but
+Emerel Daniel, too, and all the women there is&mdash;saying to them: 'My
+land, we've dressed 'em an' bathed 'em an' sewed for 'em an' brought 'em
+into the world, tedious. Let 'em live&mdash;fix things so's they can live an'
+so's it needn't all go for nothin'.' And I sort of bubbled up and
+spilled over, as if everything we was all of us <i>for</i> had come up in my
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, folks,' I says, 'just look what us in this room could have done
+for Otie&mdash;so be we'd begun in time.'</p>
+
+<p>"Right like a dash of cold water into my face, Mis' Sykes spoke up, cold
+as some kind of death:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, ladies,' she says, 'I guess we've got our eyes open now. <i>I</i> say
+that's what we'd ought to hev been doin' instead o' talkin' women
+votin',' she says, triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>"Then somebody spoke again, in a soft, new, not-used-to-it little voice,
+and in her chair over beside Elbert, Letty Ames leaned forward, and her
+eyes was like the sunny places in water.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't you see,' she says, 'don't you see, Mis' Sykes, that's what Mis'
+Lacy meant?'</p>
+
+<p>"'How so?' says Mis' Sykes, short.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never forget how sweet and shy and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>unexpected and young Letty
+looked, but she answered, as brave as brave:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Otie Daniel is sick,' she said, 'and all us women can do is to carry
+him broth and bread and nurse him. It's only the men that can bring
+about the things to make him well. And they haven't done it. It's been
+the women who have been urging it&mdash;and not getting it done. Wasn't it
+our work to do, too?'</p>
+
+<p>"I see Elbert looking at her&mdash;like he just couldn't bear to have her
+speak so, like some men can't. And I guess he spoke out in answer before
+he meant to:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'But let them do it womanly, Letty,' he said, 'like your mother did and
+my mother did.'</p>
+
+<p>"Letty turned and looked Elbert Sykes straight in the face:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Womanly!</i>' she says. 'What is there womanly about my bathing and
+feeding a child inside four clean walls, if dirt and bad food and
+neglect are outside for him? Will you tell me if there is anything more
+womanly than my right to help make the world as decent for my children
+as I would make my own home?'</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at Letty, and looked; and I see with a thrill I can't tell you
+about how Letty seemed. For she seemed the way she had that morning on
+my kitchen stoop, when she spoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> of her children and when I felt like
+I'd ought to turn away&mdash;the way I'd used to when my mother showed me my
+baby dress and told me who it would be for. Only now&mdash;only now, somehow,
+I didn't want to turn away. Somehow I wanted to keep right on looking at
+Letty, like Elbert was looking. And I see what he see. How Letty was
+what she'd said that morning that she was&mdash;and that I was&mdash;and that we
+all was: A mother, then and there, whether she ever had any children or
+not. And she was next door to owning up to it right there before them
+all and before Elbert. We didn't speak so when I was a girl. We didn't
+own up, out loud, that we ever thought anything about what we was for.
+But now, when I heard Letty do it....</p>
+
+<p>" ... Now, when I heard Letty do it, all to once, I looked into a window
+of the world. And instead of touching hands like I had with the women
+that use' to be, I looked off and off down all the time there's going to
+be, and for a minute I touched, tip-fingers, the hands of the other
+women that's coming towards me; and out of places inside of me that I
+didn't know before had eyes, I see them, mothers to the whole world,
+<i>inside their four walls and out</i>. And they wasn't coming with poultices
+and bread and broth in their hands, to patch up what had been left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+undone; nor with the keys to schoolhouses that they'd got open by
+scheming; nor with newspapers full of health that they'd had to run down
+back alleys to sell; nor national holidays that they'd got a-hold of
+through sheer accident; nor yet with nice new headstones for cemetery
+improvements on the dead and gone&mdash;no, sir, their hands wasn't occupied
+with any of these ways of serving that they'd schemed for and stole. But
+their hands&mdash;was in men's hands, closer and nearer than they'd ever been
+before. And their eyes was lit up with a look that was a new look, and
+that give new life to the old original left-over blaze. And I looked
+across to that row of tired men, not so very much dressed up, and I
+thought:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'You're the men of this world and we're the women. And there ain't no
+more thrilling fact in this universe, save one, <i>save one</i>: And that's
+that we're all human beings. That your job and ours is to make the world
+ready for the folks that are to come, and to make the folks that come
+fit to live in that new world. And yet over there by Black Hollow one of
+our children is dying from something that was your job <i>and</i> ours to do,
+and we didn't take hold of hands and do it!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Letty!' I says out. 'And Silas and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> all of you! Let's pretend,
+just for a minute, that we was all citizens and equal. And let's figure
+out things for Otie, just like we had the right!'</p>
+
+<p class="space-above">"I'd asked Letty to spend the night with me, and Elbert walked home with
+us. And just as we got there, he says to her again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Letty&mdash;you ain't <i>strong</i> enough to help carry things along!'</p>
+
+<p>"'You've got more strength,' she says to him, 'and more brains. But it
+isn't so much the strength or the brains in women that is going to help
+when the time comes. It's the&mdash;mother in them.'</p>
+
+<p>"And I says to myself:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'And it's the&mdash;<i>human beingness</i> of them.' But Letty didn't know that
+yet.</p>
+
+<p>"Elbert answered, after a minute:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'You may be right and you may be wrong, but, Letty, Letty, what a woman
+you are!'</p>
+
+<p>"And at that Letty looked up at him, just as she had looked at him that
+morning&mdash;just for a minute, and then she dipped down the brim of her big
+hat. I donno what she answered him. I didn't care. I didn't care. For
+what I see was the old wild joy of a woman in being glorified by a male
+creature. And I knew then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> and I know now, that that won't never die,
+no matter what.</p>
+
+<p>"Elbert put out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'Good night, Letty,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>"She gave him hers, and he closed over it light with his other hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'May I see you to-morrow?' he asked her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I don't know,' said Letty. 'Come and see if I'll see you&mdash;will
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>"He laughed a little, looking in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"'At about eight,' he promised. 'Good night....'</p>
+
+<p>"I got the key out from under the mat to a tune inside me. Because I'd
+heard, and I knew that Letty had heard, that tone in Elbert's voice that
+is the human tone&mdash;I can't rightly name it, but every woman in the world
+knows it when she hears it&mdash;a tone that says: <i>If I have my way, you and
+I are going to live out our lives together</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"And I knew then, and I know now, that that tone won't ever die, either.
+And some day, away off in a new world right here on this earth, I
+believe there's going to be a wilder joy in being men and women than all
+the men and women up to now have ever lived or dared or dreamed.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>XIII</h2>
+
+<p>"'Miss Marsh,' says Christopher.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Emmons's living-room was like a cup of something cool, and I set
+there in the after-supper light having such a nice rested time drinking
+it in that at first I didn't hear him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Miss Marsh,' he says again, and pulled at my dress. I put out my hand
+to him and he took it. Sometimes I donno but hands are a race of beings
+by themselves that talk and answer and do all the work and act like
+slaves and yet really rule the world.</p>
+
+<p>"'Is it me telling my feet where to go or do they tell me where I go?'
+asked Christopher.</p>
+
+<p>"'You can have it either way you want,' I told him. 'Some does one way
+and some does the other. Which way do you like?'</p>
+
+<p>"He thought for a minute, twisting on one foot with the other up in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd like 'em to know how without our sayin' so,' he announces finally.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' I says, 'I left out that way. That's really the best way of
+all.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at me eager.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p><p>"'Is it a game?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's its name?' he ask' me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Game of Life,' I told him again.</p>
+
+<p>"He thought about it, still twisting. Then he done one of his littlest
+laughs, with his head turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"'My feet heard you,' he says. 'Now they know how to play.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I hope so, Christopher,' says I, and kissed him on the back of his
+neck. That made him mad, like it usually done.</p>
+
+<p>"'My neck is my neck,' says he, 'and it's shut in my collar. It ain't
+home to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Is your mouth home?' I ask' him.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was.</p>
+
+<p>"I could of set there talking with him all evening, but not on the night
+of Sodality's Annual. I'd stopped by for Mis' Emmons. She was getting
+ready, and while I waited I could hear folks passing on their way to the
+schoolhouse where the meeting was. For the town was all het up about
+what the meeting was going to do.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd seen half-dozen or so of us that afternoon when we was putting
+plants on the hall platform, and we'd all spoke our minds.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm gaspin',' observed Mis' Sturgis, 'to take a straw vote of us on
+this amendin' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>business. Near as I can make out, it's going through.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Near as I can make out,' says Marne Holcomb, 'a good deal more than
+amending is going on here to-night. It looks to me as if Sodality was
+just going to get into its own Cemetery and be forgot, and as if
+something else was coming to meet us&mdash;something big!'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady spoke up, comfortable, down on her knees putting green
+paper on the pots.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, my land!' she says, 'I've noticed two-three things in my
+lifetime. And one is, that do what whoever will, things do change. And
+so whenever a new change pops up, I always think: "Oh, I guess you're
+comin' along anyway. I donno's I need to help." An' yet somethin' in me
+always prances to pitch in, too.'</p>
+
+<p>"Timothy was there, occupying himself with the high places us ladies
+couldn't get up to.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says he, 'if folks stop dying, like Sodality evidently intends
+they shall if it goes out of business, maybe you'll stay home some,
+Amandy, and not always be off laying folks out.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know it,' Mis' Toplady returns, 'I've laid out most everybody I
+know, and of course I'm real glad to do it. But the last dead's hair I
+done up, I caught myself thinking how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> much more interesting it'd be if
+they was alive an' could find fault. Doin' for the dead gets kind of
+monotonous, <i>I</i> think.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>I</i> don't,' says Timothy, decided. 'The minute you work for the
+living, you get all upset with being criticised. I s'pose the dead would
+find fault, if they could, over the way you cut the grass for 'em. But
+they can't an' so there's an end to it, an' we get along, peaceful. If
+they was living folks layin' there, you can bet they'd do some back
+talk.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says I, 'I've been sick of Sodality for years. But it was about
+the most what-you-might-call society I had, and I hated to give it up.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Me, either,' says Mame Holcomb.</p>
+
+<p>"'Me, either,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I declare I've often said I wouldn't
+know what <i>to</i> do if folks stopped dyin' so's Sodality would have to
+close out.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes was setting watching the rest of us.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' she observes, cold, 'if I was usin' the dead to keep in
+society, I donno's I'd own it up.'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas Sykes had just come over from the store to see if there was
+anything he could meddle in.</p>
+
+<p>"'Heh!' says he, showing his teeth. 'Not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> many of Sodality, as I can
+see, <i>deserves</i> to die and be done for, civilized.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't you worry yourself, Silas Sykes,' says I, 'we're going to be
+done things for before we die hereafter, and more civilized than ever
+you dreamed of, all up and down your ledger. That's where you do dream,
+ain't it, Silas?' I says. And though I said it gay, I meant it frank.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember I looked off down the room, and all of a sudden I see it as
+it would be that night, packed with folks. Somehow, we'd got to saying
+less about the Sodality part of the meeting, and more about the <i>open</i>
+part. Most of the town would be there. We'd got the School Board to
+leave us announce the second party for that night, following the
+meeting, and music was coming, and us ladies had froze the ice-cream,
+and the whole time reminded me of a big bud, flowered slow and bursting
+sudden.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, land,' I says, fervent, 'I feel like Friendship Village was a
+person that I was going to meet to-night for the first time.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You express yourself so odd sometimes, Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes,
+distant&mdash;but Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, they
+both looked up and nodded, and they knew.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p><p>"I set holding Christopher in Mis' Emmons's living-room, and thinking
+about this and most everything else, when I looked out and see Insley
+going along. He hadn't been back in town since Christopher's father's
+funeral, two days before, and I'd been wanting to talk over with him a
+thing or two that was likely to come up at the meeting, that of course
+he was going to be at, and that had to be handled with thimbles on every
+finger, or somebody'd get pricked. So I rapped smart on the upper sash
+and called to him through the screen, but not before I had seen the look
+on his face. I've caught that special look only once or twice in my
+life&mdash;the look of somebody passing the house that is different to them
+from all other houses in the world. The look that wants to be a look and
+won't let itself be, that tries to turn the other way and can't start,
+that thinks it's unconscious and knows it isn't, and that finally, with
+Insley, give it up and looked Mis' Emmons's house straight in the face
+for a minute, as if he might anyhow let himself have that much intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a little list of things I wanted to see go through that night.
+Enough of us was ready to have Sodality perform its last cemetery rite
+and bury itself so that that was pretty sure to go through, but I wanted
+more than that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> and several of us ladies did; and it looked to me like
+the schoolhouse and the young folks and the milk and the meat of this
+town could be done nice things to, so be we managed the meeting right. I
+even had a wild dream that the whole new society might adopt
+Christopher. Well, I donno why that's funny. It ain't funny when a club
+makes a building or a play or a bazaar or a dinner. Why shouldn't it
+make a man?</p>
+
+<p>"I told some of this to Insley, and he caught fire and lit up into a
+torch and had it all thought out beforehand, better than I could of
+dreamed it. But he made me feel bad. Haunted folks&mdash;folks haunted by
+something that was and that isn't&mdash;always makes me feel bad. How is it
+possible, I see he was asking himself the old, wore-out question, to
+drive out of the world something that is the world?</p>
+
+<p>"While we talked, Christopher went off to sleep in my arms, and even
+while I was so interested, I was enjoying the change that comes&mdash;the
+head growing heavier and heavier on my arm, as if sleep weighed
+something.</p>
+
+<p>"'Poor little kiddie,' I says, stupid.</p>
+
+<p>"'Rich little kiddie,' Insley says, wistful.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dear little kiddie,' says somebody else.</p>
+
+<p>"In the dining room doorway Robin stood&mdash;in a doorway as we had first
+seen her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p><p>"'Put him over here on the couch, do,' she says. 'It's much too hot to
+hold him, Calliope.'</p>
+
+<p>"She'd called me that at Mr. Bartlett's funeral, and I recollect how my
+throat went all over me when she done so. Ain't it funny about your own
+first name? It seems so <i>you</i> when somebody nice says it for the first
+time&mdash;more you than you ever knew you were.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley lifted Chris in his arms to do as she said, and then stood
+staring at her across the child.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've been thinking,' he said, blunt&mdash;it's like watching the sign of
+folks to watch the different kind of things that makes them blunt. 'It's
+not my affair, but do you think you ought to let Chris get so&mdash;so used
+to you? What will he do when you're&mdash;when you go away?'</p>
+
+<p>"At this she said nothing for a moment, then she smiled up at him.</p>
+
+<p>"'I meant what I told him that night his father died,' she answered.
+'I'm going to keep Chris with me, always.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Always?' He stared at her, saw her face mean what she said. 'How fine
+of you! How fine of Mr. Proudfit!' said Insley.</p>
+
+<p>"She waited just a breath, then she met his eyes, brave.</p>
+
+<p>"'Not fine of me,' she says&mdash;'only fine for me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> And not&mdash;Mr. Proudfit
+at all. I ought to take back what I told you&mdash;since I did tell you. That
+is not going to be.'</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think Insley meant for a minute to show any lack of formal
+respect for Christopher's sleep. But what Insley did was simply to turn
+and sit him down, bolt upright, on my lap. Then he wheeled round, trying
+to read her face.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you mean you aren't going to marry him?' he demanded, rough&mdash;it's
+like watching another sign of folks to watch for the one thing that will
+make one or another rough.</p>
+
+<p>"'We are not going to be married,' she said. 'I mean that.'</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose likely the room went away altogether then, Christopher and me
+included, and left Insley there in some place a long ways from
+everywhere, with Robin's face looking at him. And he just naturally took
+that face between his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin,' he said, 'don't make me wait to know.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley was the suddenest thing. And land, what it done to her name to
+have him say it. Just for a minute it sounded as if her name was the
+population of the world,&mdash;but with room for everybody else, too.</p>
+
+<p>"I think she put up her hands to take down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> his hands, but when she
+touched them, I think hers must have closed over his, next door to on
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dear,' she says, 'tell me afterward.'</p>
+
+<p>"In that minute of stillness in which any new heaven is let down on a
+suitable new earth, a little voice piped up:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell it now,' says the voice. 'Is it a story? Tell it now.'</p>
+
+<p>"And there was Christopher, wide awake where he had been set down rude
+on my knee, and looking up at them, patient.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was dreamin' my dream,' he explained, polite. 'It was about all the
+nice things there is: You and you and you and hot ice-cream and the
+house's party.... Is they any more?' he asked, anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"Robin put out her arms for him, and she and Insley and I smiled at one
+another over his head.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ever so many more,' we told him.</p>
+
+<p class="space-above">"I slipped out then and found Mis' Emmons, and I guess I come as near
+shining as anything that's like me can.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's the matter?' she says to me. 'You look as if you'd turned up
+the wick.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I did. They have. I won't tell,' I says.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> 'Oh, Mis' Emmons, I guess
+the meeting to-night won't need to adopt Christopher.'</p>
+
+<p>"She looked up at me quick, and then she started shining, too.</p>
+
+<p>"'What a universe it is,' she says, '&mdash;what a universe it is.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then we went off down to the meeting together. And the village was
+wonderful to go through, like a home some of us had hollowed out of the
+hills and was living in, common. As we went walking to the schoolhouse,
+the sidewalks seemed to me no more than ways dickered up to fasten us
+together, and to fasten us to them whose feet had wore the road before
+us, and to lead us to them that was coming, coming after: Christopher
+and Eph and Spudge Cadoza and Otie Daniel, or them like these. Otie
+Daniel had died the night before. Dr. Barrows had said Eph would not be
+lame, but we see he wan't sure of the value of the boy's physical life.
+But even so, even so we had a chance with Chris, and we had a chance
+with Spudge, and we had millions more. My feet wanted to run along them
+roads to meet the millions and my fingers tingled to get things ready.
+And as we went down Daphne Street to that meeting, I see how we all
+<i>was</i> getting things ready, and I could of sung out for what I saw:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p><p>"For Mame Holcomb, sprinkling clothes on the back porch and hurrying to
+get to the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"For Mis' Uppers, picking her currants before she went, so's to get an
+early start on her jam in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"For Viny Liberty, setting sponge for her bread loud enough so we heard
+her clear out in the street, and for Libby, shutting up her chicken coop
+that they earned their own living with.</p>
+
+<p>"For Mis' Toplady, driving by with Timothy, and her in the brown silk
+she'd made herself, like she's made all she's got.</p>
+
+<p>"For Abagail Arnold, wiping out her window to be filled to-morrow with
+the pies of her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"For little Mis' Sparks, rocking her baby on the front stoop and
+couldn't come to the meeting at all, 'count of having nobody to leave
+him with.</p>
+
+<p>"For them that had left cloth bleaching in their side yards and was
+saving the price of buying bleached. For them that had done their day's
+work, from parlour to wood-shed, and had hurried up the supper dishes
+and changed their dress and was on their way to the schoolhouse. For
+them that had lived lives like this and had died at it. For all the
+little dog-eared, wore-out account books where every one of them women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+figured out careful what they couldn't spend. And I looked down the
+street till I couldn't see no farther, and yet Daphne Street was going
+on, round and round the world, and acrost and acrost it, full of women
+doing the same identical way. And I could see away off to the places
+that Daphne Street led past, where women has all these things done for
+them and where the factories is setting them free, like us here in the
+village ain't free just yet, and I felt a wicked envy for them that can
+set their hands to the New Work, that us here in Friendship Village is
+trying so hard to get in between whiles. And I could see away ahead to
+times when sponge and currants and clothes and coops and similar won't
+have to be mothered by women 'most as much as children are; but when
+women, Away Off Then, will be mothers and workers and general human
+beings such as yet we only know how to think about being, scrappy and
+wishful. But all the time, in their arms and in ours and nowheres else,
+lays all the rest of the world that is ever going to be. And something
+in me kind of climbed out of me and run along ahead and looked back at
+me over its shoulder and says: 'Keep up, keep up, Calliope.' And before
+I knew it, right out loud, I says: 'I will. I will.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p><p>"An hour later, up in the schoolhouse, Silas Sykes stood arguing, to
+the top of his tone, that the first work of the reorganized
+society&mdash;that was to take in the whole town&mdash;had ought to be to buy a
+bargain Cupid-and-fish fountain he knew of, for the market square.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's going to take years and years to do&mdash;everything,' says Mis'
+Emmons to me, low.</p>
+
+<p>"But that didn't seem like much of anything to either of us. 'What if it
+is,' I says. And she nodded."</p>
+
+<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53650 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mothers to Men, by Zona Gale

-

-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most

-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions

-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of

-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at

-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have

-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.

-

-

-

-Title: Mothers to Men

-

-Author: Zona Gale

-

-Release Date: December 2, 2016 [EBook #53650]

-

-Language: English

-

-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

-

-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHERS TO MEN ***

-

-

-

-

-Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed

-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was

-produced from images generously made available by The

-Internet Archive)

-

-

-

-

-

-

-MOTHERS TO MEN

-

-[Illustration: Logo]

-

-THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

-

-NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO

-SAN FRANCISCO

-

-MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED

-

-LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA

-MELBOURNE

-

-THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.

-

-TORONTO

-

-

-

-

-MOTHERS TO MEN

-

-BY

-

-ZONA GALE

-

-AUTHOR OF "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE," "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE

-LOVE STORIES," "THE LOVES OF PELLEAS

-AND ETARRE," ETC.

-

-New York

-THE MACMILLAN COMPANY

-1911

-

-_All Rights Reserved_

-

-

-COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING COMPANY, THE RIDGEWAY

-COMPANY, THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, AND THE STANDARD

-FASHION COMPANY.

-

-COPYRIGHT, 1911,

-

-BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

-

-Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911.

-

-Norwood Press

-J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.

-Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.

-

-

-

-

-MOTHERS TO MEN

-

-

-"Daddy!"

-

-The dark was so thick with hurrying rain that the child's voice was

-drowned. So he splashed forward a few steps in the mud and puddles of

-the highway and plucked at the coat of the man tramping before. The man

-took a hand from a pocket and stooped somewhat to listen, still plodding

-ahead.

-

-"Daddy! It's the hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went right

-through that hole an' it chokes my toe awful."

-

-The man suddenly squatted in the mud, presenting a broad, scarcely

-distinguishable back.

-

-"Climb up," he commanded.

-

-The boy wavered. His body ached with weariness, his feet were sore and

-cold, something in his head was numb. But in a moment he ran on, two

-steps or three, past the man.

-

-"Nope," he said, "I'm seeing if I could walk all the way. I could--yet.

-I just told you 'bout my toe, daddy, 'cause I _had_ to talk about it."

-

-The man said nothing, but he rose and groped for the child's arm and

-got it about the armpit, and, now and then as they walked, he pulled the

-shoulder awkwardly upward, trying to help.

-

-After a time of silence the rain subsided a little, so that the child's

-voice was less like a drowned butterfly.

-

-"Daddy," he said, "what's velvet?"

-

-"I dunno, sonny. Some kind of black cloth, I guess. Why?"

-

-"It came in my head," the child explained. "I was tryin' to think of

-nice things. Velvet sounds like a king's clothes--but it sounds like a

-coffin too. I didn't know if it's a nice thing."

-

-This, the man understood swiftly, was because _her_ coffin had been

-black velvet--the coffin which he had had no money to buy for her, for

-his wife and the boy's mother, the coffin which had been bought with the

-poor fund of a church which he had never entered. "What other nice thing

-you been thinkin' of?" he asked abruptly.

-

-"Circus. An' angels. An' ice-cream. An' a barrel o' marbles. An' bein'

-warm an' clean stockin's an' rocked...."

-

-"My God!" said the man.

-

-The child looked up expectantly.

-

-"Did he say anything back?" he inquired eagerly.

-

-"Not a word," said the man in his throat.

-

-"Lemme try," said the child. "God--oh, God--_God dear_!" he called into

-the night.

-

-From the top of the hill on the edge of the Pump pasture which in that

-minute they had reached, they suddenly saw, cheery and yellow and alive,

-the lamps of Friendship Village, shining in the valley; and away at one

-side, less in serene contemplation than in deliberate withdrawal, shone

-the lights of a house set alone on its hill.

-

-"Oh, daddy, daddy--look at the lights!" the child cried. "God didn't say

-nothin' with words. Maybe he talks with lights instead of 'em."

-

-The man quickened his steps until, to keep pace with him, the little boy

-broke into uneven running.

-

-"Is those lights where we're goin', daddy?" he asked.

-

-"That's where," said the man. He put his hand in his pocket and felt for

-the fifteen cents that lay there, wrapped in paper. The fancied odour

-and warmth of something to drink caught at him until he could hardly

-bear the longing.

-

-But before he could get to the drink he must do something else. The man

-had been fighting away the thought of what he meant to do. But when they

-entered the village and were actually upon its main street, lonely in

-the rainy, eight o'clock summer dusk, what he meant to do had to be

-faced. So he began looking this way and that for a place to leave the

-child. There was a wagon shop. Old wagons stood under the open shed,

-their thills and tongues hanging, not expectant of journeys like those

-of new wagons, but idle, like the worn arms of beaten men. Some men, he

-thought, would leave the boy there, to sleep under a seat and be found

-in the morning; but he was no such father as that, he reflected

-complacently. He meant to leave the boy in a home, give him a fair

-start. There was a little house with a broken picket fence--someway she

-wouldn't have liked him to be there; _she_ always liked things nice. He

-had never been able to give the boy much that was nice, but now, he said

-to himself, he would take nothing second rate. There was a grocery with

-a light above stairs where very likely the family lived, and there, too,

-was a dry stairway where the child could sit and wait until somebody

-came--no, not there either.... "The best ain't none too good for the

-little fellow," thought the man.

-

-"Dad-_ee_!" cried the child suddenly.

-

-He had run a few steps on and stood with his nose against the misty pane

-of Abagail Arnold's Home Bakery. Covered with pink mosquito-netting were

-a plate of sugar rolls, a fruit cake, a platter of cream puffs, and a

-tall, covered jar of shelled nuts.

-

-"Hustle up--you!" said the man roughly, and took him by the arm again.

-

-"I was comin'," said the little boy.

-

-Why not leave the child at the bakery? No--a house. It must be a house,

-with a porch and a front stair and big upstairs rooms and a look of

-money-in-the-bank. He was giving care to the selection. It was as if he

-were exercising some natural paternal office, to be scrupulously

-discharged. Music issued from the wooden saloon building with the false

-two-story front and the coloured windows; from a protesting piano a

-dance tune was being furiously forced, and, as the door swung open, the

-tap and thud of feet, the swell of voices and laughter, the odour of the

-spirits caught at the cold and weary man. "Hurry along--hurry along!" he

-bade the boy roughly. That was where he would come back afterward, but

-first he must find the right place for the boy.

-

-Vaguely he was seeking for that section of the village which it would

-call "the residence part," with that ugly and naked appropriation of the

-term which excludes all the humbler homes from residence-hood at all.

-But when he had turned aside from the main street he came upon the First

-Church, with lights streaming from the ground-glass windows of the

-prayer-meeting room, and he stood still, staring up at it.

-

-She had cared a good deal about that sort of thing. Churches did

-good--it was a church that had buried her when he could not. Why not

-there? Why not leave the child there?

-

-He turned aside and mounted the three wooden steps and sat down, drawing

-the boy beside him. Grateful for a chance to rest, the child turned

-sidewise and dropped his head heavily on his father's arm. There was

-light enough for the father to see the thick, wet hair on the babyish

-forehead.

-

-"I did walked all the way, didn't I?" the child said triumphantly.

-

-"You bet you did," said his father absently.

-

-Since the boy's mother had died only three months had passed, but in

-that time had been crowded for the child a lifetime of physical misery.

-Before that time, too, there had been hunger and cold and the torture of

-the continual quarreling between that mother, sickly, half-fed,

-irritable, and this father, out of work and drunken. Then the mother had

-died, and the man had started out with the boy, seeking new work where

-they would not know his old vice. And in these three months, for the

-boy's sake, that old vice had been kept bound. For the boy's sake he had

-been sober and, if the chance had come, he would have been industrious.

-But, save for odd jobs, the chance never came; there seemed to be a kind

-of ineffectualness in the way he asked for work which forbade him a

-trial. Then one day, after almost three months of the struggle, he had

-waked to the old craving, to the need, the instant need, for liquor. He

-had faced the situation honestly. He knew, or thought he knew, his power

-of endurance. He knew that in a day or two he would be worsted, and that

-there would follow a period of which, afterward, he would remember

-nothing. Meanwhile, what of the boy? He had a fondness for the boy, and

-there remained to the man some shreds of decency and even of tradition.

-He would not turn him over to the "authorities." He would not cast him

-adrift in the city. He resolved to carry him to the country, to some

-near little town where, dimly it seemed to him, the people would be

-more likely to take him in. "They have more time--an' more room--an'

-more to eat," he sought to explain it to himself. So he had walked, and

-the child had walked, from the City to Friendship Village. He must find

-a place to leave him: why not leave him here on the church steps,

-"outside the meetin'?"

-

-"Don't you go to sleep, kiddie," he said, and shook him lightly.

-

-"I was jus' restin' my eye-flaps. Eye-things. _What_ are they, daddy?"

-

-"Eye-lids."

-

-"Yes. Them. They're tired, too," said the child, and smiled--the sleepy

-smile which gave his face a baby winsomeness. Then he snuggled in the

-curve of arm, like a drowsy, nosing puppy.

-

-The father sat looking down on him, and in his breast something pulled.

-In these three months he had first become really acquainted with the

-boy, had first performed for him little personal offices--sewed on a

-button or two, bought him shoes, bound up a hurt finger. In this time,

-too, he had first talked with him alone, tried to answer his questions.

-"Where _is_ my mamma, an' will she rock somebody else?" "Are you going

-to be my daddy till you die, an' _then_ who'll be?" "What is the biggest

-thing everybody knows? Can I know it too?"... Also, in these three

-months, at night he had gone to sleep, sometimes in a bed, oftener in a

-barn, now and again under the stars, with the child breathing within his

-reach, and had waked to keep him covered with his own coat. Now he was

-going to end all this.

-

-"It ain't fair to the kid not to. It ain't fair to cart him around like

-this," he said over and over, defending himself before some dim

-dissenter.

-

-The boy suddenly swung back from his father's arm and looked up in his

-face. "Will--will there be any supper till morning?" he asked.

-

-You might have thought that the man did not hear, he sat so still

-looking down the wet road-ruts shining under the infrequent lamps.

-Hunger and cold, darkness and wet and ill-luck--why should he not keep

-the boy from these? It was not deserting his child; it was giving him

-into better hands. It did not occur to him that the village might not

-accept the charge. Anything would be better than what he himself had to

-give. Hunger and cold and darkness....

-

-"You stay still here a minute, sonny," said the man.

-

-"You goin' 'way?" the child demanded.

-

-"A minute. You stay still here--right where you are," said the man, and

-went into the darkness.

-

-The little boy sat still. He was wide awake now that he was alone; the

-walls of the dark seemed suddenly to recede, and instead of merely the

-church steps there was the whole black, listening world to take account

-of. He sat alert, trying to warm each hand on the cold wrist of its

-fellow. Where had his father gone? To find them a place to stay? Suppose

-he came back and said that he had found them a home; and they should go

-to it; and it would have a coal stove and a bedstead, and a pantry with

-cookies and brown sugar in the jars. And a lady would come and cook

-molasses candy for him....

-

-All this time something was hurting him intolerably. It was the foot,

-and the biggest toe, and the hole that was "choking" _him_. He fumbled

-at his shoe laces, but they were wet and the shoes were wet and sodden,

-and he gave it up. Where had his father gone? How big the world seemed

-when he was gone, and how _different_ the night was. And when the lady

-had the molasses candy cooked, like in a story, she would cool it at the

-window and they would cut it in squares....

-

-As suddenly as he had gone, his father reappeared from the darkness.

-

-"Here," he said roughly, and thrust in the child's hands a paper bag.

-And when he had opened it eagerly there were sugar rolls and cream puffs

-and a piece of fruit cake and some shelled nuts. Fifteen cents' worth of

-food, badly enough selected, in all conscience, but--fifteen cents'

-worth. The fifteen cents which the man had been carrying in his pocket,

-wrapped in paper.

-

-"Now set there," said his father, "an' eat 'em up. An' listen, son. Set

-there till folks come out from in there. Set there till they come out.

-An' here's somethin' I'm puttin' in your coat pocket--see? It's a paper.

-Don't you look at it. But when the folks come out from in there--an' ask

-you anything--you show 'em that. Remember. Show 'em that."

-

-In the prayer-meeting room the reed organ sent out some trembling,

-throaty chords, and the little group in there sang an old melody. It was

-strange to the man, as he listened--

-

-

-     "Break thou the bread of life

-     To me, to me--"

-

-

-but, "That's it," he thought, "that's it. Break it to him--I can't. All

-I can give him is stuff in a paper bag, an' not always that. Now you

-break it to him--"

-

-"Dad-_ee_!" cried the child. "You!"

-

-Startled, the man looked down at him. It was almost like a counter

-charge. But the child was merely holding out to him half his store. The

-man shook his head and went down the steps to the sidewalk and turned to

-look back at the child munching happily from the paper sack. "Break it

-to him--break it to him--God!" the father muttered, as he might have

-used a charm.

-

-Again the child looked out expectantly.

-

-"Did he say anything back?" he asked eagerly.

-

-"Not a word--not a word," said the man again. This time he laughed,

-nervously and foolishly. "But mebbe he will," he mumbled

-superstitiously. "I dunno. Now, you set there. An' then you give 'em the

-paper--an' go with anybody out o' the church that asks you. Dad may not

-get back for--quite a while...."

-

-The man went. The child, deep in the delight of a cream puff, wondered

-and looked after him troublously, and was vaguely comforted by the

-murmur of voices beyond the doors.

-

-"Why, God didn't answer back because he was to the church meeting," the

-child thought, when he heard the people moving about within.

-

-

-

-

-I

-

-

-"Inside the church that night," Calliope Marsh is wont to tell it, "the

-Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality was having one

-of our special meetings, with hot chocolate and ice lemonade and two

-kinds of wafers. There wasn't a very big attendance, account of the

-rain, and there was so much refreshments ready that us ladies was urgin'

-the men to have all they wanted.

-

-"'Drink both kinds, Timothy,' Mis Toplady says to her husband,

-persuadin'; 'it'll have to be throwed away if somebody don't drink it

-up.'

-

-"'Lord, Amandy,' says Timothy, testy, 'I do hate to be sicked on to my

-food like that. It takes away my appetite, same as poison would.'

-

-"'They always do it,' says Jimmy Sturgis, morose. 'My wife'll say to me,

-"Jimmy, eat up them cold peas. They'll spoil if you don't," and, "Jimmy,

-can't you make 'way with them cold pancakes?" Till I wish't I could

-starve.'

-

-"'Well, if you hadn't et up things,' says Mis' Sturgis, mild, 'we'd of

-been scrappin' in the poor-house by now. I dunno but I'd ruther scrap

-where I am.'

-

-"'Sure!' says Postmaster Silas Sykes, that always pours oil on troubled

-waters except when the trouble is his own; and then he churns them.

-

-"'I dunno what ailed me in business meeting to-night,' says Mis'

-Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I declare, I was full as nervous as a

-witch. I couldn't keep my feet still anywheres.'

-

-"'The fidgets,' comprehends Mis' Uppers, sympathetic. 'I get 'em in my

-feet 'long toward night sometimes. Turn an' twist an' shift--I know the

-feeling. Whenever my feet begin that, I always give right up an' take

-off my shoes an' get into my rubbers.'

-

-"'Well, I wish't I had some rubbers now,' says Mis' Mayor Uppers. 'I

-wore my best shoes out to tea an' come right from tea here, like a

-maniac. An' now look at me, in my Three Dollar-and-a-half kids an' the

-streets runnin' rivers.'

-

-"'You take my rubbers,' Mis' Timothy Toplady offered. 'I've set with 'em

-on all evening because I always get 'em mixed up at Sodality, an' I

-declare the water'll feel good to my poor feet.'

-

-"'No, no, don't you trouble,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I'll just slip my shoes

-off an' track that one block in my stocking feet. Then I'll put 'em in

-good, hot water an' go to bed. I wouldn't of come out to-night at all

-if it hadn't of been for the professor.'

-

-"'For goodness' sakes,' I says, 'don't call him that. You know how he

-hates it.'

-

-"'But I do like to say it,' Mis' Uppers insists, wistful. 'He's the only

-professor I ever knew.'

-

-"'Me either,' I says--and I knew how she felt.

-

-"Just the same, we was getting to like Mr. Insley too much to call him

-that if he didn't want it, or even 'doctor' that was more common, though

-over to Indian Mound College, half way between us and the City, he is

-one or both, and I dunno but his name tapers off with capital letters,

-same as some.

-

-"'I just came over here to work,' he told us when we first see him. 'I

-don't profess anything. And "doctor" means teacher, you know, and I'm

-just learning things. Must you have a formal title for me? Won't Mr.

-do?'

-

-"Most of the College called him just 'Insley,' friendly and approving,

-and dating back to his foot-ball days, and except when we was speaking

-to him, we commonly got to calling him that too. A couple of months

-before he'd come over from the College with a letter of introduction

-from one of the faculty to Postmaster Silas Sykes, that is an alderman

-and our professional leading citizen. The letter from the College said

-that we could use Mr. Insley in any local civic work we happened to be

-doing.

-

-"'Civic work?' Silas says to him, thoughtful. 'You mean shuttin' up

-saloons an' like that?'

-

-"'Not necessarily,' he told him. 'Just work with folks, you know.'

-

-"'Well-a, settin' out bushes?' Silas asks.

-

-"'Whatever you're most interested in, Mr. Sykes,' says he. 'Isn't there

-some organization that's doing things here?'

-

-"Silas wasn't interested in so very much of anything except Silas. But

-the word 'organization' helped him out.

-

-"'There's the Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality,'

-says he. 'That must be the very kind of a thing you mean.'

-

-"Insley laughed a little, but he let Mis' Sykes, that loves new things

-and new people, bring him to our next evening meeting in the church

-parlors, and he'd been back several times, not saying much, but just

-getting acquainted. And that rainy night, when the men met with us to

-talk over some money raising for Sodality, we'd asked him to come over

-too. We all liked him. He had a kind of a used-to-things way, and you

-felt like you'd always known him or, for the time you hadn't, that

-you'd both missed something out; and he had a nice look too, a look that

-seemed to be saying 'good morning' and to be beginning a fine, new

-day--the best day yet.

-

-"He'd set there kind of broodin' the most of that evening, drinking

-whatever anybody brought him, but not putting his mind to it so very

-much; but it was a bright broodin', an' one that made you think of

-something that's going to open and not just of something that's shut up.

-You can brood both ways, but the effect is as different as a bud from a

-core.

-

-"'Speakin' of money raisin' for Sodality,' says Silas Sykes, kind of

-pretend hearty and pretend casual, like he does, 'why don't Sodality

-make some money off'n the Fourth of July? Everybody else is.'

-

-("Sodality always speaks of itself and of the Cemetery real intimate,

-without the _the_, an' everybody's got to doing it.)

-

-"Us ladies all set still and kept still. The Fourth of July, that was

-less than a week off, was a sore point with us, being we'd wanted a

-celebration that would _be_ a celebration, and not merely a money-raiser

-for the town.

-

-"'Oh, I say canvass, house to house,' says Timothy. 'Folks would give

-you a dime to get you off'n the front porch that wouldn't come out to a

-dime entertainment, never.'

-

-"'Why not ask them that's got Dead in their own families, to pay out for

-'em, an' leave them alone that's got livin' mouths to feed?' says Threat

-Hubbelthwait, querulous. Threat ain't no relations but his wife, and he

-claims to have no Dead of his own. I always say they must be either

-living or dead, or else where's Threat come in? But he won't admit it.

-

-"'What you raisin' money for anyhow?' asks Eppleby Holcomb, quiet.

-Eppleby always keeps still a long time, and then lets out something

-vital.

-

-"As a matter of fact, Sodality didn't have no real work on hand,

-Cemetery lookin' real neat and tasty for Cemetery, and no immediate dead

-coming on as far as we could know; but we didn't have much of anything

-in the treasury, either. And when we didn't have any work on hand, we

-was in the habit of raising money, and when we'd got some money earnt,

-we was in the habit of devising some nice way to spend it. And so we

-kept Sodality real alive.

-

-"'Well, there may not be any active dead just now,' Mis' Sykes explains

-it, 'but they are sure to die and need us. We had two country funerals

-to pay for last year. Or I might say, one an' a half, one corpse

-contributing half enough for his own support in Cemetery.'

-

-"With that Insley spoke up, kind of firm and nice, with muscles in his

-tone, like he does:

-

-"'What's the matter with doing something with these folks before they

-die?' he asks.

-

-"I guess we all looked kind of blank--like when you get asked _why_

-Columbus discovered America and all you know how to answer is just the

-date he done so on.

-

-"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'do what?'

-

-"'Mustn't there be something to do with them, living, if there's

-everything to be done for them, dead?' Insley asks.

-

-"'Well-a' says Mis' Sykes, 'I don't know that I understand just how you

-mean that. Perhaps the Mission Band--'

-

-"'No,' says Insley. 'You. Us.'

-

-"I never knew a man to say so little and yet to get so much said.

-

-"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'of course Sodality was formed with the idee

-of caring for Cemetery. You see that lets in the Dead only.'

-

-"'Gosh,' says Eppleby Holcomb, 'how exclusive.' But I don't know as

-anybody heard him but me.

-

-"'I know,' says Insley, slow. 'Well, at any rate, perhaps there are

-things that all of us Living might do together--for the sake, say, of

-earning some money for the Dead. There'd be no objection to that, would

-there?'

-

-"'Oh, no,' says Mis' Sykes. 'I'm sure nobody could take exception to

-_that_. Of course you always have to earn money out of the living.'

-

-"Insley looked at us all kind of shy--at one and another and another of

-us, like he thought he might find some different answer in somebody's

-eyes. I smiled at him, and so did Mis' Toplady, and so did Eppleby; and

-Mis' Eleanor Emmons, the widow-lady, lately moved in, she nodded. But

-the rest set there like their faces was on wrong side out and didn't

-show no true pattern.

-

-"'I mean,' he says, not quite knowing how to make us understand what he

-was driving at, 'I mean, let's get to know these folks while they are

-alive. Aren't we all more interested in folks, than we are in their

-graves?'

-

-"'_Folks_,' Timothy Toplady says over, meditative, like he'd heard of

-members, customers, clients, murderers and the like, but never of folks.

-

-"'I mean,' Insley says again, 'oh, any one of a dozen things. For

-instance, do something jolly that'll give your young people something to

-do evenings--get them to help earn the money for Cemetery, if you want

-to,' he adds, laughing a little.

-

-"'There's goin' to be a Vigilance Committee to see after the young folks

-of Friendship Village, nights,' says Silas Sykes, grim.

-

-"'You might have town parties, have the parties in schools and in the

-town hall,' Insley goes on, 'and talk over the Cemetery that belongs to

-you all, and talk over the other things besides the Cemetery that belong

-to you all. Maybe I could help,' he adds, 'though I own up to you now

-I'm really more fond of folks--speaking by and large--than I am of

-tombstones.'

-

-"He said a little more to us, about how folks was doing in the world

-outside the village, and he was so humorous about it that they never

-knew how something inside him was hopping with hope, like I betted it

-was, with his young, divine enthusiasm. And when he'd got done he

-waited, all grave and eager, for somebody to peep up. And it was, as it

-would be, Silas Sykes who spoke first.

-

-"'It's all right, it's all right,' says he, 'so long as Sodality don't

-go meddling in the village affairs--petitionin' the council and

-protestin' an' so on. That gets any community all upset.'

-

-"'That's so,' says Timothy, nodding. 'Meetin', singin' songs, servin'

-lemonade an' plantin' things in the ground is all right enough. It helps

-on the fellow feelin' amazin'. But pitchin' in for reforms and things--'

-Timothy shook his head.

-

-"'As to reforms,' says Insley, 'give me the fellowship, and the reforms

-will take care of themselves.'

-

-"'Things is quite handy about takin' their course, though,' says Silas,

-'so be we don't yank open the cocoons an' buds an' others.'

-

-"'Well,' says Mis' Uppers, 'I can't do much more, Professor. I'm drove

-to death, as it is. I don't even get time to do my own improvin' round

-the place.' Mis' Uppers always makes that her final argument. 'Sew for

-the poor?' I've heard her say. 'Why, I can't even get my own fall sewing

-done.'

-

-"'Me, too,' and, 'Me, either,' went round the circle. And, 'I can't do a

-great deal myself,' says Mis' Sykes, 'not till after my niece goes

-away.'

-

-"I thought, 'I shouldn't think you could tend to much of anything else,

-not with Miss Beryl Sessions in the house.' That was the Sykes's niece,

-till then unknown to them, that we'd all of us heard nothing but, since

-long before she come. But of course I kept still, part because I was

-expecting an unknown niece of my own in a week or so, and your unknown

-relatives is quite likely to be glass houses.

-

-"'Another thing,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'don't let's us hold any

-doin's in this church, kicking up the new cork that the Ladies' Aid has

-just put down on the floor. It'll all be tracked up in no time, letting

-in Tom, Dick, and Harry.'

-

-"'Don't let's get the church mixed up in anything outside, for pity's

-sakes,' says Silas. 'The trustees'll object to our meeting here, if we

-quit working for a dignified object and go to making things mutual,

-promiscuous. Churches has got to be church-like.'

-

-"'Well, Silas,' says Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying anything,

-'I donno as some of us could bring ourselves to think of Christ as real

-Christ-like, if he come back the way he use' to be.'

-

-"Insley sat looking round on them all, still with his way of saying good

-morning on a good day. I wondered if he wasn't wishing that they'd hang

-on that way to something worth hanging to. For I've always thought, and

-I think now, that they's a-plenty of stick-to-itiveness in the world;

-but the trouble is, it's stuck to the wrong thing.

-

-"The talk broke up after that, like somebody had said something in bad

-taste; and we conversed around in groups, and done our best to make

-'way with the refreshments. And Insley set talking to Mis' Eleanor

-Emmons, the new widow, lately moved in.

-

-"About Mis' Emmons the social judgment of Friendship Village was for the

-present hanging loose. This was partly because we didn't understand her

-name.

-

-"'My land, was her husband a felon or a thief or what that she don't use

-his name?' everybody asked everybody. 'What's she stick her own name in

-front of his last name like that for? Sneaked out of usin' his Christian

-name as soon as his back was turned, _I_ call it,' said some. 'My land,

-I'd use my dead husband's forename if it was Nebuchadnezzar. _My_

-opinion, we'd best go slow till she explains herself.'

-

-"But I guess Insley had more confidence.

-

-"'You'll help, I know?' I heard him say to Mis' Emmons.

-

-"'My friend,' she says back, 'whatever I can do I'll do. It's a big job

-you're talking about, you know.'

-

-"'It's _the_ big job,' says Insley, quiet.

-

-"Pretty soon Mis' Toplady got up on her feet, drawing her shawl up her

-back.

-

-"'Well,' she says, 'whatever you decide, count on me--I'll always do for

-chinkin' in. I've got to get home now and set my bread or it won't be

-up till day _after_ to-morrow. Ready, Timothy? Good night all.'

-

-"She went towards the door, Timothy following. But before they got to

-it, it opened, and somebody come in, at the sight of who Mis' Toplady

-stopped short and the talk of the rest of us fell away. No stranger,

-much, comes to Friendship Village without our knowing it, and to have a

-stranger walk unbeknownst into the very lecture-room of the First Church

-was a thing we never heard of, without he was a book agent or a

-travelling man.

-

-"Here, though, was a stranger--and such a stranger. She was so

-unexpected and so dazzling that it shot through my head she was like a

-star, taking refuge from all the roughness and the rain outside--a star,

-so it come in my head, using up its leisure on a cloudy night with

-peepin' in here and there to give out brightness anyway. The rough, dark

-cheviot that the girl wore was sort of like a piece of storm-cloud

-clinging about that brightness--a brightness of wind-rosy face and blowy

-hair, all uncovered. She stood on the threshold, holding her wet

-umbrella at arm's length out in the entry.

-

-"'I beg your pardon. Are you ready, Aunt Eleanor?' she asked.

-

-"Mis' Eleanor Emmons turned and looked at her.

-

-"'Robin!' she says. 'Why, you must be wet through.'

-

-"'I'm pretty wet,' says the girl, serene, 'I'm so messy I won't come in.

-I'll just stop out here on the steps. Don't hurry.'

-

-"'Wait a minute,' Mis' Emmons says. 'Stay where you are then, please,

-Robin, and meet these people.'

-

-"The girl threw the door wide, and she stepped back into the vestibule,

-where her umbrella had been trailing little puddles; and she stood there

-against the big, black background of the night and the village, while

-Mis' Emmons presented her.

-

-"'This is my niece, Miss Sidney,' she told us. 'She has just come to me

-to-day--for as long as I can keep her. Will you all come to see her?'

-

-"It wasn't much the way Mis' Sykes had done, singing praises of Miss

-Beryl Sessions for weeks on end before she'd got there; nor the way I

-was doing, wondering secret about my unknown niece, and what she'd be

-like. Mis' Emmons introduced her niece like she'd always been one of us.

-She said our names over, and we went towards her; and Miss Sidney leaned

-a little inside the frame of the doorway and put out her hand to us

-all, a hand that didn't have any glove on and that in spite of the rain,

-was warm.

-

-"'I'm so sorry,' she says, 'I'm afraid I'm disgracing Aunt Eleanor. But

-I couldn't help it. I love to walk in the rain.'

-

-"'That's what rain is for,' Insley says to her; and I see the two change

-smiles before Mis' Hubbelthwait's 'Well, I do hope you've got some good

-high rubbers on your feet' made the girl grave again--a sweet grave, not

-a stiff grave. You can be grave both ways, and they're as different from

-each other as soup from hot water.

-

-"'I have, thank you,' she says, 'big storm boots. Did you know,' she

-adds, 'that somebody else is waiting out here? Somebody's little bit of

-a beau? And I'm afraid he's gone to sleep.'

-

-"We looked at one another, wondering. Who was waiting for any of us?

-'Not me,' one after another says, positive. 'We've all raced home alone

-from this church since we was born,' Mis' Uppers adds, true enough.

-

-"We was curious, with that curiosity that it's kind of fun to have, and

-we all crowded forward into the entry. And a little to one side of the

-shining lamp path was setting a child--a little boy, with a paper bag in

-his arms.

-

-

-

-

-II

-

-

-"Who on earth was he, we wondered to ourselves, and we all jostled

-forward, trying to see down to him, us women lifting up our skirts from

-the entry wet. He was like a little wad of clothes, bunched up on the

-top step, but inside them the little fellow was all curled up, sleeping.

-And we knew he hadn't come for any of us, and he didn't look like he was

-waiting for anybody in particular.

-

-"Silas fixed up an explanation, ready-done:--

-

-"'He must belong down on the flats,' says Silas. 'The idear of his

-sleepin' here. I said we'd oughter hev a gate acrost the vestibule.'

-

-"'Roust him up an' start him home,' says Timothy Toplady, adviceful.

-

-"'I will,' says Silas, that always thinks it's his share to do any

-unclaimed managing; and he brought down his hand towards the child's

-shoulder. But his hand didn't get that far.

-

-"'Let me wake him up,' says Robin Sidney.

-

-"She laid her umbrella in the wet of the steps and, Silas being

-surprised into giving way, she stooped over the child. She woke him up

-neither by speaking to him nor grasping his arm, but she just slipped

-her hands along his cheeks till her hands met under his chin, and she

-lifted up his chin, gentle.

-

-"'Wake up and look at me,' she says.

-

-"The child opened his eyes, with no starting or bewildering, and looked

-straight up into her face. There was light enough for us all to see that

-he smiled bright, like one that's real glad some waiting is done. And

-she spoke to him, not making a point of it and bringing it out like

-she'd aimed it at him, but just matter-of-fact gentle and commonplace

-tender.

-

-"'Whose little boy are you?' she ask' him.

-

-"'I'm goin' with whoever wants me to go with 'em,' says the child.

-

-"'But who are you--where do you live?' she says to him. 'You live, don't

-you--in this town?'

-

-"The child shook his head positive.

-

-"'I lived far,' he told her, 'in that other place. I come up here with

-my daddy. He says he might not come back to-night.'

-

-"Robin Sidney knelt right down before him on the wet steps.

-

-"'Truly,' she said, 'haven't you any place to go to-night?'

-

-"'Oh, yes,' says the child, 'he says I must go with whoever wants me to

-go with 'em. Do--do you?'

-

-"At that Miss Sidney looked up at us, swift, and down again. The wind

-had took hold of a strand of her hair and blew it across her eyes, and

-she was pushing it away as she got up. And by then Insley was standing

-before her, back of the little boy, that he suddenly stooped down and

-picked up in his arms.

-

-"'Let's get inside, shall we?' he says, commanding. 'Let's all go back

-in and see about him.'

-

-"We went back into the church, even Silas taking orders, though of

-course that was part curiosity; and Insley sat down with the child on

-his knee, and held out the child's feet in his hand.

-

-"'He's wet as a rat,' he says. 'Look at his shoes.'

-

-"'Well-a, make him tell his name, why don't you?' says Mis' Sykes,

-sharp. '_I_ think we'd ought to find out who he is. What's your name,

-Boy?' she adds, brisk.

-

-"Insley dropped the boy's feet and took a-hold of one of his hands.

-'Yes,' he says, hasty, 'we must try to do that.' But he looked right

-straight over Mis' Sykes's shoulder to where, beyond the others, Robin

-Sidney was standing. 'He was your friend first,' he said to her. 'You

-found him.'

-

-"She come and knelt down beside the child where, on Insley's knee, he

-sat staring round, all wondering and questioning, to the rest of us. But

-she seemed to forget all about the rest of us, and I loved the way she

-was with that little strange boy. She kind of put her hands on him,

-wiping the raindrops off his face, unbuttoning his wet coat, doing a

-little something to his collar; and every touch was a kind of a little

-stroke that some women's hands give almost without their knowing it. I

-loved to watch her, because I'm always as stiff as a board with a

-child--unless I'm alone with them. Then I ain't.

-

-"'My name's Robin,' she says to the little fellow. 'What's yours, dear?'

-

-"'Christopher,' he says right off. 'First, Christopher. An' then John.

-An' then Bartlett. Have you only got one name?' he asked her.

-

-"'Yes, I've got two,' she says. 'The rest of mine is Sidney. Where--'

-

-"'Only two?' says the child. 'Why, I've got three.'

-

-"'Only two,' she answers. 'Where did your father go--don't you know

-that, Christopher?'

-

-"That seemed to make him think of something, and he looked down at his

-paper bag.

-

-"'First he bringed me these,' he says, and his face lighted up and he

-held out his bag to her. 'You can have one my cream-puffs,' he offers

-her, magnificent. I held my breath for fear she wouldn't take it, but

-she did. 'What fat ones!' she says admiring, and held it in her hand

-while she asked him more. It was real strange how we stood around, us

-older women and all, waiting for her to see what she could get out of

-him. But there wasn't any use. He was to go with whoever asked him to

-go--that was all he knew.

-

-"Silas Sykes snaps his watch. 'It's gettin' late,' he gives out, with a

-backward look at nothing in particular. 'Hadn't we best just leave him

-at the police station? Threat Hubbelthwait and me go right past there.'

-

-"Mis' Toplady, she sweeps round on him, pulling her shawl over her

-shoulders--one of them gestures of some women that makes it seem like

-even them that works hard and don't get out much of anywhere has motions

-left in them that used to be motioned in courts and castles and like

-that. 'Police station! Silas Sykes,' says she, queenly, 'you put me in

-mind of a stone wall, you're that sympathizin'.'

-

-"'Well, _we_ can't take him, Amandy,' Timothy Toplady reminds her,

-hurried. 'We live too far. 'Twouldn't do to walk him 'way there.'

-Timothy will give, but he wants to give to his own selected poor that he

-knows about; an' he won't never allow himself no luxuries in givin' here

-an' there, when something just happens to come up.

-

-"'Land, he may of come from where there's disease--you can't tell,' says

-Mis' Uppers. 'I think we'd ought to go slow.'

-

-"'Yes,' says two-three others, 'we'd best go slow. Why, his father may

-be looking for him.'

-

-"Mis' Eleanor Emmons spoke up serene.

-

-"'While we're going slow,' she says, 'I think I'll just take him home

-and get his feet dry. I live the nearest. Mr. Sykes, you might report

-him at the police station as you go by, in case someone is looking for

-him. And if nobody inquires, he can sleep on my couch beside my grate

-fire to-night. Can't he, Robin?'

-

-"'I'd love it,' says the girl.

-

-"'Excellent,' says Insley, and set the little boy on his feet.

-

-"But when he done that, the child suddenly swung round and caught Miss

-Sidney's arm and looked up in her face; and his little nose was screwed

-up alarming.

-

-"'What _is_ it--what's the matter, Christopher?' she ask' him. And the

-rest of us that had begun moving to go, stopped to listen. And in that

-little stillness Christopher told us:--

-

-"'Oh,' he says, 'it's that hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went

-right through that hole. And it's _chokin'_ me.'

-

-"Just exactly as if a hand had kind of touched us all, a nice little

-stir went round among us women. And with that, Insley, who had been

-standing there so big and strong and able and willing, and waiting for a

-chance to take hold, he just simply put his hands on his knees and

-stooped over and made his back right for the little fellow to climb up

-on. The child knew what it was for, soon enough--we see somebody

-somewheres must of been doing it for him before, for he scrambled right

-up, laughing, and Miss Sidney helping him. And a kind of a little

-ripple, that wan't no true words, run round among us all. Most women and

-some men is strong on ripples of this sort, but when it comes right down

-to doing something in consequence, we ain't so handy.

-

-"'Leave me come along and help take care of him a little while,' I says;

-and I thought it was because I was ashamed of myself and trying to make

-up for not offering before. But I think really what was the matter with

-me was that I just plain wanted to go along with that little boy.

-

-"'I'm your automobile,' says Insley to the little fellow, and he laughed

-out, delighted, hanging onto his paper sack.

-

-"'If you'll give me the big umbrella, Aunt Eleanor,' says Miss Sidney on

-the church steps, 'I'll try to keep the rain off the automobile and the

-passenger.'

-

-"The rain had just about stopped when we four started down Daphne

-Street. The elms and maples along the sidewalk was dripping soft, and

-everybody's gardens was laying still, like something new had happened to

-them. It smelled good, and like everything outdoors was going to start

-all over again and be something else, sweeter.

-

-"When we got most to Mis' Emmon's gate, I stopped stock still, looking

-at something shining on the hill. It was Proudfit House, lit up from top

-to bottom--the big house on the hill that had stood there, blind and

-dark, for months on end.

-

-"'Why, some of the Proudfits must of come home,' I says out loud.

-

-"Mis' Emmons answered up, all unexpected to me, for I never knew she

-knew the Proudfits. 'Mr. Alex Proudfit is coming on to-morrow,' she

-says. And I sort of resented her that was so near a stranger in the

-village hearing this about Alex Proudfit before I did, that had known

-him since he was in knickerbockers.

-

-"'Am I keeping the rain off you two people?' Miss Sidney asks as, at the

-corner, we all turned our backs on Proudfit House.

-

-"'Nobody,' Insley says--and his voice was always as smooth and round as

-wheels running along under his words, 'nobody ever kept the rain off as

-you are keeping it off, Miss Sidney.'

-

-"And, 'I did walked all that way--in that rain,' says Christopher,

-sleepy, in his automobile's collar.

-

-

-

-

-III

-

-

-"If it was anyways damp or chilly, Mis' Emmons always had a little blaze

-in the grate--not a heat blaze, but just a Come-here blaze. And going

-into her little what-she-called living-room at night, I always thought

-was like pushing open some door of the dark to find a sort of

-cubby-corner hollowed out from the bigger dark for tending the homey

-fire. That rainy night we went in from the street almost right onto the

-hearth. And it was as pleasant as taking the first mouthful of

-something.

-

-"Insley, with Christopher still on his back, stood on the rug in front

-of the door and looked round him.

-

-"'How jolly it always looks here, Mrs. Emmons,' he says. 'I never saw

-such a hearty place.'

-

-"I donno whether you've ever noticed the difference in the way women

-bustle around? Most nice women do bustle when something comes up that

-needs it. Some does it light and lifty, like fairies going around on

-missions; and some does it kind of crackling and nervous, like goblins

-on business. Mis' Emmons was the first kind, and it was real

-contagious. You caught it yourself and begun pulling chairs around and

-seeing to windows and sort of settling away down deep into the minute.

-She begun doing that way now, seeing to the fire and the lamp-shade and

-the sofa, and wanting everybody to be dry and comfortable, instant.

-

-"'You are so good-natured to like my room,' she says. 'I furnished it

-for ten cents--yes, not much more. The whole effect is just colour,' she

-says. 'What I have to do without in quality I go and wheedle out of the

-spectrum. What _should_ we do without the rainbow? And what in the world

-am I going to put on that child?'

-

-"Insley let Christopher down on the rug by the door, and there he stood,

-dripping, patient, holding his paper bag, and not looking up and around

-him, same as a child will in a strange room, but just looking hard at

-the nice, red, warm blaze. Miss Sidney come and stooped over him, with

-that same little way of touching him, like loving.

-

-"'Let's go and be dry now,' she says, 'and then let's see what we can

-find in the pantry.'

-

-"The little fellow, he just laughed out, soft and delicious, with his

-head turned away and without saying anything.

-

-"'I never said such a successful thing,' says Miss Sidney, and led him

-upstairs where we could hear Mis' Emmons bustling around cosey.

-

-"Mr. Insley and I sat down by the fire. I remember I looked over towards

-him and felt sort of nervous, he was so good looking and so silent. A

-good-looking _talking_ man I ain't afraid of, because I can either

-admire or despise him immediate, and either way it gives me something to

-do answering back. But one that's still, it takes longer to make out,

-and it don't give you no occupation for your impressions. And Insley,

-besides being still, was so good looking that it surprised me every new

-time I see him. I always wanted to say: Have you been looking like that

-all the time since I last saw you, and how _do_ you keep it up?

-

-"He had a face and a body that showed a good many men looking out of 'em

-at you, and all of 'em was men you'd like to of known. There was

-scholars that understood a lot, and gentlemen that acted easy, and

-outdoor men that had pioneered through hard things and had took their

-joy of the open. All of them had worked hard at him--and had give him

-his strength and his merriness and his big, broad shoulders and his

-nice, friendly boyishness, and his eyes that could see considerably

-more than was set before them. By his own care he had knit his body

-close to life, and I know he had knit his spirit close to it, too. As I

-looked over at him that night, my being nervous sort of swelled up into

-a lump in my throat and I wanted to say inside me: O God, ain't it nice,

-ain't it nice that you've got some folks like him?

-

-"He glanced over to me, kind of whimsical.

-

-"'Are you in favour of folks or tombstones?' he asks, with his eyebrows

-flickering up.

-

-"'Me?' I says. 'Well, I don't want to be clannish, but I do lean a good

-deal towards folks.'

-

-"'You knew what I meant to-night?' he says.

-

-"'Yes,' I answered, 'I knew.'

-

-"'I thought you did,' he says grave.

-

-"Then he lapsed into keeping still again and so did I, me through not

-quite knowing what to say, and him--well, I wasn't sure, but I thought

-he acted a good deal as if he had something nice to think about. I've

-seen that look on people's faces sometimes, and it always makes me feel

-a little surer that I'm a human being. I wondered if it was his new work

-he was turning over, or his liking the child's being cared for, or the

-mere nice minute, there by the grate fire. Then a door upstairs shut,

-and somebody come down and into the room, and when he got up, his look

-sort of centred in that new minute.

-

-"It was Miss Sidney that come in, and she set down by the fire like

-something pleased her.

-

-"'Aunt Eleanor is going to decorate Christopher herself,' she says. 'She

-believes that she alone can do whatever comes up in this life to be

-done, and usually she's right.'

-

-"Insley stood looking at her for a minute before he set down again. She

-had her big black cloak off by then, and she was wearing a

-dress-for-in-the-house that was all rosy. She wasn't anything of the

-star any longer. She was something more than a star. I always think one

-of the nicest commonplace minutes in a woman's everyday is when she

-comes back from somewheres outside the house where she's been, and sets

-down by the fire, or by a window, or just plain in the middle of the

-room. They always talk about pigeons 'homing'; I wish't they kept that

-word for women. It seems like it's so exactly what they _do_ do.

-

-"'I love the people,' Miss Sidney went on, 'that always feel that

-way--that if something they're interested in is going to be really well

-done, then they must do it themselves.'

-

-"Insley always knew just what anybody meant--I'd noticed that about

-him. His mind never left what you'd said floating round, loose ends in

-the room, without your knowing whether it was going to be caught and

-tied; but he just nipped right onto your remark and _tied it in the

-right place_.

-

-"'I love them, too,' he says now. 'I love anybody who can really feel

-responsibility, from a collie with her pups up. But then I'm nothing to

-go by. I find I'm rather strong for a good many people that can't feel

-it, too--that are just folks, going along.'

-

-"I suppose he expected from her the nice, ladylike agreeing, same as

-most women give to this sort of thing, just like they'd admit they're

-fond of verbenas or thin soles. But instead of that, she caught fire.

-Her look jumped up the way a look will and went acrost to his. I always

-think I'd rather have folks say 'I know' to me, understanding, than to

-just pour me out information, and that was what she said to him.

-

-"'I know,' she says, 'on the train to-day--if you could have seen them.

-Such dreadful-looking people, and underneath--the _giving-up-ness_. I

-believe in them,' she added simple.

-

-"When a thing you believe gets spoke by somebody that believes it, too,

-it's like the earth moved round a little faster, and I donno but it

-does. Insley looked for a minute like he thought so.

-

-"'I believe in them,' he says; 'not the way I used to, and just because

-I thought they must be, somehow, fundamentally decent, but because it's

-true.'

-

-"'I know just when I first knew that,' Miss Sidney says. 'It come to me,

-of all places, in a subway train, when I was looking at a row of faces

-across the car. Nobody, _nobody_ can look interesting in that row along

-the side of a subway car. And then I saw....'

-

-"She thought for a minute and shook her head.

-

-"'I can't tell you,' she says, 'it sounds so little and--no account. It

-was a little thing, just something that happened to a homely woman with

-a homely man, in a hat like a pirate's. But it almost--let me in. I can

-do it ever since--look into people, into, or through, or with ...' she

-tries to explain it. Then her eyes hurried up to his face, like she was

-afraid he might not be understanding. He just nodded, without looking at

-her, but she knew that he knew what she meant, and that he meant it,

-too.

-

-" ... I thought it was wonderful to hear them. I felt like an old

-mountain, or anything natural and real ancient, listening to the Song of

-Believing, sung by two that's young and just beginning. We all sing it

-sometime in our lives--or Lord grieve for them that never do--and I

-might as well own up that I catch myself humming that same song a good

-deal of the time, to keep myself a-going. But I love to hear it when

-it's just begun.

-

-"They was still talking when Mis' Emmons come downstairs with

-Christopher. Land, land but the little chap looked dear, dragging along,

-holding up a long-skirted lounging dress of Mis' Emmons's. I never had

-one of them lounging dresses. There's a lot of common things that it

-never seems to me I can buy for myself: a nice dressing-gown, a block of

-black pins, a fancy-headed hat pin, and a lemon-squeezer. I always use a

-loose print, and common pins, and penny black-headed hat pins, and go

-around squeezing my lemons by hand. I donno why it is, I'm sure.

-

-"'I'm--I'm--I'm--a little boy king!' Christopher stutters, all excited

-and satisfied, while Insley was a-packing him in the Morris chair.

-

-"'Rained on!' says Mis' Emmons, in that kind of dismay that's as pure

-feminine as if it had on skirts. 'Water isn't a circumstance to what

-that dear child was. He was saturated--bless him. He must have been out

-for perfect hours.'

-

-"Christopher, thinking back into the rain, mebbe, from the pleasantness

-of that minute, smiled and took a long breath.

-

-"'I walked from that other place,' he explains, important.

-

-"Mis' Emmons knew he was hungry, and she took Miss Sidney and Insley off

-to the kitchen to find something to eat, and left me with the little

-fellow, me spreading out his clothes in front of the fire to dry. He set

-real still, like being dry and being with somebody was all he wanted.

-And of course that is a good deal.

-

-"I don't always quite know how to start talking to a child. I'm always

-crazy to talk with them, but I'm so afraid of that shy, grave,

-criticizin' look they have. I feel right off like apologizing for the

-silly question I've just asked them. I felt that way now when

-Christopher looked at me, real dignified and wondering. 'What you going

-to be when you grow up to be a man?' was what I had just asked him. And

-yet I don't know what better question I could of asked him, either.

-

-"'I'm goin' to have a cream-puff store, an' make it all light in the

-window,' he answers ready.

-

-"'All light in the window?' I says puzzled.

-

-"'And I'm going to keep a church,' he goes on, 'and I'm going to make

-nice, black velvet for their coffings.'

-

-"I didn't know quite what to make of that, not being able to think back

-very far into his mind. So I kept still a few minutes.

-

-"'What was you doin' in the church?' he says to me, all at once.

-

-"'I don't really know. Waiting for you to come, I guess, Christopher,' I

-says.

-

-"'_Was_ you?' he cried, delighted. 'Pretty soon I came!' He looked in

-the fire, sort of troubled. 'Is God outdoors nights?' he says.

-

-"I said a little something.

-

-"'Well,' he says, 'I thought he was in the house by the bed when you say

-your prayer. An' I thought he was in church. But I don't think he stays

-in the dark, much.'

-

-"'Mebbe you don't,' I says, 'but you wait for him in the dark, and mebbe

-all of a sudden some night you can tell that something is there. And

-just you wait for that night to come.'

-

-"'That's a nice game,' says Christopher, bright. 'What game is that?'

-

-"'I donno,' I says. 'Game of Life, I guess.'

-

-"He liked the sound; and he set there--little waif, full of no supper,

-saying it over like a chant:--

-

-"'Game o' life--game o' life--game o' l-i-f-e--'

-

-"Just at that minute I was turning his little pockets wrong side out to

-dry them, and in one of them I see a piece of paper, all crumpled up and

-wrinkled. I spread it out, and I see it had writing on. And I held it up

-to the light and read it, read it through twice.

-

-"'Christopher,' I says then, 'where did you get this piece of paper? It

-was in your pocket.'

-

-"He looked at it, blank, and then he remembered.

-

-"'My daddy,' he says. 'My daddy told me to give it to folks. I forgot.'

-

-"'To folks?' I says. 'To what folks?'

-

-"'To whoever ask' me anything,' he answers. 'Is it a letter?' he ask'.

-

-"'Yes,' I says, thoughtful, 'it's a letter.'

-

-"'To tell me what to do?' he ask' me.

-

-"'Yes,' I says, 'but more, I guess, to tell us what to do.'

-

-"I talked with him a little longer, so's to get his mind off the paper;

-and then I told him to set still a minute, and I slipped out to where

-the rest was.

-

-"The pantry had a close, spicey, foody smell of a pantry at night, when

-every tin chest and glass jar may be full up with nice things to eat

-that you'd forgot about--cocoanut and citron and cinnamon bark. In

-grown-up folks one of the things that is the last to grow up is the

-things a pantry in the evening promises. You may get over really liking

-raisins and sweet chocolate; you may get to wanting to eat in the

-evening things that you didn't use' to even know the names of and don't

-know them now, and yet it never gets over being nice and eventive to go

-out in somebody's pantry at night, especially a pantry that ain't your

-own.

-

-"'Put everything on a tray,' Mis' Emmons was directing them, 'and find

-the chafing-dish and let's make it in there by Christopher. Mr. Insley,

-can you make toast? Don't equivocate,' she says; '_can_ you make toast?

-People fib no end over what they can make. I'm always bragging about my

-omelettes, and yet one out of every three I make goes flat, and I know

-it. And yet I brag on. Beans, buckwheat, rice--what do you want to

-cream, Robin? Well, look in the store-room. There may be something

-there. We must tell Miss Sidney about Grandma Sellers' store-room, Mr.

-Insley,' she says, and then tells it herself, laughing like a girl, how

-Grandma Sellers, down at the other end of Daphne Street, has got a

-store-room she keeps full of staples and won't let her son's wife use a

-thing out. 'I've been hungry,' Grandma Sellers says, 'and I ain't

-ashamed of that. But if you knew how good it feels to have a still-room

-stocked full, you wouldn't ask me to disturb a can of nothing. I want

-them all there, so if I should want them.' 'She's like me,' Mis' Emmons

-ends, 'I always want to keep my living-room table tidy, to have a place

-in case I should want to lay anything down. And if I put anything on it,

-I snatch it up, so as to have a place in case I want to lay anything

-down.'

-

-"They was all laughing when I went out into the kitchen, and I went up

-to Mis' Emmons with the paper.

-

-"'Read that,' I says.

-

-"She done so, out loud--the scrawlin', downhill message:--

-

-

-     "'Keep him will you,' the paper said, 'I don't chuck him to get rid

-     of but hes only got me since my wifes dead and the drinks got me

-     again. Ive stood it quite awhile but its got me again so keep him

-     and oblidge. will send money to him to the P O here what I can

-     spare I aint chuckin him but the drinks got me again.

-

-     "'resp, his father.

-

-     "'P S his name is Christopher Bartlett he is a good boy his throat

-     gets sore awful easy.'

-

-

-"When Mis' Emmons had got through reading, I remember Miss Sidney's face

-best. It was so full of a sort of a leaping-up pity and wistfulness that

-it went to your heart, like words. I knew that with her the minute

-wasn't no mere thrill nor twitter nor pucker, the way sad things is to

-some, but it was just a straight sounding of a voice from a place of

-pain. And so it was to Insley. But Mis' Emmons, she never give herself

-time to be swamped by anything without trying to climb out right while

-the swamping was going on.

-

-"'What'll we do?' she says, rapid. 'What in this world shall we do? Did

-you ever hear of anything--well, I wish somebody would tell me what

-we're going to do.'

-

-"'Let's be glad for one thing,' says Allen Insley, 'that he's here with

-you people to-night. Let's be glad of that first--that he's here with

-you.'

-

-"Miss Sidney looked away to the dark window.

-

-"'That poor man,' she says. 'That poor father....'

-

-"We talked about it a little, kind of loose ends and nothing to fasten

-to, like you will. Mis' Emmons was the first to get back inside the

-minute.

-

-"'Well,' she says, brisk, 'do let's go in and feed the child while we

-have him. Nobody knows when he's had anything to eat but those unholy

-cream-puffs. Let's heat him some broth and let's carry in the things.'

-

-"Back by the fire Christopher set doing nothing, but just looking in the

-blaze like his very eyesight had been chilly and damp and needed seeing

-to. He cried out jolly when he see all the pretty harness of the

-chafing-dish and the tray full of promises.

-

-"'Oh,' he cries, '_Robin!_'

-

-"She went over to him, and she nestled him now like she couldn't think

-of enough to do for him nor enough things to say to keep him company. I

-see Insley watching her, and I wondered if it didn't come to him like it

-come to me, that for the pure art of doing nothing so that it seems like

-it couldn't be got along without, a woman--some women--can be commended

-by heaven to a world that always needs that kind of doing nothing.

-

-"'Children have a genius for getting rid of the things that don't

-count,' Miss Sidney says. 'I love his calling me "Robin." Mustn't there

-be some place where we don't build walls around our names?'

-

-"Insley thought for a minute. 'You oughtn't to be called "Miss," and

-you oughtn't to wear a hat,' he concluded, sober. 'Both of them make

-you--too much _there_. They draw a line around you.'

-

-"'I don't feel like Miss to myself,' she says, grave. 'I feel like

-Robin. I believe I _am_ Robin!'

-

-"And I made up my mind right then and there that, to myself anyway, I

-was always going to call her Robin. It's funny about first names. Some

-of them fit right down and snuggle up close to their person so that you

-can't think of them apart. And some of them slip loose and dangle along

-after their person, quite a ways back, so that you're always surprised

-when now and then they catch up and get themselves spoke by someone. But

-the name Robin just seemed to wrap Miss Sidney up in itself so that, as

-she said, she _was_ Robin. I like to call her so.

-

-"It was her that engineered the chafing-dish. A chafing-dish is a thing

-I've always looked on a little askant. I couldn't cook with folks

-looking at me no more than I could wash my face in company. I remember

-one hot July day when there was a breeze in my front door, I took my

-ironing-board in the parlor and tried to iron there. But land, I felt

-all left-handed; and I know it would be that way if I ever tried to

-cook in there, on my good rug. Robin though, she done it wonderful. And

-pretty soon she put the hot cream gravy on some crumbled-up bread and

-took it to Christopher, with a cup of broth that smelled like when they

-used to say, 'Dinner's ready,' when you was twelve years old.

-

-"He looked up at her eager. 'Can you cut it in squares?' he asked.

-

-"'In what?' she asks him over.

-

-"'Squares. And play it's molasses candy--white molasses candy?' he says.

-

-"'Oh,' says Robin, 'no, not in squares. But let's play it's hot

-ice-cream.'

-

-"'_Hot ice-cream_,' he says, real slow, his eyes getting wide. To play

-Little Boy King and have hot ice-cream was about as much as he could

-take care of, in joy. Sometimes I get to wondering how we ever do

-anything else except collect children together and give them nice little

-simple fairylands. But while, on the sly, we was all watching to see

-Christopher sink deep in the delight of that hot toothsome supper, he

-suddenly lays down his spoon and stares over to us with wide eyes, eyes

-that there wasn't no tears gathering in, though his little mouth was

-quivering.

-

-"'What is it--what, dear?' Robin asks, from her stool near his feet.

-

-"'My daddy,' says the little boy. 'I was thinking if he could have some

-this.'

-

-"Robin touched her cheek down on his arm.

-

-"'Blessed,' she says, 'think how glad he'd be to have you have some.

-He'd want you to eat it--wouldn't he?'

-

-"The child nodded and took up his spoon, but he sighed some. 'I wish't

-he'd hurry,' he says, and ate, obedient.

-

-"Robin looked up at us--I don't think a woman is ever so lovely as when

-she's sympathizing, and it don't make much difference what it's over, a

-sore finger or a sore heart, it's equally becoming.

-

-"'I know,' she says to us, 'I know just the _place_ where that hurts. I

-remember, when I was little, being in a house that a band passed, and

-because mother wasn't there, I ran inside and wouldn't listen. It's such

-a special kind of hurt....'

-

-"From the end of the settle that was some in the shadow, Insley set

-watching her, and he looked as if he was thinking just what I was

-thinking: that she was the kind that would most always know just the

-place things hurt. And I bet she'd know what to do--and a thousand kinds

-of things that she'd go and do it.

-

-"'O ...' Christopher says. 'I like this most next better than molasses

-candy, cutted in squares. I do, Robin!' He looked down at her, his spoon

-waiting. 'Is you that Robin Redbreast?' he inquired.

-

-"'I'm any Robin you want me to be,' she told him. 'To-morrow we'll play

-that, shall we?'

-

-"'Am I here to-morrow? Don't I have to walk to-morrow?' he ask' her.

-

-"'No, you won't have to walk to-morrow,' she told him.

-

-"Christopher leaned back, altogether nearer to luxury than I guess he'd

-ever been.

-

-"'I'm a little boy king, and it's hot ice-cream, and I love _you_,' he

-tops it off to Robin.

-

-"She smiled at him, leaning on his chair.

-

-"'Isn't it a miracle,' she says to us, 'the way we can call out--being

-liked? We don't do something, and people don't pay any attention and

-don't know the difference. Then some little thing happens, and there

-they are--liking us, doing a real thing.'

-

-"'I know it,' I says, fervent. 'Sometimes,' I says, 'it seems to me

-wonderful cosey to be alive! I'm glad I'm it.'

-

-"'So am I,' says Insley, and leaned forward. 'There's never been such a

-time to be alive,' he says. 'Mrs. Emmons, why don't we ask Miss Sidney

-for some plans for our plan?'

-

-"Do you know how sometimes you'll have a number of floating ideas in

-your mind--wanting to do this, thinking that would be nice, dreaming of

-something else--and yet afraid to say much about it, because it seems

-like the ideas or the dreams is much too wild for anybody else to have,

-too? And then mebbe after a while, you'll find that somebody had the

-same idea and dreamed it out, and died with it? Or somebody else tried

-to make it go a little? Well, that was what begun to happen to me that

-night while I heard Insley talk, only I see that my floating ideas, that

-wan't properly attached to the sides of my head, was actually being

-worked out here and there, and that Insley knew about them.

-

-"I donno how to tell what my ideas was. I'd had them from time to time,

-and a good many of us ladies had, only we didn't know what to do with

-them. And an idea that you don't know what to do with is like a wild

-animal out of its cage: there ain't no performance till it's adjusted.

-For instance, when we'd wanted to pave Daphne Street and the whole town

-council had got up and swung its arms over its head and said that having

-an economical administration was better than paving--why, then us ladies

-had all had the same idee about that.

-

-"'Is the town run for the sake of being the town, with money in its

-treasury, or is the town run for the folks in it?' I remember Mis'

-Toplady asking, puzzled. 'Ain't the folks the town really?' she ask'.

-'And if they are, why can't they pave themselves with their own money?

-Don't that make sense?' she ask' us, and we thought it did.

-

-"Us ladies had got Daphne Street paved, or at least it was through us

-they made the beginning, but there was things we hadn't done. We was all

-taking milk of Rob Henney that we knew his cow barns wasn't at all

-eatable, but he was the only milk wagon, nobody else in town delivering,

-so we kept on taking, but squeamish, squeamish. Then there was the

-grocery stores, leaving their food all over the sidewalk, dust-peppered

-and dirt-salted. But nobody liked to say anything to Silas Sykes that

-keeps the post-office store, nor to Joe Betts, that his father before

-him kept the meat market, being we all felt delicate, like at asking a

-church member to come out to church. Then us ladies had bought a zinc

-wagon and started it around to pick up the garbage to folks' doors, but

-the second summer the council wouldn't help pay for the team, because it

-was a saving council, and so the wagon was setting in a shed, with its

-hands folded. Then there was Black Hollow, that we'd wanted filled up

-with dirt instead of scummy water, arranging for typhoid fever and other

-things, but the council having got started paving, was engaged in paving

-the swamp out for miles, Silas Sykes's cousin being in the wooden block

-business. And, too, us ladies was just then hopping mad over the doings

-they was planning for the Fourth of July, that wasn't no more than

-making a cash register of the day to earn money into. All these things

-had been disturbing us, and more; but though we talked it over

-considerable, none of us knew what to do, or whether anything could be.

-It seemed as though every way we moved a hand, it hit out at the council

-or else went into some business man's pocket. And not having anybody to

-tell us what other towns were doing, we just set still and wished,

-passive.

-

-"Well, and that night, while I heard Insley talking, was the first I

-knew that other towns had thought about these things, too, and was

-beginning to stir and to stir things. Insley talked about it light

-enough, laughing, taking it all casual on the outside, but underneath

-with a splendid earnestness that was like the warp to his words. He

-talked like we could pick Friendship Village up, same as a strand if we

-wanted, and make it fine and right for weaving in a big pattern that

-his eyes seemed to see. He talked like our village, and everybody's

-village and everybody's city wasn't just a lot of streets laid down and

-walls set up, and little families and little clubs and little separate

-groups of folks organized by themselves. But he spoke like the whole

-town was just one street and _no_ walls, and like every town was a piece

-of the Big Family that lives on the same street, all around the world

-and back again. And he seemed to feel that the chief thing all of us was

-up to was thinking about this family and doing for it and being it, and

-getting it to be the way it can be when we all know how. And he seemed

-to think the things us ladies had wanted to do was some of the things

-that would help it to be the way it can.

-

-"When he stopped, Robin looked up at him from the hearth-rug: '"The

-world is beginning,"' she quotes to him from somewheres; "'I must go and

-help the king."'

-

-"He nodded, looking down at her and seeing, as he must have seen, that

-her face was all kindled into the same kind of a glory that was in his.

-It was a nice minute for them, but I was so excited I piped right up in

-the middle of it:--

-

-"'Oh,' I says, '_them_ things! Was it them kind of things you meant

-about in Sodality to-night that we'd ought to do? Why, us ladies has

-wanted to do things like that, but we felt sort of sneaking about it and

-like we was working against the council and putting our interests before

-the town treasury--'

-

-"'And of the cemetery,' he says.

-

-"'Is _that_,' I ask' him, 'what you're professor of, over to Indian

-Mound college?'

-

-"'Something like that,' he says.

-

-"'Nothing in a book, with long words and italics?' I ask' him.

-

-"'Well,' he says, 'it's getting in books now, a little. But it doesn't

-need any long words.'

-

-"'Why,' I says, 'it's just being professor of human beings, then?'

-

-"'Trying to be, perhaps,' he says, grave.

-

-"'Professor of Human Beings,' I said over to myself; 'professor of being

-human....'

-

-"On this nice minute, the front door, without no bell or knock, opened

-to let in Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, with a shawl over her head

-and a tin can in her hand.

-

-"'No, I won't set any, thanks,' she says. 'I just got to

-thinking--mercy, no. Don't give me any kind of anything to eat any such

-time of night as this. I should be up till midnight taking soda. That's

-what ails folks' stomachs, my notion--these late lunches on nobody

-knows what. No, I got to bed and I was just dropping off when I happened

-to sense how wringing wet that child was, and that I betted he'd take

-cold and have the croup in the night, and you wouldn't have no

-remedy--not having any children, so. It rousted me right up wide awake,

-and I dressed me and run over here with this. Here. Put some on a rag

-and clap it on his chest if he coughs croupy. I donno's it would hurt

-him to clap it on him, anyway, so's to be sure. No, I can't stop. It's

-'way past my bed-time....'

-

-"'There's lots of professors of being human, Miss Marsh,' Insley says to

-me, low.

-

-"Mis' Holcomb stood thinking a minute, brushing her lips with the fringe

-of her shawl.

-

-"'Mebbe somebody up to the Proudfits' would do something for him,' she

-says. 'I see they're lit up. Who's coming?'

-

-"'Mr. Alex Proudfit will be here to-morrow,' Mis' Emmons told her. 'He

-has some people coming to him in a day or two, for a house party over

-the Fourth.'

-

-"'Will he be here so soon?' says Insley. 'I've been looking forward to

-meeting him--I've a letter to him from Indian Mound.'

-

-"'Whatever happens,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'I'll get up attic first thing

-in the morning and find some old clothes for this dear child. I may be

-weak in the pocket-book, but I'm strong on old duds.'

-

-"Insley and I both said good night, so's to walk home with Mis' Holcomb,

-and Christopher kissed us both, simple as belonging to us.

-

-"'We had that hot ice-cream,' he announced to Mis' Holcomb.

-

-"'The lamb!' says she, and turns her back, hasty.

-

-"I wondered a little at Mis' Emmons not saying anything to her about the

-letter we'd found, that made us know somebody would have to do

-something. But just as we was starting out, Mis' Emmons says to me low,

-'Don't let's say anything about his father yet. I have a plan--I want to

-think it over first.' And I liked knowing that already she had a plan,

-and I betted it was a plan that would be born four-square to its own

-future.

-

-"Insley stood holding the door open. The rain had stopped altogether

-now, and the night was full of little things sticking their heads up in

-deep grasses and beginning to sing about it. I donno about what, but

-about something nice. And Insley was looking toward Robin, and I see

-that all the ancestors he'd ever had was lingering around in his face,

-like they knew about something he was just beginning to know about.

-Something nice--nicer than the little outdoor voices.

-

-"'Good night, Miss Sidney,' he says. 'And what a good night for

-Christopher!' And he looked as if he wanted to add: 'And for me.'

-

-"'Good night, Mis' Emmons,' I says. 'It's been an evening like a full

-meal.'

-

-

-

-

-IV

-

-

-"By messenger the next day noon come a letter for me that made me laugh

-a little and that made me a little bit mad, too. This was it:--

-

-

-     "'Dear Calliope:

-

-     "'Come up and help straighten things out, do. This place breathes

-     desolation. Everything is everywhere except everything which

-     everyone wants, which is lost. Come at once, Calliope, pray, and

-     dine with me to-night and give me as much time as you can for a

-     fortnight. I'm having some people here next week--twenty or so for

-     over the Fourth--and a party. A company, you know! I need you.

-

-     "'ALEX PROUDFIT.'

-

-

-"It was so exactly like Alex to send for me just plain because he wanted

-me. Never a word about if I was able or if I wasn't putting up berries

-or didn't have company or wasn't dead. I hadn't heard a sound from him

-in the two years or more that he'd been gone, and yet now it was just

-'Come,' like a lord. And for that matter like he used to do when he was

-in knickerbockers and coming to my house for fresh cookies, whether I

-had any baked or not. But I remember actually baking a batch for him one

-day while he galloped his pony up and down the Plank Road waiting for

-them. And I done the same way now. I got my work out of the way and went

-right up there, like I'd always done for that family in the forty years

-I could think back to knowing them, when I was a girl. I guessed that

-Alex had lit down sudden, a day or so behind his telegram to the

-servants; and I found that was what he had done.

-

-"Proudfit House stands on a hill, and it looks like the hill had

-billowed up gentle from underneath and had let some of the house flow

-down the sides. It was built ambitious, of the good cream brick that

-gives to a lot of our Middle West towns their colour of natural flax in

-among the green; it had been big in the beginning, and to it had been

-added a good many afterthoughts and postscripts of conservatory and

-entrance porch and sun room and screened veranda, till the hill couldn't

-hold them all. The house was one of them that was built fifty years ago

-and that has since been pecked and patted to suit modern uses, pinched

-off here and pulled off there to fit notions refining themselves

-gradual. And all the time the house was let to keep some nice, ugly

-things that after a while, by mere age and use-to-ness, were finally

-accepted wholesale as dignified and desirable. The great brown mansard

-roof, niched and glassed in two places for statues--and having them,

-too, inside my memory and until Mr. Alex pulled them down; the scalloped

-tower on a wing; the round red glass window on a stairway--these we all

-sort of come to agree to as qualities of the place that couldn't be

-changed no more'n the railroad track. Tapestries and water-colours and

-Persian carpets went on inside the house, but outside was all the little

-twists of a taste that had started in naked and was getting dressed up

-by degrees.

-

-"Since the marriage of her daughter Clementina, Madame Proudfit had

-spent a good deal of time abroad, and the house had been shut up. This

-shutting up of people's houses always surprises me. When I shut up my

-house to go away for a couple of months or so, I just make sure the

-kitchen fire is out, and I carry the bird down to Mis' Holcomb's, and I

-turn the key in the front door and start off. But land, land when

-Proudfit House is going to be shut, the servants work days on end. Rugs

-up, curtains down, furniture covered and setting around out of place,

-pictures and ornaments wrapped up in blue paper--I always wonder _why_.

-Closing my house is like putting it to sleep for a little while, but

-closing Proudfit House is some like seeing it through a spasm and into a

-trance. They done that to the house most every summer, and I used to

-think they acted like spring was a sort of contagion, or a

-seventeen-year locust, or something to be fumigated for. I supposed that

-was the way the house looked when Alex got home to it, and of course a

-man must hate it worse than a woman does, because he doesn't know which

-end to tell them to take hold of to unravel. So I went right up there

-when he sent for me--and then it was a little fun, too, to be on the

-inside of what was happening there, that all the village was so curious

-about.

-

-"He'd gone off when I got there, gone off on horseback on some business,

-but he'd left word that he'd be back in a little while, and would I help

-him out in the library. I knew what that meant. The books was all out of

-the shelves and packed in paper, and he wanted me to see that they got

-back into their right places, like I'd done many and many a time for his

-mother. So I worked there the whole afternoon, with a couple of men to

-help me, and the portrait of Linda Proudfit on the wall watching me like

-it wanted to tell me something, maybe about the way she went off and

-died, away from home; and a little after four o'clock a servant let

-somebody into the room.

-

-"I looked up expecting to see Alex, and it surprised me some to see

-Insley instead. But I guessed how it was: that Alex Proudfit being a

-logical one to talk over Friendship Village with, Insley couldn't lose a

-day in bringing him his letter.

-

-"'Well, Miss Marsh,' says he, 'and do you live everywhere, like a good

-fairy?'

-

-"I thought afterwards that I might have said to him: 'No, Mr. Insley.

-And do you appear everywhere, like a god?' But at the time I didn't

-think of anything to say, and I just smiled. I'm like that,--if I like

-anybody, I can't think of a thing to say back; but to Silas Sykes I

-could talk back all day.

-

-"We'd got the room part in order by then, and Insley sat down and looked

-around him, enjoyable. It was a beautiful room. I always think that that

-library ain't no amateur at its regular business of being a vital part

-of the home. Some rooms are awful amateurs at it, and some ain't no more

-than apprentices, and some are downright enemies to the house they're

-in. But that library I always like to look around. It seems to me, if I

-really knew about such things, and how they ought to be, I couldn't

-like that room any better. Colour, proportion, window, shadow--they was

-all lined up in a kind of an enjoyable professionalism of doing their

-best. The room was awake now, too--I had the windows open and I'd

-started the clock. Insley set looking around as if there was sighs

-inside him. I knew how, down in New England, his father's home sort of

-behaved itself like this home. But after college, he had had to choose

-his way, and he had faced about to the new west, the new world, where

-big ways of living seemed to him to be sweeping as a wind sweeps. He had

-chose as he had chose, and I suppose he was glad of that; but I knew the

-room he had when he was in town, at Threat Hubbelthwait's hotel, must be

-a good deal like being homesick, and that this library was like coming

-home.

-

-"'Mr. Proudfit had just returned and would be down at once,' the man

-come back and told him. And while he waited Insley says to me:

-

-"'Have you seen anything of the little boy to-day, Miss Marsh?'

-

-"I was dying to answer back: 'Yes, I see Miss Sidney early this

-morning,' but you can't answer back all you die to. So I told him yes,

-I'd seen all three of them and they was to be up in the city all day to

-buy some things for Christopher. Mis' Emmons and Robin was both to come

-up to Proudfit House to Alex's house party--seems they'd met abroad

-somewheres a year or more back; and they was going to bring Christopher,

-who Mis' Emmons didn't show any sign of giving up while her plan,

-whatever it was, was getting itself thought over. So they'd whisked the

-child off to the city that day to get him the things he needed. And

-there wasn't time to say anything more, for in come Alex Proudfit.

-

-"He was in his riding clothes--horseback dress we always call it in the

-village, which I s'pose isn't city talk, proper. He was long and thin

-and brown, and sort of slow-moving in his motions, but quick and nervous

-in his talk; and I don't know what there was about him--his clothes, or

-his odd, old-country looking ring, or the high white thing wound twice

-around his neck, or his way of pronouncing his words--but he seemed a

-good deal like a picture of a title or a noted man. The minute you

-looked at him, you turned proud of being with him, and you pretty near

-felt distinguished yourself, in a nice way, because you was in his

-company. Alex was like that.

-

-"'I don't like having kept you waiting,' he says to Insley. 'I'm just

-in. By Jove, I've left Topping's letter somewhere--Insley, is it? thank

-you. Of course. Well, Calliope, blessings! I knew I could count on you.

-How are you--you look it. No, don't run away. Keep straight on--Mr.

-Insley will pardon us getting settled under his nose. Now what can I get

-you, Mr. Insley? If you've walked up, you're warm. No? As you will. It's

-mighty jolly getting back--for a minute, you know. I couldn't stop here.

-How the devil do you stop here all the time--or do you stop here all the

-time?...' All this he poured out in a breath. He always had talked fast,

-but now I see that he talked more than fast--he talked foreign.

-

-"'I'm here some of the time,' says Insley; 'I hoped that you were going

-to be, too.'

-

-"'I?' Alex said. 'Oh, no--no. I feel like this: while I'm in the world,

-I want it at its best. I want it at its latest moment. I want to be

-living _now_. Friendship Village--why, man, it's living half a century

-ago--anyway, a quarter. It doesn't know about A.D. nineteen-anything. I

-love the town, you know, for what it is. But confound it, I'm living

-_now_.'

-

-"Insley leaned forward. I was dusting away on an encyclopædia, but I see

-his face and I knew what it meant. This was just what he'd been hoping

-for. Alex Proudfit was a man who understood that the village hadn't

-caught up. So he would want to help it--naturally he would.

-

-"'I'm amazed at the point of view,' Alex went on. 'I never saw such

-self-sufficiency as the little towns have. In England, on the continent,

-the villages know their place and keep it, look up to the towns and all

-that--play the peasant, as they are. Know their betters. Here? Bless

-you. Not a man down town here but will tell you that the village has got

-everything that is admirable. They believe it, too. Electric light,

-water, main street paved, cemetery kept up, "nice residences,"

-telephones, library open two nights a week, fresh lettuce all

-winter--fine, up-to-date little place! And, Lord, but it's a back-water.

-With all its improvements the whole _idea_ of modern life somehow

-escapes it--music and art, drama, letters, manners, as integral parts of

-everyday living--what does it know of them? It thinks these things are

-luxuries, outside the scheme of real life, like monoplanes. Jove, it's

-delicious!'

-

-"He leaned back, laughing. Insley must have felt his charm. Alex always

-was fascinating. His eyes were gray and sort of hobnobbed with your

-own; his square chin just kind of threatened a dimple without breaking

-into one; his dark hair done clusters like a statue; and then there was

-a lot of just plain charm pouring off him. But of course more than with

-this, Insley was filled with his own hope: if Alex Proudfit understood

-some things about the village that ought to be made right, it looked to

-him as though they might do everything together.

-

-"'Why,' Insley says, 'you don't know--you don't know how glad I am to

-hear you say this. It's exactly the thing my head has been full of....'

-

-"'Of course your head is full of it,' says Alex. 'How can it help but be

-when you're fast here some of the time? If you don't mind--what is it

-that keeps you here at all? I don't think I read Topping's letter

-properly....'

-

-"Insley looked out from all over his face.

-

-"'I stay,' he says, 'just because all this _is_ so. It needs somebody to

-stay, don't you think?'

-

-"'Ah, yes, I see,' says Alex, rapid and foreign. 'How do you mean,

-though? Surely you don't mean renouncing--and that sort of thing?'

-

-"'Renouncing--no!' says Insley. 'Getting into the game.'

-

-"He got his enthusiasm down into still places and outlined what he

-meant. It was all at the ends of his fingers--what there was to do if

-the town was to live up to itself, to find ways to express the everyday

-human fellowship that Insley see underneath everything. And Alex

-Proudfit listened, giving that nice, careful, pacifying attention of

-his. He was always so polite that his listening was like answering. When

-Insley got through, Alex's very disagreeing with him was sympathizing.

-

-"'My dear man,' says he--I remember every word because it was something

-I'd wondered sometimes too, only I'd done my wondering vague, like you

-do--'My dear man, but are you not, after all, anticipating? This is just

-the way Nature works--beating these things into the heads and hearts of

-generations. Aren't you trying to do it all at once?'

-

-"'I'm trying to help nature, to be a part of nature--exactly,' says

-Insley, 'and to do it here in Friendship Village.'

-

-"'Why,' says Alex, 'you'll be talking about facilitating God's plan

-next--helping him along, by Jove.'

-

-"Insley looks at him level. 'I mean that now,' he says, 'if you want to

-put it that way.'

-

-"'Good Lord,' says Alex, 'but how do you know what--what he wants?'

-

-"'Don't you?' says Insley, even.

-

-"Alex Proudfit turned and touched a bell. 'Look here,' he says, 'you

-stay and dine, won't you? I'm alone to-night--Calliope and I are. Stay.

-I always enjoy threshing this out.'

-

-"To the man-servant who just about breathed with a well-trained stoop of

-being deferential, his master give the order about the table. 'And,

-Bayless, have them hunt out some of those tea-roses they had in bloom

-the other day--you should see them, Calliope. Oh, and, Bayless, hurry

-dinner a bit. I'm as hungry as lions,' he added to us, and he made me

-think of the little boy in knickerbockers, asking me for fresh cookies.

-

-"He slipped back to their topic, ranking it right in with tea-roses. In

-the hour before dinner they went on 'threshing it out' there in that

-nice luxurious room, and through the dinner, too--a simple, perfect

-dinner where I didn't know which to eat, the plates or the food, they

-was both so complete. Up to Proudfit House I can hardly ever make out

-whether I'm chewing flavours or colours or shapes, but I donno as I

-care. Flavours, thank my stars, aren't the only things in life I know

-how to digest.

-

-"First eager, then patient, Insley went over his ground, setting forth

-by line and by line, by vision and by vision, the faith that was in

-him--faith in human nature to come into its own, faith in the life of a

-town to work into human life at its best. And always down the same road

-they went, they come a-canterin' back with Alex Proudfit's 'Precisely.

-It is precisely what is happening. You can't force it. You mustn't force

-it. To do the best we can with ourselves and to help up an under dog or

-two--if he deserves it--that's the most Nature lets us in for. Otherwise

-she says: "Don't meddle. I'm doing this." And she's right. We'd bungle

-everything. Believe me, my dear fellow, our spurts of civic

-righteousness and national reform never get us anywhere in the long run.

-In the long run, things go along and go along. You can't stop them. If

-you're wise, you won't rush them.'

-

-"At this I couldn't keep still no longer. We was at the table then, and

-I looked over to Alex between the candlesticks and felt as if he was

-back in knickerbockers again, telling me God had made enough ponies so

-he could gallop his all day on the Plank Road if he wanted to.

-

-"'You and Silas Sykes, Alex,' I says, 'have come to the same motto.

-Silas says Nature is real handy about taking her course so be you don't

-yank open cocoons and buds and like that.'

-

-"'Old Silas,' says Alex. 'Lord, is he still going on about everything?

-Old Silas....'

-

-"'Yes,' I says, 'he is. And so am I. Out by my woodshed I've got a

-Greening apple tree. When it was about a year old a cow I used to keep

-browst it down. It laid over on the ground, broke clean off all but one

-little side of bark that kept right on doing business with sap, like it

-didn't know its universe was sat on. I didn't get time for a week or two

-to grub it up, and when I did go to it, I see it was still living,

-through that little pinch of bark. I liked the pluck, and I straightened

-it up and tied it to the shed. I used to fuss with it some. Once in a

-storm I went out and propped a dry-goods box over it. I kept the earth

-rich and drove the bugs off. I kind of got interested in seeing what it

-would do next. What it done was to grow like all possessed. It was

-twenty years ago and more that the cow come by it, and this year I've

-had seven bushels of Greenings off that one tree. Suppose I hadn't tied

-it up?'

-

-"'You'd have saved yourself no end of trouble, dear Calliope,' says

-Alex, 'to say nothing of sparing the feelings of the cow.'

-

-"'I ain't so anxious any more,' says I, 'about sparing folks' feelings

-as I am about sparing folks. Nor I ain't so crazy as I used to be about

-saving myself trouble, either.'

-

-"'Dear Calliope,' says Alex, 'what an advocate you are. Won't you be my

-advocate?'

-

-"He wouldn't argue serious with me now no more than he would when he was

-in knickerbockers. But yet he was adorable. When we got back to the

-library, I went on finishing up the books and I could hear him being

-adorable. He dipped down into the past and brought up rich things--off

-down old ways of life in the village that he'd had a part in and then

-off on the new ways where his life had led him. Java--had Insley ever

-been in Java? He must show him the moonstone he got there and tell him

-the story they told him about it. But the queerest moonstone story was

-one he'd got in Lucknow--so he goes on, and sends Bayless for a cabinet,

-and from one precious stone and another he just naturally drew out

-romances and adventures, as if he was ravelling the stones out into

-them. And then he begun taking down some of his old books. And when it

-come to books, the appeal to Insley was like an appeal of friends, and

-he burrowed into them musty parchments abundant.

-

-"'By George,' Insley says once, 'I didn't dream there were such things

-in Friendship Village.'

-

-"'Next thing you'll forget they're in the world,' says Alex,

-significant. 'Believe me, a man like you ought not to be down here, or

-over to Indian Mound, either. It's an economic waste. Nature has fitted

-you for her glorious present and you're living along about four decades

-ago. Don't you think of that?...'

-

-"Then the telephone on the library table rang and he answered a call

-from the city. 'Oh, buy it in, buy it in, by all means,' he directs.

-'Yes, cable to-night and buy it in. That,' he says, as he hung up, 'just

-reminds me. There's a first night in London to-night that I've been

-promising myself to see.... What a dog's life a business man leads. By

-the way,' he goes on, 'I've about decided to put in one of our plants

-around here somewhere--a tannery, you know. I've been off to-day looking

-over sites. I wonder if you can't give me some information I'm after

-about land around Indian Mound. I'm not saying anything yet,

-naturally--they'll give other people a bonus to establish in their

-midst, but the smell of leather is too much for them. We always have to

-surprise them into it. But talk about the ultimate good of a town ... if

-a tannery isn't that, what is it?'

-

-"It was after nine o'clock when I got the books set right--I loved to

-handle them, and there was some I always looked in before I put them up

-because some of the pictures give me feelings I remembered, same as

-tasting some things will--spearmint and caraway and coriander. Insley,

-of course, walked down with me. Alex wanted to send us in the

-automobile, but I'm kind of afraid of them in the dark. I can't get it

-out of my head that every bump we go over may be bones. And then I guess

-we both sort of wanted the walk.

-

-"Insley was like another man from the one that had come into the library

-that afternoon, or had been talking to us at Mis' Emmons's the night

-before. Down in the village, on Mis' Emmons's hearth, with Robin sitting

-opposite, it had seemed so easy to know ways to do, and to do them.

-Everything seemed possible, as if the whole stiff-muscled universe could

-be done things to if only everybody would once say to it: _Our_

-universe. But now, after his time with Alex, I knew how everything had

-kind of _tightened_, closed in around him, shot up into high walls.

-Money, tanneries, big deals by cable, moonstones from Java, they almost

-made me slimpse too, and think, What's the use of believing Alex

-Proudfit and me belong to the same universe? So I guessed how Insley was

-feeling, ready to believe that he had got showed up to himself in his

-true light, as a young, emotioning creature who dreams of getting

-everybody to belong together, and yet can't find no good way. And Alex

-Proudfit's parting words must of followed him down the drive and out on

-to the Plank Road:--

-

-"'Take my advice. Don't spend yourself on this blessed little hole. It's

-dear to me, but it _is_ a hole ... eh? You won't get any thanks for it.

-Ten to one they'll turn on you if you try to be one of them. Get out of

-here as soon as possible, and be in the real world! This is just

-make-believing--and really, you know, you're too fine a sort to throw

-yourself away like this. Old Nature will take care of the town in good

-time without you. Trust her!'

-

-"Sometimes something happens to make the world seem different from what

-we thought it was. Them times catch all of us--when we feel like we'd

-been let down gentle from some high foot-path where we'd been going

-along, and instead had been set to walk a hard road in a silence that

-pointed its finger at us. If we get really knocked down sudden from a

-high foot-path, we can most generally pick ourselves up and rally. But

-when we've been let down gentle by arguments that seem convincing, and

-by folks that seem to know the world better than we do, then's the time

-when there ain't much of any rally to us. If we're any good, I s'pose we

-can climb back without rallying. Rallying gives some spring to the

-climb, but just straight dog-climbing will get us there, too.

-

-"It was a lovely July night, with June not quite out of the world yet.

-There was that after-dark light in the sky that makes you feel that the

-sky is going to stay lit up behind and shining through all night, as if

-the time was so beautiful that celestial beings must be staying awake to

-watch it, and to keep the sky lit and turned down low.... We walked

-along the Plank Road pretty still, because I guessed how Insley's own

-thoughts was conversation enough for him; but when we got a ways down,

-he kind of reached out with his mind for something and me being near by,

-his mind clutched at me.

-

-"'What if it _is_ so, Miss Marsh?' he says. 'What if the only thing for

-us to do is to tend to personal morality and an occasional lift to an

-under dog or two--"if he deserves it." What if that's all--they meant us

-to do?'

-

-"It's awful hard giving a reason for your chief notions. It's like

-describing a rose by the tape-measure.

-

-"'Shucks!' I says only. 'Look up at the stars. I don't believe it.'

-

-"He laughed a little, and he did look up at them, but still I knew how

-he felt. And even the stars that night looked awful detached and able to

-take care of themselves. And they were a-shining down on the Plank Road

-that would get to be Daphne Street and go about its business of leading

-to private homes--_private_ homes. The village, that little cluster of

-lights ahead there, seemed just shutting anybody else out, going its own

-way, kind of mocking anybody for any idea of getting really inside it.

-It was plain enough that Insley had nothing to hope for from Alex

-Proudfit. And Alex's serene sureness that Nature needed nobody to help,

-his real self-satisfied looking on at processes which no man could

-really hurry up--my, but they made you feel cheap, and too many of

-yourself, and like none of you had a license to take a-hold. For a

-second I caught myself wondering. Maybe Nature--stars and streets and

-processes--_could_ work it out without us.

-

-"Something come against my foot. I pushed at it, and then bent over and

-touched it. It was warm and yieldy, and I lifted it up. And it was a

-puppy that wriggled its body unbelievable and flopped on to my arm its

-inch and a quarter of tail.

-

-"'Look at,' I says to Insley, which, of course, he couldn't do; but I

-put the little thing over into his hands.

-

-"'Well, little brother,' says he. 'Running away?'

-

-"We was just in front of the Cadozas', a tumble-down house halfway

-between Proudfit House and the village. It looked like the puppy might

-belong there, so we turned in there with it. I'd always sort of dreaded

-the house, setting in back among lilacs and locusts and never lit up.

-When I stopped to think of it, I never seemed to remember much about

-those lilacs and locusts blooming--I suppose they did, but nobody caught

-them at it often. Some houses you always think of with their lilacs and

-locusts and wisteria and hollyhocks going all the time; and some you

-never seem to connect up with being in bloom at all. Some houses you

-always seem to think of as being lit up to most of their windows, and

-some you can't call to mind as showing any way but dark. The Cadozas'

-was one of the unblossoming, dark kind, and awful ramshackle, besides.

-I always use' to think it looked like it was waiting for some kind of

-happening, I didn't know what. And sometimes when I come by there in the

-dark, I used to think: It ain't happened yet.

-

-"We went around to the back door to rap, and Mis' Cadoza opened it--a

-slovenly looking woman she is, with no teeth much, and looking like what

-hair she's got is a burden to her. I remember how she stood there

-against a background of mussy kitchen that made you feel as if you'd

-turned something away wrong side out to where it wasn't meant to be

-looked at.

-

-"'Is it yours, Mis' Cadoza?' I says, Insley holding out the puppy.

-

-"'Murder, it's Patsy,' says Mis' Cadoza. 'Give 'm here--he must of

-followed Spudge off. Oh, it's you, Miss Marsh.'

-

-"Over by the cook stove in the corner I see past her to something that

-made me bound to go inside a minute. It was a bed, all frowzy and

-tumbled, and in it was laying a little boy.

-

-"'Why,' I says, 'I heard Eph was in bed. What's the matter with him?'

-And I went right in, past his mother, like I was a born guest. She drew

-off, sort of grudging--she never liked any of us to go there, except

-when some of them died, which they was always doing. 'Come in and see

-Eph, Mr. Insley,' I says, and introduced him.

-

-"The little boy wasn't above eight years old and he wasn't above six

-years big.... He was laying real still, with his arms out of bed, and

-his little thin hands flat down on the dark covers. His eyes, looking up

-at us, watching, made me think of some trapped thing.

-

-"'Well, little brother,' says Insley, 'what's the trouble?'

-

-"Mis' Cadoza come and stood at the foot of the bed and jerked at the top

-covers.

-

-"'I've put him in the bed,' she says, 'because I'm wore out lifting him

-around. An' I've got the bed out here because I can't trapse back an'

-forth waitin' on him.'

-

-"'Is he a cripple?' asks Insley, low. I liked so much to hear his

-voice--it was as if it lifted and lowered itself in his throat without

-his bothering to tell it which kind it was time to do. And I never heard

-his voice make a mistake.

-

-"'Cripple?' says Mis' Cadoza, in her kind of undressed voice. 'No. He

-fell in a tub of hot water years ago, and his left leg is witherin' up.'

-

-"'Let me see it,' says Insley, and pulled the covers back without

-waiting.

-

-"There ain't nothing more wonderful than a strong, capable, quick human

-hand doing something it knows how to do. Insley's hands touched over the

-poor little leg of the child until I expected to see it get well right

-there under his fingers. He felt the cords of the knee and then looked

-up at the mother.

-

-"'Haven't they told you,' he says, 'that if he has an operation on his

-knee, you can have a chance at saving the leg? I knew a case very like

-this where the leg was saved.'

-

-"'I ain't been to see nobody about it,' says Mis' Cadoza, leaving her

-mouth open afterwards, like she does. 'What's the good? I can't pay for

-no operation on him. I got all I can do to keep 'm alive.'

-

-"Eph moved a little, and something fell down on the floor. Mis' Cadoza

-pounced on it.

-

-"'Ain't I forbid you?' she says, angry, and held out to us what she'd

-picked up--a little dab of wet earth. 'He digs up all my house plants,'

-she scolds, like some sort of machinery grating down on one place

-continual, 'an' he hauls the dirt out and lays there an' makes

-_figgers_. The idear! Gettin' the sheets a sight....'

-

-"The child looked over at us, defiant. He spoke for the first time, and

-I was surprised to hear how kind of grown-up his voice was.

-

-"'I can get 'em to look like faces,' he says. 'I don't care what _she_

-says.'

-

-"'Show us,' commands Insley.

-

-"He got back the bit of earth from Mis' Cadoza, and found a paper for

-the crumbs, and pillowed the boy up and sat beside him. The thin, dirty

-little hands went to work as eager as birds pecking, and on the earth

-that he packed in his palm he made, with his thumb nail and a pen handle

-from under his pillow, a face--a boy's face, that had in it something

-that looked at you. 'But I can never get 'em to look the same way two

-times,' he says to us, shy.

-

-"'He's most killed my Lady Washington geranium draggin' the clay out

-from under the roots,' Mis' Cadoza put in, resentful.

-

-"Insley sort of sweeps around and looks acrost at her, deep and gentle,

-and like he understood about her boy and her geranium considerable

-better than she did.

-

-"'He won't do it any more,' he says. 'He'll have something better.'

-

-"The boy looked up at him. 'What?' he asks.

-

-"'Clay,' says Insley, 'in a box. With things for you to make the clay

-like. Do you want that?'

-

-"The boy kind of curled down in his pillow and come as near to shuffling

-as he could in the bed, and he hadn't an idea what to say. But I tell

-you, his eyes, they wasn't like any trapped thing any more; they was

-regular _boy's_ eyes, lit up about something.

-

-"'Mrs. Cadoza,' Insley says, 'will you do something for me? We're trying

-to get together a little shrubbery, over at the college. May I come in

-and get some lilac roots from you some day?'

-

-"Mis' Cadoza looked at him--and looked. I don't s'pose it had ever come

-to her before that anybody would want anything she had or anything she

-could do.

-

-"'Why, sure,' she says, only. 'Sure, you can, Mr. What's-name.'

-

-"And then Insley put out his hand, and she took it, I noted special. I

-donno as I ever see anybody shake hands with her before, excep' when

-somebody was gettin' buried out of her house.

-

-"When we got out on the road again, I noticed that Insley went swinging

-along so's I could hardly keep up with him; and he done it sort of

-automatic, and like it was natural to him. I didn't say anything. If

-I've learned one thing living out and in among human beings, it's that

-if you don't do your own keeping still at the right time, nobody else is

-going to do it for you. He spoke up after a minute like I thought he

-would; and he spoke up buoyant--kind of a reverent buoyant:--

-

-"'I don't believe we're discharged from the universe, after all,' he

-says, and laughed a little. 'I believe we've still got our job.'

-

-"I looked 'way down the Plank Road, on its way to its business of being

-Daphne Street, and it come to me that neither the one nor the other

-stopped in Friendship Village. But they led on out, down past the wood

-lots and the Pump pasture and across the tracks and up the hill, and

-right off into that sky that somebody was keeping lit up and turned down

-low. And I said something that I'd thought before:

-

-"'Ain't it,' I says, 'like sometimes everybody in the world come and

-stood right close up beside of you, and spoke through the walls of you

-for something inside of you to come out and be there with them?'

-

-"'That's it,' he says, only. 'That's it.' But I see his mind nipped onto

-what mine meant, and tied it in the right place.

-

-"When we got to Mis' Emmons's corner, I turned off from Daphne Street

-to go that way, because I'd told her I'd look in that night and see what

-they'd bought in town. It was late, for the village, but Mis' Emmons

-never minded that. The living-room light was showing through the

-curtains, and Insley, saying good night to me, looked towards the

-windows awful wistful. I guessed why. It was part because he felt as if

-he must see Robin Sidney and they must talk over together what Alex

-Proudfit had said to him. And part it was just plain because he wanted

-to see her again.

-

-"'Why don't you come in a minute,' I says, 'and ask after Christopher?

-Then you can see me home.'

-

-"'Wouldn't they mind it being late?' he asks.

-

-"I couldn't help smiling at that. Once Mis' Emmons had called us all up

-by telephone at ten o'clock at night to invite us to her house two days

-later. She explained afterwards that she hadn't looked at the clock for

-a week, but if she had, she might have called us just the same. 'For my

-life,' she says, 'I _can't_ be afraid of ten o'clock. Indeed, I rather

-like it.' I told him this, while we was walking in from her gate.

-

-"'Mrs. Emmons,' he says, when she come to the door, 'I've come because I

-hear that you like ten o'clock, and so do I. I wanted to ask if you've

-ever been able to make it last?'

-

-"'No,' she says. 'I prefer a new one every night--and this one to-night

-is an exceptionally good one.'

-

-"She always answered back so pretty. I feel glad when folks can. It's

-like they had an extra brain to 'em.

-

-"Insley went in, and he sort of filled up the whole room, the way some

-men do. He wasn't so awful big, either. But he was pervading.

-Christopher had gone to bed, and Robin Sidney was sitting there near a

-big crock of hollyhocks--she could make the centre and life of a room a

-crock full of flowers just as you can make it a fireplace.

-

-"'Come in,' she says, 'and see what we bought Christopher. I wanted to

-put him in black velvet knickerbockers or silver armour, but Aunt

-Eleanor has bought chiefly khaki middies. She's such a sensible

-relative.'

-

-"'What are we going to do with him?' Insley asks. I loved the way he

-always said 'we' about everything. Not 'they' or 'you,' but always,

-'What are _we_ going to do.'

-

-"'I'll keep him awhile,' Mis' Emmons says, 'and see what develops. If I

-weren't going to Europe this fall--but something may happen. Things do.

-Calliope,' she says to me, 'did I buy what I ought to have bought?'

-

-"I went over to see the things spread out on the table, and Insley

-turned round to where Robin was. I don't really believe he had been very

-far away from where she was since the night before, when Christopher

-come. And he got right into what he had to say, like he was impatient

-for the sympathy in her eyes and in her voice.

-

-"'I must tell you,' he says. 'I could hardly wait to tell you. Isn't it

-great to be knocked down and picked up again, without having to get back

-on your own feet. I--wanted to tell you.'

-

-"'Tell me,' she says. And she looked at him in her nice, girl way that

-lent him her eyes in good faith for just a minute and then took them

-back again.

-

-"'I've been to see Alex Proudfit,' he said. 'I've dined with him.'

-

-"I don't think she said anything at all, but Insley went on, absorbed in

-what he was saying.

-

-"'I talked with him,' he says, 'about what we talked of last night--the

-things to do, here in the village. I thought he might care--I was

-foolish enough for that. Have you ever tried to open a door in a solid

-wall? When I left there, I felt as if I'd tried just that. Seriously,

-have you ever tried to talk about the way things are going to be and to

-talk about it to a perfectly satisfied man?'

-

-"Robin leaned forward, but I guess he thought that was because of her

-sympathy. He went right on:--

-

-"'I want never to speak of this to anyone else, but I can't help telling

-you. You--understand. You know what I'm driving at. Alex Proudfit is a

-good man--as men are counted good. And he's a perfect host, a

-fascinating companion. But he's a type of the most dangerous selfishness

-that walks the world--'

-

-"Robin suddenly laid her hand, just for a flash, on Insley's arm.

-

-"'You mustn't tell me,' she says. 'I ought to have told you before. Alex

-Proudfit--I'm going to be Alex Proudfit's wife.'

-

-

-

-

-V

-

-

-"In the next days things happened that none of us Friendship Village

-ladies is likely ever to forget. Some of the things was nice and some

-was exciting, and some was the kind that's nice after you've got the

-introduction wore off; but all of them was memorable. And most all of

-them was the kind that when you're on the train looking out the car

-window, or when you're home sitting in the dusk before it's time to

-light the lamp, you fall to thinking about and smiling over, and you

-have them always around with you, same as heirlooms you've got ready for

-yourself.

-

-"One of these was the Fourth of July that year. It fell a few days after

-Alex Proudfit come, and the last of the days was full of his guests

-arriving to the house party. The two Proudfit cars was racking back and

-forth to the station all day long, and Jimmy Sturgis, he went near crazy

-with getting the baggage up. I never see such a lot of baggage. 'Land,

-land,' says Mis' Toplady, peeking out her window at it, 'you'd think

-they was all trees and they'd come bringing extra sets of branches,

-regular forest size.' Mis' Emmons and Robin and Christopher went up the

-night before the Fourth--Mis' Emmons was going to do the chaperoning,

-and Alex had asked me to be up there all I could to help him. He knows

-how I love to have a hand in things. However, I couldn't be there right

-at first, because getting ready for the Fourth of July was just then in

-full swing.

-

-"Do you know what it is to want to do over again something that you

-ain't done for years and years? I don't care what it is--whether it's

-wanting to be back sitting around the dinner table of your home when you

-was twelve, and them that was there aren't there now; or whether it's

-rocking in the cool of the day on the front porch of some old house that

-got tore down long ago; or whether it's walking along a road you use' to

-know every fence post of; or fishing from a stream that's dried up or

-damned these twenty years; or eating spice' currants or pickle' peaches

-that there aren't none put up like them now; or hearing a voice in a

-glee club that don't sing no more, or milking a dead cow that _wasn't_

-dead on the spring mornings you mean about--no, sir, I don't care what

-one of them all it happens to be, if you know what it is to want to do

-it again and can't, 'count of death and distance and long-ago-ness,

-then I tell you you know one of the lonesomest, hurtingest feelings the

-human heart can, sole outside of the awful things. And that was what had

-got the matter with me awhile ago.

-

-"It had come on me in the meeting of townspeople called by Silas Sykes a

-few weeks before, to discuss how Friendship Village should celebrate the

-Fourth. We hadn't had a Fourth in the village in years. Seeing the

-Fourth and the Cemetery was so closely connected, late years, Sodality

-had took a hand in the matter and had got fire-crackers and pistols

-voted out of town, part by having family fingers blowed off and clothes

-scorched full of holes, and part through Silas and the other dealers

-admitting they wan't no money in the stuff and they'd be glad to be

-prevented by law from having to sell it. So we shut down on it the year

-after little Spudge Cadoza bit down on a cap to see if it'd go off, and

-it done so. But we see we'd made the mistake of not hatching up

-something to take the place of the noise, because the boys and girls all

-went off to the next-town Fourths and come home blowed up and scorched

-off, anyway. And some of the towns, especially Red Barns, that we can

-see from Friendship Village when it's clear, was feeling awful touchy

-and chip-shouldered towards us, and their two weekly papers was saying

-we borrowed our year's supply of patriotism off the county, and sponged

-on public spirit, and like that. So the general Friendship feeling was

-that we'd ought to have a doings this year, and Postmaster Sykes, that

-ain't so much public spirited as he is professional leading

-citizen,--platform introducer of all visiting orators and so on,--he

-called a mass-meeting to decide what to do.

-

-"Mis' Sykes, she was awful interested, too, through being a born leader

-and up in arms most of the time to do something new. And this year she

-was anxious to get up something fancy to impress her niece with--the new

-niece that was coming to visit her, and that none of us had ever see,

-and that the Sykes's themselves had only just developed. Seems she was

-looking for her family tree and she wrote to Mis' Sykes about being

-connect'. And the letter seemed so swell, and the address so

-mouth-melting and stylish that Mis' Sykes up and invited her to

-Friendship Village to look herself up in their Bible, Born and Died

-part.

-

-"The very night of that public mass-meeting Miss Beryl Sessions--such

-was the niece's name--come in on the Through, and Mis' Sykes, she

-snapped her up from the supper table to bring her to the meeting and

-show her off, all brimming with the blood-is-thicker-than-water

-sentiments due to a niece that looked like that. For I never see

-sweller. And being in the Glee Club I set where I got a good view when

-Mis' Sykes rustled into the meeting, last minute, in her best black

-cashmere, though it was an occasion when the rest of us would wear our

-serges and alapacas, and Mis' Sykes knew it. All us ladies see them both

-and took in every stitch they had on without letting on to unpack a

-glance, and we see that the niece was wearing the kind of a dress that

-was to ours what mince-pie is to dried apple, and I couldn't blame Mis'

-Sykes for showing her off, human.

-

-"Silas had had Dr. June open the meeting with prayer, and I can't feel

-that this was so much reverence in Silas as that he isn't real

-parliamentary nor yet real knowledgeable about what to do with his

-hands, and prayer sort of broke the ice for him. That's the way Silas

-is.

-

-"'Folks,' says he, 'we're here to consider the advisability of bein'

-patriotic this year. Of having a doings that'll shame the other towns

-around for their half-an'-half way of giving things. Of making the

-glorious Fourth a real business bringer. Of having a speech that'll

-bring in the country trade--the Honourable Thaddeus Hyslop has been

-named by some. And of getting our city put in the class of the wide

-awake and the hustlers and the up-to-date and doing. It's a grand chance

-we've passed up for years. What are we going to do for ourselves this

-year? To decide it is the purpose of this mass-meetin'. Sentiments are

-now in order.'

-

-"Silas set down with a kitterin' glance to his new niece that he was

-host and uncle of and pleased to be put in a good light before, first

-thing so.

-

-"Several men hopped up--Timothy Toplady saying that Friendship Village

-was a city in all but name and numbers, and why not prove it to the

-other towns? Jimmy Sturgis that takes tintypes, besides running the 'bus

-and was all primed for a day full of both--'A glorious Fourth,' says he,

-'would be money in our pockets.' And the farm machinery and furniture

-dealers, and Gekerjeck, that has the drug store and the ice-cream

-fountain, and others, they spoke the same. Insley had to be to the

-college that night, or I don't believe the meeting would have gone the

-way it did go. For the first line and chorus of everything that all the

-men present said never varied:--

-

-"'The Fourth for a business bringer.'

-

-"It was Threat Hubbelthwait that finally made the motion, and he wasn't

-real sober, like he usually ain't, but he wound up on the key-note:--

-

-"'I sold two hundred and four lunches the last Fourth we hed in

-Friendship Village,' says he, pounding his palm with his fist, 'an' I

-move you that we celebrate this comin' Fourth like the blazes.'

-

-"And though Silas softened it down some in putting it, still that was

-substantially the sentiment that went through at that mass-meeting, that

-was real pleased with itself because of.

-

-"Well, us ladies hadn't taken no part. It ain't our custom to appear

-much on our feet at public gatherings, unless to read reports of a

-year's work, and so that night we never moved a motion. But we looked at

-each other, and us ladies has got so we understand each other's

-eyebrows. And we knew, one and all, that we was ashamed of the men and

-ashamed of their sentiments. But the rest didn't like to speak out,

-'count of being married to them. And I didn't like to, 'count of not

-being.

-

-"But when they got to discussing ways and means of celebrating, a woman

-did get onto her feet, and a little lilt of interest run round the room

-like wind. It was Miss Beryl Sessions, the niece, that stood up like

-you'd unwrapped your new fashion magazine and unrolled her off'n the

-front page.

-

-"'I wonder,' says she--and her voice went all sweet and chirpy and

-interested, 'whether it would amuse you to know some ways we took to

-celebrate the Fourth of July last year at home ...' and while the men

-set paying attention to her appearance and thinking they was paying

-attention to her words alone, she went on to tell them how 'at home' the

-whole town had joined in a great, Fourth of July garden party on the

-village 'common,' with a band and lanterns and fireworks at night, and a

-big marquee in the middle, full of ice-cream. 'We made it,' she wound

-up, 'a real social occasion, a town party with everybody invited. And

-the business houses said that it paid them over and over.'

-

-"Well, of course that went with the men. Land, but men is easy tamed, so

-be the tameress is somebody they ain't used to and is gifted with a good

-dress and a kind of a 'scalloped air. But when she also has some idea of

-business they go down and don't know it. 'Why, I should think that'd

-take here like a warm meal,' says Timothy Toplady, instant--and I see

-Mis' Amanda Toplady's chin come home to place like she'd heard Timothy

-making love to another woman. 'Novel as the dickens,' says Simon

-Gekerjeck. 'Move we adopt it.' And so they done.

-

-"While they was appointing committees I set up there in the Glee Club

-feeling blacker and blacker. Coming down to the meeting that night, I

-recollect I'd been extra gentle in my mind over the whole celebration

-idea. Walking along in the seven-o'clock light, with the sun shining

-east on Daphne Street and folks all streaming to the town-meeting, and

-me sensing what it was going to be for, I'd got all worked up to 'most a

-Declaration of Independence lump in my throat. When I went in the door

-to the meeting, little Spudge Cadoza and some other children was hanging

-around the steps and Silas Sykes was driving them away; and it come to

-me how deathly ridiculous that was, to be driving _children_ away from a

-meeting like that, when children is what such meetings is for; and I'd

-got to thinking of all the things Insley was hoping for us, and I'd been

-real lifted up on to places for glory. And here down had come the men

-with their talk about a _paying_ Fourth, and here was Miss Beryl

-Sessions showing us how to celebrate in a way that seemed to me real

-sweet but not so very patriotic. It was then that all of a sudden it

-seemed to me I'd die, because I wanted so much to feel the way I'd use

-to feel when it was going to be the Fourth o' July. And when they sung

-'Star Spangled Banner' to go home on and all stood up to the sentiment,

-I couldn't open my mouth. I can't go folks that stands up and carols

-national tunes and then talks about having a Fourth that'll be a real

-business bringer.

-

-"'What'd you think of the meeting?' says Mis' Toplady, low, to me on the

-way out.

-

-"'I think,' says I, frank, 'it was darn.'

-

-"'There's just exactly what we all think,' says Mis' Toplady, in a

-whisper.

-

-"But all the same, preparations was gone into head first. Most of us was

-put on to from one to five committees--I mean most of them that works.

-The rest of the town was setting by, watching it be done for them,

-serene or snarling, according to their lights. Of course us ladies

-worked, not being them that goes to a meeting an' sets with their mouths

-shut and then comes out and kicks at what the meetin' done. Yet, though

-we wan't made out of that kind of meal, we spoke our minds to each

-other, private.

-

-"'What under the canopy _is_ a marquee?' asks Mis' Amanda Toplady, when

-we met at her house to plan about refreshments.

-

-"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke right up.

-

-"'Why, it's a finger ring,' she says. 'One of them with stones running

-the long way. The minister's wife's got a blue stone one....'

-

-"'Finger ring!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, scornful. 'It's a title. That's

-what it is. From England.'

-

-"We looked at them both, perplexish. Mis' Holcomb is always up on

-things--it was her that went into short sleeves when the rest of us was

-still crocheting cuff turnovers, unconscious as the dead. But Mis'

-Uppers had been the Mayor's wife, and though he'd run away, 'count o'

-some money matter, still a title is a title, an' we thought Mis' Uppers

-had ought to know.

-

-"Then Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, she spoke up timid. 'I

-see,' she says, 'in the _Caterer's Gazette_ a picture called "Marquee

-Decorated for Fête." The picture wan't nothing but a striped tent. Could

-a tent have anything to do with it?'

-

-"'Pity sakes, no,' says Mis' Uppers. 'This is somethin' real city done,

-Abagail.'

-

-"We worked on what we could, but we all felt kind of lost and left out

-of it, and like we was tinkering with tools we didn't know the names of

-and a-making something we wasn't going to know how to use. And when the

-article about our Fourth flared out in the _Friendship Daily_ and Red

-Barns and Indian Mound weeklies, we felt worse than we had before:

-'Garden Party.' 'All Day Fête.' '_Al Fresco_ Celebration,' the editors

-had wrote it up.

-

-"'All _what_?' says Mis' Uppers, listening irritable to the last one. 'I

-can't catch that word no more'n a rabbit.'

-

-"'It's a French word,' Mis' Holcomb told her, superior. 'Seems to me

-I've heard it means a failure. It's a funny way to put it, ain't it? I

-bet, though, that's what it'll be.'

-

-"But the men, my, the men thought they was doing things right. The

-Committee on Orator, with Silas for rudder, had voted itself Fifty

-Dollars to squander on the speech, and they had engaged the Honourable

-Thaddeus Hyslop, that they'd hoped to, and that was formerly in our

-legislature, to be the orator of the day; they put up a platform and

-seats on the 'common'--that wan't nothing but the market where loads of

-wood stood to be sold; they was a-going to cut evergreens and plant them

-there for the day; the Committee on Fireworks was a-going to buy set

-pieces for the evening; they was a-going to raise Ned. Somebody that was

-on one of the committees wanted to have some sort of historic scenes,

-but the men wouldn't hear to it, because that would take away them that

-had to do the business in the stores; no caluthumpians, no grand basket

-dinner--just the garden party, real sweet, with Miss Beryl Sessions and

-a marquee full of ice-cream that the ladies was to make.

-

-"'It sounds sort of sacrilegious to me,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'connectin'

-the Fourth up with society and secular doin's. When I was young, my

-understandin' of a garden party would of been somethin' worldly. Now it

-seems it's patriotic. Well, I wonder how it's believed to be in the

-sight of the Lord?'

-

-"But whether it was right or whether it was wrong, none of it rung like

-it had ought to of rang. They wan't no _glow_ to it. We all went around

-like getting supper on wash-day, and not like getting up a meal for

-folks that meant a lot to us. It wan't going to be any such Fourth as

-I'd meant about and wanted to have come back. The day come on a pacing,

-and the nearer it come, the worse all us ladies felt. And by a few days

-before it, when our final committee meeting come off in Abagail Arnold's

-home bakery, back room, 'count of being central, we was all blue as the

-grave, and I donno but bluer. We set waiting for Silas that was having

-a long-distance call, and Abagail was putting in the time frosting dark

-cakes in the same room. We was most all there but the niece Miss Beryl

-Sessions. She had gone home, but she was coming back on the Fourth in an

-automobile full o' city folks.

-

-"'The _marquee's_ come,' says Mis' Holcomb, throwing out the word

-clickish.

-

-"Nobody said anything. Seems it _was_ a tent all along.

-

-"'Silas has got in an extra boy for the day,' says Mis' Sykes,

-complacent. 'It's the littlest Cadoza boy, Spudge. He's goin' to walk up

-an' down Daphne Street all day, with a Prize Coffee board on his back.'

-

-"'Where's Spudge's Fourth comin' in?' I couldn't help askin'.

-

-"Mis' Sykes stared. She always could look you down, but she's got a much

-flatter, thicker stare since her niece come. 'What's them kind o' folks

-_for_ but such work?' says she, puckering.

-

-"'Oh, I donno, I donno,' says I. 'I thought mebbe they was partly made

-to thank the Lord for bein' born free.'

-

-"'How unpractical you talk, Calliope,' she says.

-

-"'I donno that word,' says I, reckless from being pent up. 'But it

-seems like a liberty-lovin' people had ought to hev _one_ day to love

-liberty on an' not tote groceries and boards and such.'

-

-"'_Don't it!_' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, explosive.

-

-"'What you talking?' says Mis' Sykes, cold. 'Don't you know the Fourth

-of July can be made one of the best days of the year for your own town's

-good? What's that if it ain't patriotic?'

-

-"'It's Yankee shrewd,' says I, snapping some, 'that's what it is. It

-ain't Yankee spirited, by a long shot.'

-

-"'"_By a long shot_,"' quotes Mis' Sykes, withering. She always was

-death on wording, and she was far more death after her niece come. But I

-always thought, and I think now, that correcting your advisary's grammar

-is like telling him there's a smooch on his nose, and they ain't either

-of them parliamental _or_ decent.

-

-"Mis' Uppers sighed. 'The whole thing,' says she, candid, 'sounds to me

-like Fourth o' July in Europe or somewheres. No get-up-an'-get anywheres

-to it. What do they do in Europe on the Fourth o' July, anyway?' she

-wondered. 'I donno's I ever read.'

-

-"'I donno, either,' says Mis' Holcomb, dark, 'but I bet you it's one of

-these All Frost celebrations--or whatever it is they say.'

-

-"Mis' Toplady set drying her feet by Abagail's stove, and she looked

-regular down in the mouth. 'Well, sir,' she said, 'a Fourth o' July all

-rosettes an' ribbins so don't sound to me one bit like the regular

-Fourth at all. It don't sound to me no more'n the third--or the fifth.'

-

-"I was getting that same homesick feeling that I'd had off and on all

-through the getting ready, that hankering for the old kinds of Fourths

-of Julys when I was a little girl. When us girls had a quarter apiece to

-spend, and father'd cover the quarter with his hands on the gate-post

-for us to guess them; and when the boys picked up scrap-iron and sold

-old rubbers to get their Fourth money. It wan't so much what we used to

-do that I wanted back as it was the _feeling_. Why, none of our spines

-use' to be laid down good and flat in our backs once all day long. And I

-wisht what I'd wisht more than once since the mass-meeting, that some of

-us ladies had of took hold of that Fourth and had run it so's 'twould of

-been like you mean 'way inside when you say 'The Fourth of July'--and

-that death and distance and long-ago-ness is awful in the way of.

-

-"'We'd ought to of had a grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods,' I

-says, restless.

-

-"'An' a p'rade,' says Mis' Toplady. 'I donno nothin' that makes me feel

-more patriotic than the minute before the p'rade comes by.'

-

-"'An' children in the Fourth somehow,' Mis' Uppers says. 'Land, children

-is who it's for, anyhow,' she says, like I'd been thinking; 'an' all

-we've ever done for 'em about it is to leave 'em kill 'emselves with

-it.'

-

-"Well, it was there, just there, and before Mis' Sykes could dicker a

-reply that in come tearing her husband from his long-distance

-telephoning, and raced into the room like he hadn't a manner in his kit.

-

-"'We're all over with,' Silas shouts. 'It's all done for! Thaddeus

-Hyslop is smashed an' bleedin'. He can't come. We ain't got no speech.

-His automobile's turned over on top of his last speakin' place.

-Everybody else that ain't one-horse is sure to be got for somewheres

-else. Our Fourth of July is rooned. We're done for. The editor's gettin'

-it in the _Weekly_ so's to warn the county. We'll be the Laughing Stock.

-Dang the luck!' says Silas; 'why don't some o' you say somethin'?'

-

-"But it wasn't all because Silas was doing it all that the men didn't

-talk, because when he'd stopped, they all stood there with their mouths

-open and never said a word. Seems to me I did hear Timothy Toplady bring

-out, 'Blisterin' Benson,' but nobody offered nothing more fertile. That

-is, nobody of the men did. But 'most before I got my thoughts together I

-heard two feet of a chair come down onto the floor, and Mis' Amanda

-Toplady stood up there by Abagail's cook stove, and she took the griddle

-lifter and struck light on the side of the pipe.

-

-"'Hurrah!' she says. 'Now we can have a real Fourth. A Fourth that does

-as a Fourth is.'

-

-"'What you talkin', Amanda Toplady?' says Silas, crisp; and ''Mandy,

-what the blazes do you mean?' says Timothy, her lawful lord. But Mis'

-Toplady didn't mind them, nor mind Mis' Sykes, that was staring at her

-flat and thick.

-

-"'I mean,' says Mis' Toplady, reckless, 'I been sick to death of the

-idea of a Fourth with no spirit to it. I mean I been sick to death of a

-Fourth that's all starched white dresses an' company manners an' no

-hurrahs anywheres about it. An' us ladies, most all of us, feels the

-same. We didn't like to press in, bein' you men done the original

-plannin', an' so not one of us has said "P'rade," nor nothin' else to

-you. But now that your orator has fell through on himself, you men just

-leave us ladies in on this thing to do more'n take orders, an' you

-needn't be the Laughin' Stock o' nothin' an' nobody. I guess you'll all

-stand by me. What say, ladies?'

-

-"Well, sir, you'd ought to of heard us. We joined in like a patch of

-grasshoppers singing. They wasn't one of us that hadn't been dying to

-get our hands on that Fourth and make it a Fourth full of unction and

-oil of joy, like the Bible said, and must of meant what we meant.

-

-"'Oh, ladies,' I remember I says, fervent, 'I feel like we could make a

-Fourth o' July just like stirrin' up a white cake, so be we was let.'

-

-"'What d' you know about managin' a Fourth?' snarls Silas. 'You'll have

-us all in the hole. You'll have us shellin' out of our own pockets to

-make up--'

-

-"Mis' Toplady whirled on him. 'Would you druther have Red Barns an'

-Indian Mound a-jumpin' on you through the weekly press for bein'

-bluffers, an' callin' us cheap an' like that, or would you druther not?'

-she put it to him.

-

-"'Dang it,' says Silas, 'I never tried to do a thing for this town that

-it didn't lay down an' roll all over me. I wish I was dead.'

-

-"'You wan't tryin' to do this thing for this town,' says Mis' Toplady

-back at him, like the wind. 'You was tryin' to do it for the _stores_

-of this town, an' you know it. You was tryin' to ride the Fourth for a

-horse to the waterin' trough o' good business, an' you know it, Silas

-Sykes,' says she, 'an' so was Jimmy and Threat an' all of you. The hull

-country tries to get behind the Fourth of July an' make money over its

-back like a counter. It ain't what was meant, an' us ladies felt it all

-along. An' neither was it meant for a garden party day alone, though

-_that_,' says Mis' Toplady, gracious, 'is a real sweet side idea. An'

-Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Sessions had ought to go on an' run that part of it,

-bein' the--tent's here,' she could _not_ bring herself to use that other

-word. 'But,' she says, 'that ain't all of a real Fourth, nor yet a

-speech ain't, though he did use to be in the legislature. Them things

-alone don't make a real flag, liberty-praisin' Fourth, to me nor to none

-of us.'

-

-"'Well,' says Silas, sour, 'what you goin' to _do_ if the men decides to

-let you try this?'

-

-"'That ain't the way,' says Mis' Toplady, like a flash; 'it ain't for

-the men to _let us do_ nothin'. It's for us all to do it together, yoke

-to yoke, just like everything else ought to be done by us both, an' no

-talk o' "_runnin_'" by either side.'

-

-"'But what's the idee--what's the idee?' says Silas. 'Dang it all,

-somebody's got to hev an idee.'

-

-"'Us ladies has got 'em,' says Mis' Toplady, calm. 'An',' says she, 'one

-o' the first of 'em is that if we have anything to do with runnin' the

-Fourth of our forefathers, then after 10 A.M., all day on that day,

-every business house in town has got to shut down.'

-

-"'What?' says Silas, his voice slippin'. 'Gone crazy-headed, hev ye?'

-

-"'No, Silas,' says Mis' Toplady, 'nor yet hev we gone so graspin' that

-we can't give up a day's trade to take notice of our country.'

-

-"'Lord Harry,' says Silas, 'you can't get a dealer in town to do it, an'

-you know it.'

-

-"'Oh, yes, you can, Silas,' says somebody, brisk. And it was Abagail,

-frosting dark cakes over by the side of the room. 'I was goin' to shut

-up shop, anyway, all day on the Fourth,' Abagail says.

-

-"'An' lose the country trade in lunches?' yells Silas. 'Why, woman,

-you'd be Ten Dollars out o' pocket.'

-

-"'I wan't never one to spend the mornin' thankin' God an' the afternoon

-dippin' oysters,' says Abagail. And Silas scrunched. He done that one

-year when his Thanksgiving oysters come late, and he knew he done it.

-

-"Well, they went over it and over it and tried to think of some other

-way, and tried to hatch up some other speaker without eating up the

-whole Fifty Dollars in telephone tolls, and tried most other things. And

-then we told them what we'd thought of different times, amongst us as

-being features fit for a Fourth in the sight of the Lord and the sight

-of men. And they hemmed and they hawed and they give in about as

-graceful as a clothes-line winds up when you've left it out in the

-sleet, but they did give in and see reason. Timothy last--that's quite

-vain of being firm.

-

-"'If we come out with a one-horse doin's, seems like it'd be worse than

-sittin' down flat-foot failed,' he mourns, grieving.

-

-"Amanda, his wife, give him one of her looks. 'Timothy,' says she,

-'when, since you was married to me, did I ever fail to stodge up a

-company dinner or a spare bed or a shroud when it was needed sudden?

-When did any of us ladies ever fail that's here? Do you sp'ose we're any

-more scant of idees about our own nation?'

-

-"And Timothy had to keep his silence. He knew what she said was the Old

-Testament truth. But I think what really swung them all round was the

-thought of Red Barns and Indian Mound. Imagination of what them two

-weekly papers would say, so be we petered out on our speech and didn't

-offer nothing else, was too much for flesh and blood to bear. And the

-men ended by agreeing to seeing to shutting every business house in

-Friendship Village and they went off to do it,--resolved, but groaning

-some, like men will.

-

-"Mis' Sykes, she made some excuse and went, too. 'I'll run the garden

-party part,' says she. 'My niece an' I'll do that, an' try our best to

-get some novelty into your Fourth. An' we'll preside on the marquee,

-like we'd agreed. More I don't say.'

-

-"But the rest of us, we stayed on there at Abagail's, and we planned

-like mad.

-

-"We didn't look in no journal nor on no woman's page for something new.

-We didn't rush to our City relations for novelties. We didn't try for

-this and that nor grasp at no agony whatever. We just went down deep

-into the inside of our understanding and thought what the Fourth was and

-how them that made it would of wanted it kept. No fingers blowed off nor

-clothes scorched up, no houses burned down, no ear-drums busted

-out--none of them would of been in _their_ programme, and they wan't in

-ours. Some of the things that was in ours we'd got by hearing Insley

-tell what they was doin' other places. Some o' the things he suggested

-to us. Some o' the things we got by just going back and back down the

-years an' _remembering_--not so much what we'd done as the way we use'

-to feel, long ago, when the Fourth was the Fourth and acted like it knew

-it. Some of the things we got by just reaching forward and forward, and

-seeing what the Fourth is going to mean to them a hundred years from

-now--so be we do our part. And some of the things we got through sheer

-make-shift woman intelligence, that put its heads together and used

-everything it had, that had anything to do with the nation, or the town,

-or with really living at all the way that first Fourth of July meant

-about, 'way down inside.

-

-"Before it was light on the morning of the Fourth, I woke up, feeling

-all happy and like I wanted to hurry. I was up and dressed before the

-sun was up, and when I opened my front door, I declare it was just like

-the glory of the Lord was out there waiting for me. The street was

-laying all still and simple, like it was ready and waiting for the

-light. Early as it was, Mis' Holcomb was just shaking her breakfast

-table-cloth on her side stoop, and she waved it to me, big and billowy

-and white, like a banner. And I offs with my apron and waved it back,

-and it couldn't of meant no more to either of us if we had been shaking

-out the folds of flags. It was too early for the country wagons to be

-rattling in yet, and they wan't no other sounds--except a little bit of

-a pop now and then over to where Bennie Uppers and little Nick Toplady

-was up and out, throwing torpedoes onto the bricks; and then the birds

-that was trilling an' shouting like mad, till every tree all up and down

-Daphne Street and all up and down the town and the valley was just one

-living singing. And all over everything, like a kind of a weave to it,

-was that something that makes a Sunday morning and some holiday mornings

-better and sweeter and _goldener_ than any other day. I ain't got much

-of a garden, not having any real time to fuss in it, but I walked out

-into the middle of the little patch of pinks and parsley that I have

-got, and I says 'way deep in me, deeper than thinking: 'It don't make no

-manner of differ'nce how much of a fizzle the day ends up with, this,

-here and now, is the way it had ought to start.'

-

-"Never, not if I live till beyond always, will I forget how us ladies'

-hearts was in our mouths when, along about 'leven o'clock, we heard the

-Friendship Village Stonehenge band coming fifing along, and we knew the

-parade was begun. We was all on the market square--hundreds of us, seems

-though. Red Barns and Indian Mound had turned out from side to side of

-themselves, mingling the same as though ploughshares was

-pruning-hooks--or whatever that quotation time is--both towns looking

-for flaws in the day, like enough, but both shutting up about it,

-biblical. Even the marquee, with its red and white stripes, showing

-through the trees, made me feel good. 'Land, land,' Mis' Toplady says,

-'it looks kind of homey and old-fashioned, after all, don't it? I mean

-the--tent,' she says--she would _not_ say the other word; but then I

-guess it made her kind of mad seeing Mis' Sykes bobbing around in there

-in white duck an' white shoes--her that ain't a grandmother sole because

-of Nature and not at all through any lack of her own years. Everything

-was all seeming light and confident--but I tell you we didn't feel so

-confident as we'd meant to when we heard the band a-coming to the tune

-o' 'Hail, Columbia! Happy Land.' And yet now, when I look back on that

-Independence Day procession, it seems like regular floats is no more

-than toy doings beside of it.

-

-"What do you guess us ladies had thought up for our procession,--with

-Insley back of us, letting us think we thought it up alone? Mebbe you'll

-laugh, because it wan't expensive to do; but oh; I think it was nice.

-We'd took everything in the town that done the town's work, and we'd run

-them all together. We headed off with the fire-engine, 'count of the

-glitter--and we'd loaded it down with flags and flowers, and the hook

-and ladder and hose-carts the same, wheels and sides; and flags in the

-rubber caps of the firemen up top. Then we had the two big sprinkling

-carts, wound with bunting, and five-foot flags flying from the seats.

-Then come all the city teams drawn by the city horses--nice, plump

-horses they was, and rosettes on them, and each man had decorated his

-wagon and was driving it in his best clothes. Then come the steam roller

-that Friendship Village and Red Barns and Indian Mound owns together and

-scraps over some, though that didn't appear in its appearance, puffing

-along, with posies on it. Then there was the city electric light repair

-wagon, with a big paper globe for an umbrella, and the electric men

-riding with their leggings on and their spurs, like they climb the

-poles; and behind them the telephone men was riding--because the town

-owns its own telephone, too--and then the four Centrals, in pretty

-shirtwaists, in a double-seated buggy loaded with flowers--the telephone

-office we'd see to it was closed down, too, to have its Fourth, like a

-human being. And marching behind them was the city waterworks men, best

-bib and tucker apiece. And then we hed out the galvanized garbage wagon

-that us ladies hed bought ourselves a year ago, and that wasn't being

-used this year count of the city pleading too poison poor; and it was

-all scrubbed up and garnished and filled with ferns and drove by its own

-driver and the boy that had use' to go along to empty the cans. And then

-of course they was more things--some of them with day fireworks shooting

-up from them--but not the hearse, though we had all we could do to keep

-Timothy Toplady from having it in, 'count of its common public office.

-

-"Well, and then we'd done an innovation--an' this was all Insley's idea,

-and it was him that made us believe we could do it. Coming next, in

-carriages and on foot, was the mayor and the city council and every last

-man or woman that had anything to do with running the city life. They

-was all there--city treasurer, clerk of the court, register of deeds,

-sheriffs, marshals, night-watchmen, health officer, postmaster, janitor

-of the city hall, clerks, secretaries, stenographers, school board, city

-teachers, and every one of the rest--they was all there, just like they

-had belonged in the p'rade the way them framers of the first Fourth of

-July had meant they should fit in: Conscience and all. But some of them

-servants of the town had made money off'n its good roads, and some off'n

-its saloons, and some off'n getting ordinances repealed, and some off'n

-inspecting buildings and sidewalks that they didn't know nothing about,

-and some was making it even then by paving out into the marsh; and some

-in yet other ways that wasn't either real elbow work nor clean head

-work. What else could they do? We'd ask' them to march because they

-represented the town, and rather'n own they _didn't_ represent the town,

-there they was marching; but if some of them didn't step down Daphne

-Street feeling green and sick and sore and right down schoolboy ashamed

-of themselves, then they ain't got the human thrill in them that somehow

-I _cannot_ believe ever dies clear out of nobody. They was a lump in my

-throat for them that had sold themselves, and they was a lump for them

-that hadn't--but oh, the differ'nce in the lumps.

-

-"'Land, land,' I says to Mis' Toplady, 'if we ain't done another thing,

-we've made 'em remember they're servants to Friendship Village--like

-they often forget.'

-

-"'Ain't we?' she says, solemn. 'Ain't we?'

-

-"And then next behind begun the farm things: the threshin' machines and

-reapers and binders and mowers and like that, all drawn by the farm

-horses and drove by their owners and decorated by them, jolly and gay;

-and, too, all the farm horses for miles around--we was going to give a

-donated surprise prize for the best kep' and fed amongst them. And last,

-except for the other two bands sprinkled along, come the leading

-citizens, and who do you guess _they_ was? Not Silas nor Timothy nor

-Eppleby nor even Doctor June, nor our other leading business men and our

-three or four professionals--no, not them; but the real, true, leading

-citizens of Friendship Village and Indian Mound and Red Barns and other

-towns and the farms between--the _children_, over two hundred of them,

-dressed in white if they had it and in dark if they didn't, with or

-without shoes, in rags or out of them, village-tough descended or with

-pew-renting fathers, all the same and together, and carrying a flag and

-singing to the tops of their voices 'Hail, Columbia,' that the bands

-kept a-playing, some out of plumb as to time, but all fervent and

-joyous. It was us women alone that got up that part. My, I like to think

-about it.

-

-"They swung the length of Daphne Street and twice around the market

-square, and they come to a halt in front of the platform. And Doctor

-June stood up before them all, and he prayed like this:--

-

-"'Lord God, that let us start free an' think we was equal, give us to

-help one another to be free an' to get equal, in deed an' in truth.'

-

-"And who do you s'pose we hed to read the Declaration of Independence?

-Little Spudge Cadoza, that Silas had been a-going to hev walk up and

-down Daphne Street with a board on his back--Insley thought of him, and

-we picked him out a-purpose. And though he didn't read it so thrilling

-as Silas would of, it made me feel the way no reading of it has ever

-made me feel before--oh, because it was kind of like we'd snapped up the

-little kid and set him free all over again, even though he wasn't it but

-one day in the year. And it sort of seemed to me that all inside the

-words he read was trumpets and horns telling how much them words was

-_going_ to mean to him and his kind before he'd had time to die. And

-then the Glee Club struck into 'America,' and the whole crowd joined in

-without being expected, and the three bands that was laying over in the

-shade hopped up and struck in, too--and I bet they could of heard us to

-Indian Mound. Leastways to Red Barns, that we can see from Friendship

-Village when it's clear.

-

-"The grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods stays in my head as one

-picture, all full of veal loaf and 'scalloped potato and fruit salad and

-nut-bread and deviled eggs and bake' beans and pickle' peaches and layer

-cake and drop sponge-cake and hot coffee--the kind of a dinner that

-comes crowding to your thought whenever you think 'Dinner' at your

-hungriest. And after we'd took care of everybody's baskets and set them

-under a tree for a lunch towards six, us ladies went back to the market

-square. And over by the marquee we see the men gathered--all but Insley,

-that had slipped away as quick as we begun telling him how much of it

-was due to him. Miss Beryl Sessions had just arrived, in a automobile,

-covered with veils, and she was introducing the other men to her City

-friends. Us ladies sort of kittered around back of them, not wanting to

-press ourselves forward none, and we went up to the door of the marquee

-where, behind the refreshment table, Mis' Sykes was a-standing in her

-white duck.

-

-"'My,' says Mis' Holcomb to her, 'it's all going off nice so far, ain't

-it?'

-

-"'They ain't a great deal the matter with it,' says Mis' Sykes, snappy.

-

-"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Uppers, grieving, 'the parade an' the

-basket dinner seemed to me both just perfect.'

-

-"'The parade done well enough,' says Mis' Sykes, not looking at her. 'I

-donno much about the dinner.'

-

-"And all of a sudden we recollected that she hadn't been over to the

-grand basket dinner at all.

-

-"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Toplady, blank, 'ain't you et nothin'?'

-

-"'My niece,' says Mis' Sykes, dignified, 'didn't get here till now. Who

-was I to leave in the _tent_? I've et,' says she, cold, 'two dishes of

-ice-cream an' two chocolate nut-cakes.'

-

-"Mis' Toplady just swoops over towards her. 'Why, my land,' she says,

-hearty, 'they's stuff an' to spare packed over there under the trees.

-You go right on over and get your dinner. Poke right into any of our

-baskets--ours is grouped around mine that's tied with a red bandanna to

-the handle. And leave us tend the marquee. What say, ladies?'

-

-"And I don't think she even sensed she used that name.

-

-"When she'd gone, I stood a minute in the marquee door looking off

-acrost the market square, hearing Miss Beryl Sessions and the men

-congratulating each other on the glorious Fourth they was a-having, and

-the City folks praising them both sky high.

-

-"'Real nice idee it was,' says Silas, with his hands under his best coat

-tails. 'Nice, tastey, up-to-date Fourth. And cheap to do.'

-

-"'Yes, we all hung out for a good Fourth this year,' says Timothy,

-complacent.

-

-"'It's a simply lovely idea,' says Miss Beryl Sessions, all sweet and

-chirpy and interested, 'this making the Fourth a county party and

-getting everybody in town, so. But tell me: Whatever made you close your

-shops? I thought the Fourth could always be made to pay for itself over

-and over, if the business houses went about it right.'

-

-"'Oh, well,' says Silas, lame but genial, 'we closed up to-day. We kind

-o' thought we would.'

-

-"But I stood looking off acrost the market square, where the children

-was playing, and quoits was being pitched, and the ball game was going

-to commence, and the calathumpians was capering, and most of Red Barns

-and Indian Mound and Friendship Village was mingling, lion and lamb; and

-I looked on along Daphne Street, where little Spudge Cadoza wasn't

-walking with a Prize Coffee board on his back,--and all of a sudden I

-felt just the way I'd wanted to feel, in spite of all the distance and

-long-ago-ness. And I turned and says to the other women inside the

-marquee:--

-

-"'Seems to me,' I says, 'as if the Fourth of July _had_ paid for itself,

-over and over. Oh, don't it to you?'

-

-

-

-

-VI

-

-

-"The new editor of the _Friendship Village Evening Daily_ give a fine

-write-up of the celebration. He printed it on the night after the

-Fourth, not getting out any paper at all on the day that was the day;

-but on the night after that, the news columns of his paper fell flat and

-dead. In a village the day following a holiday is like the hush after a

-noise. The whole town seems like it was either asleep or on tiptoe. And

-in Friendship Village this hush was worse than the hush of other years.

-Other years they'd usually been accidents to keep track of, and mebbe

-even an amputation or two to report. But this Fourth there was no

-misfortunes whatever, nor nothing to make good reading for the night of

-July 6.

-

-"So the editor thought over his friends and run right down the news

-column, telling what there _wasn't_. Like this:--

-

-

-     "'SUPPER TABLE JOTTINGS

-

-     "'Postmaster Silas Sykes is well.

-

-     "'Timothy Toplady has not had a cold since before Christmas.

-     Prudent Timothy.

-

-     "'Jimmy Sturgis has not broken his leg yet this year as he did

-     last. Keep it up, Jimmy.

-

-     "'Eppleby Holcomb has not been out of town for quite a while.

-

-     "'None of the Friendship ladies has given a party all season.

-

-     "'The First Church is not burnt down nor damaged nor repaired.

-     Insurance $750.

-

-     "'Nothing local is in much of any trouble.

-

-     "'Nobody is dead here to-day except the usual ones.

-

-     "'Nobody that's got a telephone in has any company at the present

-     writing. Where is the old-time hospitality?

-

-     "'Subscriptions payable in advance.

-

-     "'Subscriptions payable in advance.

-

-     "'Subscriptions payable in advance.'

-

-

-"It made quite some fun for us, two or three of us happening in the

-post-office store when the paper come out--Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady

-and me. But we took it some to heart, too, because to live in a town

-where they ain't nothing active happening all the time is a kind of

-running account of everybody that's in the town. And us ladies wan't

-that kind.

-

-"All them locals done to Silas Sykes, though, was to set him fussing

-over nothing ever happening to him. Silas is real particular about his

-life, and I guess he gets to thinking how life ain't so over-particular

-about him.

-

-"'My dum,' he says that night, 'that's just the way with this town. I

-always calculated my life was goin' to be quite some pleasure to me. But

-I don't see as it is. If I thought I was going to get sold in my death

-like I've been in my life, I swan I'd lose my interest in dyin'.'

-

-"Mis' Timothy Toplady was over in behind the counter picking out her

-butter, and she whirled around from sampling the jars, and she says to

-Mis' Sykes and me:--

-

-"'Ladies,' she says, 'le's us propose it to the editor that seems to

-have such a hard job, that us members of Sodality take a hold of his

-paper for a day and get it out for him and put some news in it, and sell

-it to everybody, subscribers and all, that one night, for ten cents.'

-

-"Mis' Silas Sykes looks up and stopped winking and breathing, in a way

-she has when she sights some distant money for Sodality.

-

-"'Land, land,' she says, 'I bet they'd go like hot cakes.'

-

-"But Silas he snorts, scorching.

-

-"'Will you ladies tell me,' he says, 'where you going to _get_ your news

-to put in your paper? The Fourth don't come along every day. Or less you

-commit murder and arson and runaways, there won't be any more in your

-paper than they is in its editor's.'

-

-"That hit a tender town-point, and I couldn't stand it no longer. I

-spoke right up.

-

-"'Oh, I donno, I donno, Silas,' I says. 'They's those in this town

-that's doin' the murderin' for us, neat an' nice, right along,' I told

-him.

-

-"'Mean to say?' snapped Silas.

-

-"'Mean to say,' says I, 'most every grocery store in this town an' most

-every milkman an' the meat market as well is doin' their best to drag

-the health out o' people's systems for 'em. Us ladies is more or less

-well read an' knowledgeable of what is goin' on in the world outside,' I

-says to Silas that ain't, 'an' we know a thing or two about what ought

-to be clean.'

-

-"Since Insley come, we had talked a good deal more about these things

-and what was and what shouldn't be; and especially we had talked it in

-Sodality, on account of our town stores and social ways and such being

-so inviting to disease and death. But we hadn't talked it official,

-'count of Sodality being for Cemetery use, and talking it scattering we

-hadn't been able to make the other men even listen to us.

-

-"'Pack o' women!' says Silas, now, and went off to find black molasses

-for somebody.

-

-"Mis' Toplady sampled her butter, dreamy.

-

-"'Rob Henny's butter here,' she says, 'is made out of cow sheds that I

-can't bear to think about. An' Silas knows it. Honest,' she says, 'I'm

-gettin' so I spleen against the flowers in the fields for fear Rob

-Henny's cows'll get holt of 'em. I should think the _Daily_ could write

-about that.'

-

-"I remember how us three women looked at each other then, like our

-brains was experimenting with our ideas. And when Mis' Toplady got her

-butter, we slipped out and spoke together for a few minutes up past the

-Town Pump. And it was there the plan come to a head and legs and arms.

-And we see that we had a way of picking purses right off of every day,

-so be the editor would leave us go ahead--and of doing other things.

-

-"The very next morning we three went to see the editor and get his

-consent.

-

-"'What's your circulation, same as City papers print to the top of the

-page?' Mis' Toplady asks him, practical.

-

-"'Paid circulation or got-out circulation?' says the editor.

-

-"'Paid,' says Mis' Toplady, in silver-dollar tones.

-

-"'Ah, well, _paid for_ or subscribed for?' asks the editor.

-

-"'Paid for,' says Mis' Toplady, still more financial.

-

-"'Six hundred and eighty paid for,' the editor says, 'an' fifty-two

-that--mean to pay.'

-

-"'My!' says Mis' Toplady, shuddering. 'What business is! Well, us ladies

-of the Sodality want to run your paper for one day and charge all your

-subscribers ten cents extra for that day's paper. Will you?'

-

-"The editor, he laughed quite a little, and then he looked thoughtful.

-He was new and from the City and young and real nervous--he used to pop

-onto his feet whenever a woman so much as come in the room.

-

-"'Who would collect the ten cents?' says he.

-

-"'Sodality,' says Mis' Toplady, firm. 'Ourself, cash an' _in advance_.'

-

-"The editor nodded, still smiling.

-

-"'Jove,' he said, 'this fits in remarkably well with the fishing I've

-been thinking about. I confess I need a day. I suppose you wouldn't want

-to do it this week?'

-

-"Mis' Toplady looked at me with her eyebrows. But I nodded. I always

-rather hurry up than not.

-

-"'So be we had a couple o' hours to get the news to happenin',' says

-she, 'that had ought to do us.'

-

-"The editor looked startled.

-

-"'News!' said he. 'Oh, I say now, you mustn't expect too much. I ought

-to warn you that running a paper in this town is like trying to raise

-cream on a cistern.'

-

-"Mis' Toplady smiled at him motherly.

-

-"'You ain't ever tried pouring the cream into the cistern, I guess,' she

-says.

-

-"So we settled it into a bargain, except that, after we had planned it

-all out with him and just as we was going out the door, Mis' Toplady

-thought to say to him:--

-

-"'You know, Sodality don't know anything about it yet, so you'd best not

-mention it out around till this afternoon when we vote to do it. We'll

-be up at eight o'clock Thursday morning, rain or shine.'

-

-"There wasn't ever any doubt about Sodality when it see Sixty Dollars

-ahead--which we would get if everybody bought a paper, and we was

-determined that everybody should buy. Sodality members scraps among

-themselves personal, but when it comes to raising money we unite yoke to

-yoke, and all differences forgot. It's funny sometimes at the meetings,

-funny and disgraceful, to hear how we object to each other, especially

-when we're tired, and then how we all unite together on something for

-the good of the town. I tell you, it makes me feel sometimes that the

-way ain't so much to try to love each other,--which other folks'

-peculiarities is awful in the way of,--but for us all to pitch in and

-love something altogether, your town or your young folks, or your

-cemetery or keeping something clean or making somethin' look nice--and

-before you know it you're loving the folks you work with, no matter how

-peculiar, or even more so. It's been so nice since we've been working

-for Cemetery. Folks that make each other mad every time they try to talk

-can sell side by side at the same bazaar and count the money mutual.

-There's quite a few disagreements in Sodality, so we have to be real

-careful who sets next to who to church suppers. But when we pitch in to

-work for something, we sew rags and 'scallop oysters in the same pan

-with our enemies. Don't it seem as if that must mean something?

-Something big?

-

-"Sodality voted to publish the paper, all right, and elected the

-officers for the day: Editor, Mis' Postmaster Sykes, 'count of her

-always expecting to take the lead in everything; assistant editor, me,

-'count of being well and able to work like a dog; business manager and

-circulation man, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, 'count of no dime

-ever getting away from her unexpected. And the reporters was to be most

-of the rest of the Sodality: Mis' Timothy Toplady, the three Liberty

-girls, Mis' Mayor Uppers, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, Mis' Threat

-Hubbelthwait, an' Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery. It was

-hard for Abagail to get away from her cook stove and her counter, so we

-fixed it that she was to be let off any other literary work along of her

-furnishing us our sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs that day noon. It was

-quite a little for Abagail to do, but she's always real willing, and we

-didn't ask coffee of her. Mis' Sturgis, her that is the village invalid,

-we arranged should have charge of the Woman's Column, and bring down her

-rocking chair and make her beef broth right there on the office

-wood-stove.

-

-"I guess we was all glad to go down early in the morning that day,

-'count of not meeting the men. One and all and with one voice the

-Friendship men had railed at us hearty.

-

-"'Pack o' women!' says Silas Sykes, over and over.

-

-"'You act like bein' a woman an' a wife was some kind o' nonsense,' says

-Mis' Sykes back at him, majestic. 'Well, I guess bein' yours is.'

-

-"'Land, Amandy,' says Timothy Toplady, 'you women earn money so

-_nervous_. Why don't you do it regular an' manly?'

-

-"Only Eppleby Holcomb had kept his silence. Eppleby sees things that the

-run of men don't see, or, if they did see them, they would be bound to

-stick them in their ledgers where they would never, never belong.

-Eppleby was our friend, and Sodality never had truer.

-

-"So though we went ahead, the men had made us real anxious. And most of

-us slipped down to the office by half past seven so's not to meet too

-many. The editor had had a column in the paper about what we was goin'

-to do--'Loyal to our Local Dead' he headed it, and of course full half

-the town was kicking at the extra ten cents, like full half of any town

-can and will kick when it's asked to pay out for its own good, dead or

-alive. But we was leaving all that to Mis' Holcomb, that knows a thing

-or two about the human in us, and similar.

-

-"Extra-paper morning, when we all come in, Mis' Sykes she was sitting at

-the editor's desk with her big apron on and a green shade to cover up

-her crimping kids, and her list that her and Mis' Toplady and I had made

-out, in front of her.

-

-"'Now then, let's get right to work,' she says brisk. 'We ain't any too

-much time, I can tell you. It ain't like bakin' bread or gettin' the

-vegetables ready. We've all got to use muscles this day we ain't used to

-usin',' she says, 'an' we'd best be spry.'

-

-"So then she begun giving out who was to do what--assignments, the

-editor named it when he told us what to do. And I skipped back an' hung

-over the files, well knowing what was to come.

-

-"Mis' Sykes stood up in her most society way, an'--

-

-"'Anybody want to back out?' says she, gracious.

-

-"'Land!' says everyone in a No-I-don't tone.

-

-"'Very well,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Mis' Toplady, you go out to Rob Henney's

-place, an' you go through his cow sheds from one end to the other an'

-take down notes so's he sees you doin' it. You go into his kitchen an'

-don't you let a can get by you. Open his churn. Rub your finger round

-the inside of his pans. An' if he won't tell you, the neighbours will.

-Explain to him you're goin' to give him a nice, full printed description

-in to-night's _Daily_, just the way things are. If he wants it changed

-any, he can clean all up, an' we'll write up the clean-up like a

-compliment.'

-

-"Just for one second them assembled women was dumb. But it hardly took

-them that instant to sense what was what. And all of a sudden, Mame

-Holcomb, I guess it was, bursted out in a little understanding giggle,

-and after a minute everybody joined in, too. For we'd got the whole

-world of Friendship Village where we wanted it, and every one of them

-women see we had, so be we wasn't scared.

-

-"'Mis' Uppers,' Mis' Sykes was going on, 'you go down to Betts's meat

-market. You poke right through into the back room. An' you tell Joe

-Betts that you're goin' to do a write-up of that room an' the alley back

-of it for the paper to-night, showin' just what's what. If so be he

-wants to turn in an' red it up this mornin', tell him you'll wait till

-noon an' describe it then, _providin'_ he keeps it that way. An' you

-might let him know you're goin' to run over to his slaughterhouse an'

-look around while you're waitin', an' put that in your write-up, too.'

-

-"'Miss Hubbelthwait,' Mis' Sykes went on, 'you go over to the Calaboose.

-They won't anybody be in the office--Dick's saloon is that. Skip right

-through in the back part, an' turn down the blankets on both beds an'

-give a thorough look. If it's true they's no sheets an' pillow-cases on

-the calaboose beds, an' that the blankets is only washed three times a

-year so's to save launderin', we can make a real interestin' column

-about that.'

-

-"'Miss Merriman,' says Mis' Sykes to Mis' Fire Chief, 'I've give you a

-real hard thing because you do things so delicate. Will you take a walk

-along the residence part of town an' go into every house an' ask 'em to

-let you see their back door an' their garbage pail. Tell 'em you're

-goin' to write a couple of columns on how folks manage this. Ask 'em

-their idees on the best way. Give 'em to understand if there's a real

-good way they're thinkin' of tryin' that you'll put that in, providin'

-they begin tryin' right off. An' tell 'em they can get it carted off for

-ten cents a week if enough go in on it. An' be your most delicate, Mis'

-Fire Chief, for we don't want to offend a soul.'

-

-"Libby an' Viney Liberty Mis' Sykes sent round to take a straw vote in

-every business house in town to see how much they'd give towards

-starting a shelf library in the corner of the post-office store, a full

-list to be printed in order with the amount or else 'Not a cent' after

-each name. And the rest of Sodality she give urrants similar or even

-more so.

-

-"'An' all o' you,' says Mis' Sykes, 'pick up what you can on the way.

-And if anybody starts in to object, you tell 'em you have instructions

-to make an interview out of any of the interestin' things they say. And

-you might tell 'em you don't want they should be buried in a nice

-cemetery if they don't want to be.'

-

-"Well, sir, they started off--some scairt, but some real brave, too. And

-the way they went, we see every one of them meant business.

-

-"'But oh,' says Mis' Sturgis, fixing her medicine bottles outside on the

-window-sill, '_supposin'_ they can't do it. _Supposin'_ folks ain't nice

-to 'em. What'll we put in the paper then?'

-

-"Mis' Sykes drew herself up like she does sometimes in society.

-

-"'Well,' she says, 'supposin'. Are we runnin' this paper or ain't we?

-There's nothin' to prevent our writin' editorials about these things, as

-I see. Our husbands can't very well sue us for libel, because they'd hev

-to pay it themselves. Nor they can't put us in prison for debt, because

-who'd get their three meals? I can't see but we're sure of an

-interestin' paper, anyway.'

-

-"Then she looked over at me sort of sad.

-

-"'Go on, Calliope,' says she, 'you know what you've got to do. Do it,'

-she says, 'to the bitter end.'

-

-"I knew, and I started out, and I made straight for Silas Sykes, and the

-post-office store. Silas wan't in the store, it was so early; but he had

-the floor all sprinkled nice, and the vegetables set out, all uncovered,

-close to the sidewalk; and everything real tasty and according to

-grocery-store etiquette. The boy was gone that day. And Silas himself

-was in the back room, sortin' over prunes.

-

-"'Hello, Calliope,' s'he. 'How's literchoor?'

-

-"'Honest as ever,' I says. 'Same with food?'

-

-"'Who says I ain't honest?' says Silas, straightening up, an' holding

-all his fingers stiff 'count of being sticky.

-

-"'Why, I donno who,' says I. 'Had anybody ought to? How's business,

-Silas?'

-

-"'Well,' says he, 'for us that keeps ourselves up with the modern

-business methods, it's pretty good, I guess.'

-

-"'Do you mean pretty good, Silas, or do you mean pretty paying?' I ask'

-him.

-

-"Silas put on his best official manner. 'Look at here,' s'e, 'what can I

-do for you? Did you want to buy somethin' or did you want your mail?'

-

-"'Oh, neither,' I says. 'I want some help from you, Silas, about the

-paper to-day.'

-

-"My, that give Silas a nice minute. He fairly weltered in satisfaction.

-

-"'Huh,' he says, elegant, 'didn't I tell you you was bitin' off more'n

-you could chew? Want some assistance from me, do you, in editin' this

-paper o' yours? Well, I suppose I can help you out a little. What is it

-you want me to do for you?'

-

-"'We thought we'd like to write you up,' I told him.

-

-"Silas just swelled. For a man in public office, Silas Sykes feels about

-as presidential as anybody I ever see. If they was to come out from the

-City and put him on the front page of the morning paper, he's the kind

-that would wonder why they hadn't done it before.

-

-"'Sketch of my life?' s'e, genial. 'Little outline of my boyhood? Main

-points in my career?'

-

-"'Well,' I says, 'no. We thought the present'd be about all we'd hev

-room for. We want to write up your business, Silas,' I says, 'in an

-advertising way.'

-

-"'Oh!' says Silas, snappy. 'You want me to pay to be wrote up, is that

-it?'

-

-"'Well,' I says, 'no; not if you don't want to. Of course everybody'll

-be buried in the Cemetery whether they give anything towards the fund

-for keeping it kep' up or not.'

-

-"'Lord Heavens,' says Silas, 'I've had that Cemetery fund rammed down my

-throat till I'm sick o' the thought o' dyin'.'

-

-"That almost made me mad, seeing we was having the disadvantage of doing

-the work and Silas going to get all the advantages of burial.

-

-"'Feel the same way about some of the Ten Commandments, don't you,

-Silas?' I says, before I knew it.

-

-"Silas just rared.

-

-"'The Ten Commandments!' says he, 'the Ten Commandments! Who can show me

-one I ain't a-keepin' like an old sheep. Didn't I honour my father an'

-mother as long as I had 'em? Did they ever buy anything of me at more

-than cost? Didn't I give 'em new clothes an' send 'em boxes of oranges

-an' keep up their life insurance? Do I ever come down to the store on

-the Sabbath Day? Do I ever distribute the mail then, even if I'm

-expectin' a letter myself? The Sabbath I locked the cat in, didn't I

-send the boy down to let it out, for fear I'd be misjudged if I done it?

-Who do I ever bear false witness against unless I know they've done what

-I say they've done? I can't kill a fly--an' I'm that tender-hearted

-that I make the hired girl take the mice out o' the trap because I can't

-bring myself to do it. So you might go through the whole list an' just

-find me workin' at 'em an' a-keepin' 'em. What do you mean about the Ten

-Commandments?' he ends up, ready to burst.

-

-"'Don't ask me,' I says. 'I ain't that familiar with 'em. I didn't know

-anybody was. Go on about 'em. Take stealing--you hadn't got to that

-one.'

-

-"'_Stealing_,' says Silas, pompous. 'I don't know what it is.'

-

-"And with that I was up on my feet.

-

-"'I thought you didn't,' says I. 'Us ladies of Sodality have all thought

-it over an' over again: That you don't know stealing when you see it.

-No, nor not even when you've done it. Come here, Silas Sykes!' I says.

-

-"I whipped by him into the store, and he followed me, sheer through

-being dazed, and keeping still through being knocked dumb.

-

-"'Look here,' I says, 'here's your counter of bakery stuff--put in to

-take from Abagail, but no matter about that now. Where do you get it?

-From the City, with the label stuck on. What's the bakery like where you

-buy it? It's under a sidewalk and dust dirty, and I happen to know you

-know it. And look at the bread--not a thing over it, flies promenadin'

-on the crust, and you counting out change on an apple-pie the other

-day--I see you do it. Look at your dates, all uncovered and dirt from

-the street sticking to them like the pattern. Look at your fly-paper,

-hugged up against your dried-fruit box that's standing wide open. Look

-at you keeping fish and preserved fruit and canned stuff that you know

-is against the law--going to start keeping the law quick as you get

-these sold out, ain't you, Silas? Look at your stuff out there in front,

-full of street dirt and flies and ready to feed folks. And you keepin'

-the Ten Commandments like an old sheep--and being a church elder, and

-you might better climb porches and bust open safes. I s'pose you wonder

-what I'm sayin' all this to you for?'

-

-"'No, ma'am,' says Silas, like the edge o' something, 'I don't wonder at

-your sayin' _anything_ to anybody.'

-

-"'I've got more to say,' I says, dry. 'I've only give you a sample. An'

-the place I'm goin' to say it is _The Friendship Village Evening Daily_,

-_Extra_, to-night, in a descriptive write-up of you and your store. I

-thought it might interest you to know.'

-

-"'It's libel--it's libel!' says Silas, arms waving.

-

-"'All right,' says I, liberating a fly accidentally caught on a date.

-'Who you going to sue? Your wife, that's the editor? And everybody

-else's wife, that's doing the same thing to every behind-the-times

-dealer in town?'

-

-"Silas hung on to that straw.

-

-"'Be they doin' it to the others, too?' he asks.

-

-"Then I told him.

-

-"'Yes,' I says, 'Silas, only--they ain't goin' to start writing up the

-descriptions till noon. And if you--and they all--want to clean up the

-temples where you do business and make them fit for the Lord to look

-down on and a human being to come into, you've got your chance. And

-seeing your boy is gone to-day, if you'll do it, I'll stay and help you

-with it--and mebbe make room for some of the main points in your career

-as well,' says I, sly.

-

-"Silas looked out the door, his arms folded and his beard almost

-pointing up, he'd made his chin so firm. And just in that minute when I

-was feeling that all the law and the prophets, and the health of

-Friendship Village, and the life of people not born, was hanging around

-that man's neck--or the principle of them, anyway--Silas's eye and mine

-fell on a strange sight. Across the street, from out Joe Betts's meat

-market come Joe Betts, and behind him his boy. And Joe begun pointing,

-and the boy begun taking down quarters of beef hung over the sidewalk.

-Joe pointed consid'able. And then he clim' up on his meat wagon that

-stood by the door, and out of the shop I see Mis' Mayor Uppers come,

-looking ready to drop. And she clim' up to the seat beside him--he

-reaching down real gentlemanly to help her up. And he headed his horse

-around on what I guessed was a bee-line for the slaughterhouse.

-

-"Well, sir, at that, Silas Sykes put his hands on his knees and bent

-over and begun laughing. And he laughed like I ain't seen him since he's

-got old and begun to believe that life ain't cut after his own plan that

-he made. And I laughed a little, too, out of sheer being glad that a

-laugh can settle so many things right in the world. And when he sobered

-down a little, I says gentle:--

-

-"'Silas, I'll throw out the dates and the dusty lettuce. And we'll hev

-it done in no time. I'll be glad to get an early start on the write-up.

-I don't compose very ready,' I told him.

-

-"He was awful funny while we done the work. He was awful still, too.

-Once when I lit on a piece of salt pork that I knew, first look, was

-rusty, 'Them folks down on the flats buys it,' he says. 'They like it

-just as good as new-killed.' 'All right,' s'I, careless, 'I'll make a

-note of that to shine in my article. It needs humour some,' s'I. Then

-Silas swore, soft and under his breath, as an elder should, but quite

-vital. And he took the pork out to the alley barrel, an' I sprinkled

-ashes on it so's he shouldn't slip out and save it afterwards.

-

-"It was 'leven o'clock when we got done, me having swept out behind the

-counters myself, and Silas he mopped his face and stood hauling at his

-collar.

-

-"'I'll get on my white kids now,' s'e, dry. 'I can't go pourin' kerosene

-an' slicin' cheese in this place barehanded any more. Gosh,' he says, 'I

-bet when they see it, they'll want to have church in here this comin'

-Sunday.'

-

-"'No need to be sacrilegious, as I know of, Silas,' s'I, sharp.

-

-"'No need to be livin' at all, as I see,' says Silas, morbid; 'just lay

-low an' other folks'll step in an' do it for you, real capable.'

-

-"I give him the last word. I thought it was his man's due.

-

-"When I got back to the office, Libby Liberty an' Mis' Toplady was there

-before me. They was both setting on high stools up to the file shelf,

-with their feet tucked up, an' the reason was that Viney Liberty was

-mopping the floor. She had a big pail of suds and her skirt pinned up,

-and she was just lathering them boards. Mis' Sykes at the main desk was

-still labouring over her editorials, breathing hard, the boards steaming

-soap all around her.

-

-"'I couldn't stand it,' Viney says. 'How a man can mould public opinion

-in a place where the floor is pot-black gets me. My land, my ash house

-is a dinin' room side of this room, an' the window was a regular gray

-frost with dust. Ain't men the funniest lot of folks?' she says.

-

-"'Funny,' says I, 'but awful amiable if you kind of sing their key-note

-to 'em.'

-

-"Mis' Sykes pulled my skirt.

-

-"'How was he?' she asks in a pale voice.

-

-"'He was crusty,' says I, triumphant, 'but he's beat.'

-

-"She never smiled. 'Calliope Marsh,' says she, cold, 'if you've sassed

-my husband, I'll never forgive you.'

-

-"I tell you, men may be some funny, and often are. But women is odd as

-Dick's hatband and I don't know but odder.

-

-"'How'd you get on?' I says to Mis' Toplady and the Libertys. The

-Libertys they handed out a list on two sheets, both sides with sums

-ranging from ten to fifty cents towards a shelf library for public use;

-but Mis' Toplady, the tears was near streaming down her cheeks.

-

-"'Rob Henney,' she says, mournful, 'gimme to understand he'd see me

-in--some place he hadn't ought to of spoke of to me, nor to no

-one--before I could get in his milk sheds.'

-

-"'What did you say to him?' I ask', sympathetic.

-

-"'I t-told him,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that lookin' for me wouldn't be the

-only reason he'd hev for goin' there. And then he said some more. He

-said he'd be in here this afternoon to stop his subscription off.'

-

-"'So you didn't get a thing?' I says, grieving for her, but Mis'

-Toplady, she bridled through her tears.

-

-"'I got a column!' she flashed out. 'I put in about the sheds, that the

-whole town knows, anyway, an' I put in what he said to me. An' I'm goin'

-to read it to him when he comes in. An' after that he can take his pick

-about havin' it published, or else cleanin' up an' allowin' Sodality to

-inspect him reg'lar.'

-

-"By just before twelve o'clock we was all back in the office, Mis' Fire

-Chief, Mis' Uppers, fresh from the slaughterhouse, and so on, all but

-Mame Holcomb that was out seeing to the circulation. And I tell you we

-set to work in earnest, some of us to the desks, and some of us working

-on their laps, and everybody hurrying hectic. The office was awful

-hot--Mis' Sturgis had built up a little light fire to heat up her beef

-broth, and she was stirring it, her shawl folded about her, in between

-writing receipts. But it made it real confusing, all of us doing our

-best so hard, and wanting to tell each other what had happened, and

-seeing about spelling and all.

-

-"'Land, land,' says Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'you'd ought to _see_ the

-Carters' back door. They wan't nobody to home there, so I just took a

-look, anyway, bein' it was for Sodality, so. They ain't no real garbage

-pail--'

-

-"'Who said, "Give me Liberty or give me Death?"' ask' Mis' Sykes,

-looking up kind o' glassy. 'Was it Daniel Webster or Daniel Boone?'

-

-"'Ladies,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, when we'd settled down on Daniel

-Boone, 'if I ever do a crime, I won't stop short at stealin' somebody's

-cow an' goin' to calaboose. I'll do a whole beef corner, or some real

-United States sin, an' get put in a place that's clean. Why over to the

-calaboose--'

-

-"'Ugh!' says Mis' Uppers, 'don't say "beef" when I'm where I can hear.

-I donno what I'll do without my steak, but do it I will. Ladies, the

-cleanest of us is soundin' brass an' tinklin' cannibals. Why do they

-call 'em _tinklin'_ cannibals?' she wondered to us all.

-

-"'Oh--,' wailed Mis' Sturgis in the rocking-chair, 'some of you ladies

-give me your salad dressing receipt. Mine is real good on salad, but on

-paper it don't sound fit to eat. I don't seem to have no book-style

-about me to-day.'

-

-"'How do you spell _embarrass_?' asked Libby Liberty. 'Is it an _r_ an'

-two _s_'s or two _r_'s and an _s_?'

-

-"'It's two _s_'s at the end, so it must be one _r_,' volunteers Mis'

-Sykes. 'That used to mix me up some, too.'

-

-"Just then up come Abagail Arnold bringing the noon lunch, and she had

-the sandwiches and the eggs not only, but a pot of hot coffee thrown in,

-and a basket of doughnuts, sugared. She set them out on Mis' Sykes's

-desk, and we all laid down our pencils and drew up on our high stools

-and swing chairs, Mis' Sturgis and all, and nothing in the line of food

-had ever looked so welcoming.

-

-"'Oh, the eatableness of nice refreshments!' says Mis' Toplady, sighing.

-

-"'This is when it ain't victuals, its viands,' says Mis' Sykes, showing

-pleased.

-

-"But well do I remember, we wasn't started to eat, and Abagail still

-doing the pouring, when the composing room door opened--I donno _why_

-they called it that, for we done the composing in the office, and they

-only got out the paper in there--and in come the foreman, with an apron

-of bed-ticking. He was Riddy Styles, that we all knew him.

-

-"'Excuse me,' he says, hesitating, 'but us fellows thought we'd ought to

-mention that we can't get no paper out by quittin' time if we don't get

-a-hold of some copy pretty quick.'

-

-"'Copy o' what?' says Mis' Sykes, our editor.

-

-"'Why, copy,' says Riddy. 'Stuff for the paper.'

-

-"Mis' Sykes looked at him, majestic.

-

-"'_Stuff_,' she says. 'You will please to speak,' she says, 'more

-respectfully than that to us ladies, Mr. Styles.'

-

-"'It was meant right,' says Riddy, stubborn. 'It's the word we always

-use.'

-

-"'It ain't the word you use, not with us,' says Mis' Sykes, womanly.

-

-"'Well,' says Riddy, 'we'd ought to get to settin' up _somethin'_ by

-half past twelve, if we start in on the dictionary.'

-

-"Then he went off to his dinner, and the other men with him, and Mis'

-Sykes leaned back limp.

-

-"'I been writin' steady,' she says, 'since half past eight o'clock this

-mornin', an' I've only got one page an' one-half composed.'

-

-"We ask' each other around, and none of us was no more then started, let

-be it was Mis' Toplady, that had got in first.

-

-"'Le's us leave our lunch,' says Mis' Sykes, then. 'Le's us leave it

-un-et. Abagail, you put it back in the basket an' pour the coffee into

-the pot. An' le's us _write_. Wouldn't we all rather hev one of our sick

-headaches,' she says, firm, 'than mebbe make ourselves the Laughing

-Stock? Ladies, I ask you.'

-

-"An' we woulded, one and all. Sick headaches don't last long, but

-laughed-at has regular right down eternal life.

-

-"Ain't it strange how slow the writing muscles and such is, that you

-don't use often? Pitting cherries, splitting squash, peeling potatoes,

-slicing apples, making change at church suppers,--us ladies is lightning

-at 'em all. But getting idees down on paper--I declare if it ain't more

-like waiting around for your bread to raise on a cold morning. Still

-when you're worried, you can press forward more than normal, and among

-us we had quite some material ready for Riddy and the men when they came

-back. But not Mis' Sykes. She wan't getting on at all.

-

-"'If I could only _talk_ it,' she says, grieving, 'or I donno if I could

-even do that. What I want to say is in me, rarin' around my head like

-life, an' yet I can't get it out no more'n money out of a tin bank. I

-shall disgrace Sodality,' she says, wild.

-

-"'Cheer up,' says Libby Liberty, soothing. 'Nobody ever reads the

-editorials, anyway. I ain't read one in years.'

-

-"'You tend to your article,' snaps Mis' Sykes.

-

-"I had got my write-up of Silas all turned in to Riddy, and I was

-looking longing at Abagail's basket, when, banging the door, in come

-somebody breathing like raging, and it was Rob Henney, that I guess we'd

-all forgot about except it was Mis' Toplady that was waiting for him.

-

-"Rob Henney always talks like he was long distance.

-

-"'I come in,' he says, blustering, 'I come in to quit off my

-subscription to this fool paper, that a lot o' fool women--'

-

-"Mis' Sykes looks up at him out from under her hand that her head was

-resting on.

-

-"'Go on out o' here, Mr. Henney,' she says sharp to him, 'an' quit your

-subscription quiet. Can't you see you're disturbing us?' she says.

-

-"With that Mis' Toplady wheeled around on her high stool and looked at

-him, calm as a clock.

-

-"'Rob Henney,' says she, 'you come over here. I'll read you what I've

-wrote about you,' she told him.

-

-"The piece begun like this:--

-

-"'Rob Henney, our esteemed fellow-townsman and milkman, was talked with

-this morning on his cow sheds. The reporter said to same that what was

-wanting would be visiting the stables, churn, cans, pans, and like that,

-being death is milked out of most cows if they are not kept clean and

-inspected regular for signs of consumption. Mr. Henney replied as

-follows:

-

-"'First: That his cows had never been inspected because nothing of that

-kind had ever been necessary.

-

-"'Second: That he was in the milk business for a living, and did the

-town expect him to keep it in milk for its health?

-

-"'Third: That folks had been drinking milk since milk begun, and if the

-Lord saw fit to call them home, why not through milk, or even through

-consumption, as well as through pneumonia and others?

-

-"'Fourth: That he would see the reporter--a lady--in the

-lake-that-burneth-with-fire before his sheds and churn and pans and cans

-should be put in the paper.

-

-"'Below is how the sheds, churn, pans, and cans look to-day....' And I

-tell you, Mis' Toplady, she didn't spare no words. When she meant What,

-she said What, elaborate.

-

-"I didn't know for a minute but we'd hev to mop Rob up off the clean

-floor. But Mis' Toplady she never forgot who she was.

-

-"'Either that goes in the paper to-night,' she says, 'or you'll clean up

-your milk surroundin's--pick your choice. An' Sodality's through with

-you if you don't, besides.'

-

-"'Put it in print! Put it in print, if you dast!' yells Rob,

-wind-milling his arms some.

-

-"'No need to make an earthquake o' yourself,' Mis' Toplady points out to

-him, serene.

-

-"And at that Rob adds a word intending to express a cussing idee, and he

-outs and down the stairs. And Mis' Toplady starts to take her article

-right in to Riddy. But in the door she met Riddy, hurrying into the

-office again. I never see anybody before that looked both red and

-haggard, but Riddy did. He come right to the point:--

-

-"'Some of you ladies has got to quit handing in--news,' he says,

-scrabbling for a word to please Mis' Sykes. 'We're up to our eyes in

-here now. An' there ain't enough room in the paper, either, not without

-you get out eight pages or else run a supplement or else throw away the

-whole patent inside. An' those ways, we ain't got enough type even if we

-had time to burn.'

-

-"Mis' Sykes pushed back her green shade, looking just _chased_.

-

-"'What does he mean?' she says. 'Can't he tend to his type and things

-with us doing all the work?'

-

-"Riddy took this real nettlish.

-

-"'I mean,' s'he, clear but brutal, 'you got to cut your stuff somewheres

-to the tune of a couple o' columns.'

-

-"Well, it's hard to pick out which colour you'll take when you have a

-new dress only once in every so seldom; or which of your hens you'll

-kill when you know your chickens like you know your own mind; but these

-are nothing to the time we had deciding on what to omit out of the paper

-that night. And the decision hurt us even more than the deciding, for

-what we left out was Mis' Sturgis's two women's columns.

-

-"'We _can't_ leave out meat nor milk nor cleanliness nor the library,'

-says Mis' Toplady, reasonable, 'because them are the things we live by.

-An' so with the other write-ups we got planned. But receipts and

-patterns an' moth balls is only kind o' decorations, seems though.

-Besides, we all know about 'em, an' it's time we stopped talkin' about

-'em, anyway.'

-

-"Mis' Sturgis she cried a little on the corner of her shawl.

-

-"'The receipts an' patterns an' moth balls is so w-womanly,' she says.

-

-"Mis' Toplady whirled round at her.

-

-"'If you know anything more womanly than conquerin' dirt an' disease an'

-the-dead-that-needn't-die,' s'she, 'I'll roll up my sleeves an' be into

-it. But it won't be eyelet embroidery nor yet boiled frostin'!'

-

-"After that they wrote in hasty peace, though four o'clock come racing

-across the day like a runaway horse, and us not out of its way. And a

-few minutes past, when Riddy was waiting in the door for Mis' Sykes's

-last page, somebody most knocked him over, and there come Mis' Holcomb,

-our circulation editor, purple and white, like a ghost.

-

-"'Lock the door--lock it!' she says. 'I've bolted the one to the foot of

-the stairs. Lock both outside ones an' lay yourselves low!' s'she.

-

-"Riddy an' I done the locking, me well knowing Mis' Holcomb couldn't

-give a false alarm no more than a map could.

-

-"'What is it?' we says, pressing Mis' Holcomb to speak, that couldn't

-even breathe.

-

-"'Oh, ladies,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'they've rejoined us, or whatever it

-is they do. I mean they're going to rejoin us from gettin' out

-to-night's paper. The sheriff or the coroner or whoever it is they have,

-is comin' with injunctions--_is_ that like handcuffs, do you know? An'

-it's Rob Henney's doin'. Eppleby told me. An' I run down the alley an'

-beat 'em to it. They're most here. Let's us slap into print what's wrote

-an' be ready with the papers the livin' minute we can.'

-

-"Mis' Sykes had shoved her green shade onto the back of her head, and

-her crimping pins was all showing forth.

-

-"'What good'll it do us to get the paper _out_?' says she, in a numb

-voice. 'We can't distribute 'em around to no one with the sheriff to the

-front door with them things to put on us.'

-

-"Then Mis' Holcomb smiled, with her eyes shut, where she sat, breathing

-so hard it showed through.

-

-"'I come in the coal door, at the alley,' s'she. 'They'll never think o'

-that. Besides, the crowd'll be in front an' the carrier boys too, an'

-they'll want to show off out there. An' Eppleby knows--he told me to

-come in that way--an' he'll keep 'em interested out in front. Le's us

-each take the papers, an' out the coal door, an' distribute 'em around,

-ourselves, without the boys, an' collect in the money same time.'

-

-"And that was how we done. For when they come to the door and found it

-locked, they pounded a little to show who was who and who wan't and then

-they waited out there calm enough, thinking to stop us when the papers

-come down would be plenty time. They waited out there, calm and sure,

-while upstairs Bedlam went on, but noiseless. And after us ladies was

-done with our part, we sat huddled up in the office, soothing Mis'

-Sturgis and each other.

-

-"'In one sentence,' Mis' Holcomb says, 'Eppleby says Rob Henney was

-going to _put_ injunctions on us. An' in the next he says he was goin'

-to _serve_ 'em. What did he mean by that, do you s'pose?'

-

-"'I donno what he meant,' says Mis' Toplady, 'but I wouldn't have

-anything to do with _anything_ Rob Henney served.'

-

-"That made us think of Abagail's lunch, laying un-et in the basket. They

-wasn't none of us felt like eating, but Mis' Sturgis says she bet if we

-didn't eat it, Abagail would feel she hadn't had no part in writing the

-paper like us, and so we broke off a little something once around; but

-food didn't have much fun for us, not then. And nothing did up to the

-minute the paper was done, and we was all ready to sly out the alley

-door.

-

-"With Sodality and Riddy Styles and the composing-room men we had above

-twenty carriers. Riddy and the men helped us, one and all, because of

-course the paper was a little theirs, too, and they was interested and

-liked the lark. Land, land, I ain't felt so young or so wicked as I done

-getting out that alley door. There's them I wish could see that there's

-just as much fun keeping secret about something that may be good as in

-being sly about something regular bad.

-

-"When we finally got outside it was suppertime and summer seeming, and

-the hour was all sweet and frank, and the whole village was buried in

-its evening fried mush and potatoes, or else sprinkling their front

-yards. I donno how it was with the others, but I know I went along the

-streets seeing through them little houses like they was glass, and

-seeing the young folks eating their suppers and growing up and getting

-ready to live and to _be_. And in us ladies' arms, in them heavy papers,

-it seemed to me we was carrying new life to them, in little ways--in

-little ways, but ways that was going to be big with meaning. And I felt

-as if something in me kind of snuggled up closer to the way things was

-meant to be.

-

-"Us that went west got clear the whole length of Daphne Street without

-anybody seeing what we was doing, or else believing that we was doing it

-orderly and legitimate. And away out by the Pump pasture, we started in

-distributing, and we come working down town, handing out papers to the

-residence part like mad and taking in dimes like wild. They was so many

-of us, and the _Evening Daily_ office was so located, that by the time

-Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I come around the corner where the men

-and Rob Henney and the rejoiners and the carriers was loafing, waiting,

-smoking, and secure, we didn't have many papers left. And we three was

-the first ones back.

-

-"'Evenin' paper?' says Mis' Toplady, casual. '_Friendship Village

-Evenin' Daily, Extra?_ All the news for a dime?'

-

-"Never have I see a man so truly flabbergasted as Rob Henney, and he did

-look like death.

-

-"'You're rejoined!' he yelled, or whatever it is they say--'you're

-rejoined by law from printin' your papers or from deestributin' the

-same.'

-

-"'Why, Rob Henney,' says Mis' Toplady, 'no call to show fight like that.

-Half the town is readin' its papers by now. They've been out for

-three-quarters of an hour,' she says.

-

-"Then soft and faint and acrost the street, we heard somebody laugh, and

-then kind of spat hands; and we all looked up. And there in the open

-upstairs window of the building opposite, we see leaning out Eppleby

-Holcomb and Timothy Toplady and Silas Sykes. And when we crossed eyes,

-they all made a little cheer like a theatre; and then they come clumping

-down stairs and acrost to where we was.

-

-"'Won out, didn't you, by heck!' says Silas, that can only see that far.

-

-"'Blisterin' Benson,' says Timothy, gleeful. '_I_ say we ain't got no

-cause to regret our wifes' brains.'

-

-"But Eppleby, he never said a word. He just smiled slow and a-looking

-past us. And we knew that from the beginning he had seen our whole plan,

-face to face.

-

-"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and me, seeing how Rob Henney stood

-muttering and beat, and seeing how the day had gone, and seeing what was

-what in the world and in all outside of it, we looked at each other,

-dead tired, and real happy, and then we just dragged along home to our

-kitchens and went to cooking supper. But oh, it wasn't our same old

-kitchens nor it wasn't our same old Friendship Village. We was in places

-newer and better and up higher, where we see how things are, and how

-life would get more particular about us if we'd get particular about

-some more of life.

-

-

-

-

-VII

-

-

-"Well, of course then we had Sixty Dollars or so to spend, and Sodality

-never could rest a minute when it had money to do with if it wasn't

-doing it, any more than it could rest when it had something to do and no

-money to do with. It made a nice, active circle. Wishing for dreams to

-come true, and then, when they do come true, making the true things

-sprout more dreams, is another of them circles. I always think they're

-what keeps us a-going, not only immortal but busy.

-

-"And then with us there's another reason for voting our money prompt. As

-soon as we've made any and the news has got out around, it's happened

-two-three times that somebody has put in an application for a headstone

-for somebody dead that can't afford one. The first time that was done

-the application was made by the wife of a harness maker that had a

-little shop in the back street and had been saving up his money for a

-good tombstone. 'I ain't had much of a position here in life,' he used

-to say. 'I never was pointed out as a leading citizen. But I'm goin' to

-fix it so's when I'm buried and folks come to the Cemetery, nobody'll

-get by my grave without noticin' my tombstone.' And then he took sick

-with inflammatory rheumatism, and if it didn't last him three years and

-et up his whole tombstone fund. He use' to worry about it considerable

-as the rheumatism kept reducing the granite inch after inch, and he

-died, thinking he wasn't going to have nothing but markers to him. So

-his old wife come and told Sodality, crying to think he wasn't going to

-seem no real true inhabitant of Cemetery, any more than he had of the

-village. And we felt so sorry for her we took part of the Thirty Dollars

-we'd made at the rummage sale and bought him a nice cement stone, and

-put the verse on to attract attention that he'd wrote himself:--

-

-

-     "'STOP. LOOK. LISTEN.

-         HERE LAYS ME.

-     MY GRAVE IS JUST AS BIG

-       AS YOURS WILL BE.'

-

-

-"Some was inclined to criticise Jeb for being so ambitious in death, and

-stopping to think how good a showing he could make. But I donno, I

-always sort of understood him. He wanted to be somebody. He'd used to

-try to have a voice in public affairs, but somehow what he proposed

-wasn't ever practical and never could get itself adopted. His judgment

-wasn't much, and time and again he'd voted against the town's good, and

-he see it afterward. He missed being a real citizen of his town, and he

-knew it, and he hankered to be a citizen of his Cemetery. And wherever

-he is now, I bet that healthy hankering is strained and purified and

-helping him ahead.

-

-"But our buying that stone for Jeb's widow's husband's grave let us in

-for perpetual applications for monuments; and so when we had any money

-we always went right to work and voted it for general Cemetery

-improvement, so there wasn't ever any money in the treasury for the

-applications. Anyway, we felt we'd ought to encourage self-made graves

-and not pauperize our corpses.

-

-"So the very next afternoon after we got our paper out, we met at Mis'

-Sykes's; and the day being mild and gold, almost all of Sodality turned

-out, and Mis' Sykes used both her parlours. It was funny; but such times

-there fell on them that sat Front Parlour a sort of

-what-you-might-call-distinction over them that sat Back Parlour. It's

-the same to our parties. Them that are set down to the dining-room table

-always seem a little more company than them that are served to the

-little sewing tables around in the open rooms, and we all feel it,

-though we all pretend not, as well-bred as we know how. I donno but

-there's something to it, too. Mis' Sykes, for instance, she always gets

-put to a dining table. Nobody would ever think of setting her down to a

-small one, no more than they would a Proudfit. But me, I generally get

-tucked down to a sewing table and in a rocking-chair, if there ain't

-enough cane seats to go around. Things often divide themselves true to

-themselves in this life, after all.

-

-"This was the last regular meeting before our Annual. The Annual, at

-Insley's suggestion, was going to be in the schoolhouse, and it was

-going to be an open evening meeting, with the whole town invited in and

-ice-cream served after. Regular meetings Sodality gives just tea;

-special meetings we give hot chocolate or ice-lemonade, or both if the

-weather is unsettled; for entertainments we have cut-up fruit and little

-bakery cakes; but to our Annual we mount up to ice-cream and some of our

-best cake makers' layer cake. And us ladies always dress according:

-afternoon home dresses to regular meetings; second best to specials;

-Sunday silks to entertainments; and straight going-out clothes for the

-Annual. It makes it real nice. Nobody need to come dressed wrong, and

-nobody can go away disappointed at what they've been fed.

-

-"The meeting that day all ought to have gone smooth enough, it being so

-nice that our paper had sold well and all, but I guess the most of us

-was too tired out to have tried to have a meeting so soon. Anyhow, we

-didn't seem to come together slippery and light-running, like we do some

-days; but instead I see the minute we begun to collect that we was all

-inclined to be heavy and, though not cross, yet frictionish.

-

-"For instance: Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss had come in a new red

-waist with black raspberry buttons. And it was too much for Mis' Fire

-Chief Merriman that's been turning her black poplin ever since the Fire

-Chief died.

-

-"'Dear me, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'I never see anybody have more

-dressy clothes. Did you put that on just for us?'

-

-"Mis' Holcomb shut her lips tight.

-

-"'This is for home wear,' she says short, when she opened them.

-

-"'Mean to say you get a cooked supper in that rig?' says Mis' Merriman.

-'Fry meat in it, do you?'

-

-"'We don't eat as hearty as some,' says Mame. 'We don't insist on warm

-suppers. We feel at our house we have to keep our bills down.'

-

-"Mis' Merriman straightened up, real brittle.

-

-"'My gracious,' she says, 'I guess I live as cheap as the best does.'

-

-"'I see you buying _shelled_ nuts, just the same,' says Mis' Holcomb,

-'when shellin' 'em with your fingers cost twenty cents off.'

-

-"'I ain't never had my store-buyin' criticised before,' says Mis'

-Merriman, elbows back.

-

-"'Nor,' says Mis' Holcomb, bitter, 'have I ever before, in my twenty-six

-years of married life, ever been called _dressy_.'

-

-"Then Mis' Toplady, she sort of shouldered into the minute, big and

-placid and nice-feeling.

-

-"'Mame,' she says, 'set over here where you can use the lead-pencil on

-my watch chain, and put down that crochet pattern I wanted, will you?'

-

-"Mame come over by her and took the pencil, Mis' Toplady leaning over

-so's she could use it; but before she put the crochet pattern down, Mame

-made one, experimental, on the stiff bottom of her work-bag, and Libby

-Liberty thought she'd make a little joking.

-

-"'S-sh-h,' says Libby, 'the authoress is takin' down notes.'

-

-"Mis' Holcomb has had two-three poems in the _Friendship Daily_, and

-she's real sensitive over it.

-

-"'I'd be polite if I couldn't be pleasant, Libby,' says Mame, acid.

-

-"'I'm pleasant enough to pleasant folks,' snaps Libby, up in arms in a

-minute. Nothing whatever makes anybody so mad as to have what was meant

-playful took plain.

-

-"'I,' says Mis' Holcomb, majestic, 'would pay some attention to my

-company manners, no matter what I was in the home.'

-

-"'That makes me think,' puts in Mis' Toplady, hasty, 'speaking of

-company so, who's heard anything about the evenin' company up to

-Proudfits'?'

-

-"It was something all our heads was full of, being half the village had

-just been invited in to the big evening affair that was to end up the

-house party, and we'd all of pitched in and talked fast anyhow to take

-our minds off the spat.

-

-"'Elbert's comin' home to go to it an' to stay Sunday an' as much as he

-can spare,' says Mis' Sykes. Elbert is her son and all Silas Sykes ought

-to of been, Elbert is.

-

-"'Letty Ames is home for the party, too,' says Libby Liberty, speaking

-up in defence of their block, that Letty lives in. She's just graduated

-at Indian Mound and has been visiting up the state.

-

-"My niece that had come on for a few days would be gone before the party

-come off, so she didn't seem worth mentioning for real news value at a

-time when everything was centring in an evening company at Proudfit

-House. No doubt about it, Proudfit House does give distinction to

-Friendship Village, kind of like a finishing school would, or a circus

-wintering in us.

-

-"'I heard,' says Mis' Jimmy Sturgis, 'that the hired help set up all

-night long cleanin' the silver. I shouldn't think _that_ would of been

-necessary, with any kind of management behind 'em.'

-

-"'You don't get much management now'-days,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait,

-sighing. 'Things slap along awful haphazard.'

-

-"'I know I ain't the system to myself that I use' to have,' says Abagail

-Arnold. 'Why, the other day I found my soda in one butt'ry an' my bakin'

-powder in the other.'

-

-"'An' I heard,' says Mame Holcomb--that's one thing about Mame, you

-can't keep her mad. She'll flare up and be a tongue of flame one minute,

-and the next she's actin' like a friendly open fire on a family hearth.

-And I always trust that kind--I can't help it--'I heard,' she said,

-'that for the party that night the ice-cream is coming in forms,

-calla-lilies an' dogs an' like that.'

-

-"'I heard,' says Mis' Uppers, 'that Emerel Daniel was invited up to help

-an' she set up nights and got her a new dress for helpin' in, and now

-little Otie's sick and she likely can't go near.'

-

-"Mis' Toplady looks over her glasses.

-

-"'Is Otie sick again?' says she. 'Well, if Emerel don't move out of

-Black Hollow, she'll lose him just like she done Abe. Can't she sell?'

-

-"Black Hollow is the town's pet breeding place for typhoid, that the

-ladies has been at the council to clean up for a year now. And nobody

-will buy there, so Emerel's had to live in her house to save rent.

-

-"'She's made her a nice dress an' she was so excited and pleased,' says

-Mis' Uppers, grieving. 'I do hope it was a dark shade so if bereavement

-follows--'

-

-"'I suppose you'll have a new cloth, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis'

-Hubbelthwait, 'you're so up-to-date.' It's always one trouble with Mis'

-Hubbelthwait: she will flatter the flatterable. But that time it didn't

-work. Mis' Sykes was up on a chair fixing a window-shade that had flew

-up, and I guess she must have pinched her finger, she was so crispy.

-

-"'I thought I _had_ things that was full stylish enough to wear,' she

-says stiff.

-

-"'I didn't mean harm,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, humble.

-

-"Just then we all got up to see out the window, for the Proudfit

-automobile drew up to Mis' Sykes's gate. They was several folks in it,

-like they had been most of the time during the house party, with

-everybody flying hither and yon; and they was letting Mis' Emmons out.

-It was just exactly like her to remember to come right out of the midst

-of a house party to a meeting of Sodality. That woman was pure gold.

-When they was a lot of things to choose about, she always seemed to let

-the pleasant and the light and the easy-to-do slip right through her

-fingers, that would close up by and by on the big real thing that most

-folks would pretend to try to catch _after_ it had slipped through, and

-yet would be awful glad to see disappearing.

-

-"We didn't talk clothes any more after Mis' Emmons come in. Some way her

-clothes was so professional seeming, in colour and cut, that beside of

-her the rest of us never said much about ours; though I will say Mis'

-Emmons always wore her clothes like she was no more thinking about them

-than she would be thinking about morning housework togs.

-

-"'Well-said, how's the little boy, Mis' Emmons?' asks Mis' Toplady,

-hearty. 'I declare I couldn't go to sleep a night or two ago for

-thinkin' about the little soul. Heard any sound out of his folks?'

-

-"'I'm going to tell you about that pretty soon,' Mis' Emmons

-answered--and it made my heart beat a little with wondering if she'd got

-her plans thought out, not only four-square, but tower-high. 'He is

-well--he wanted to come to the meeting. "I like ladies," he said, "when

-they look at me like loving, but not when they touch me much." Mr.

-Insley has him out walking.'

-

-"'Little soul,' says Mis' Toplady, again.

-

-"Out in the back parlour, some of us had been talking about Christopher

-already.

-

-"'I heard,' Mis' Merriman says, that wasn't to the church the night

-Christopher come, 'I heard that he didn't have much of any clothes on.

-An' that nobody could understand what he said. An' that nobody could get

-him to speak a word.'

-

-"'Pshaw,' Mis' Sturgis puts in, 'he was a nice-dressed little boy,

-though wet; an' quite conversational.'

-

-"'Well, I think it's a great problem,' says Mis' Uppers. 'He's too young

-for the poorhouse and too old for the babies' home. Seems like they

-wasn't anything _to_ do with him.'

-

-"There come a lull when Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in a ruffled lawn that

-had shrunk too short for anything but house wear, stood up by the piano

-and called the meeting to order. And when we'd got on down to new

-business, the purpose of the meeting and a hint of the pleasure was

-stated formal by Mis' Sykes herself. 'One thing why I like to preside at

-Sodality,' I heard her tell once, 'is, you do get your say whenever you

-want it, and nobody can interrupt you when you're in the chair.'

-

-"'Ladies,' she says, 'we've seen from the treasurer's report we've got

-some Sixty-odd Dollars on hand. The question is, where shall we vote it

-to. Let the discussion be free.'

-

-"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke first, with a kind of a bright

-manner of having thought it all out over her dish pan and her bread pan.

-There is this about belonging to Sodality: We just live Sodality every

-day, around our work. We don't forget it except to meetings, same as

-some.

-

-"'Well, I just tell you what,' Mame says, 'I think now is our time to

-get a big monument for the middle of Cemetery that'll do some credit to

-the Dead. All our little local headstones is quite tasty and shows our

-interest in them that's gone before; but not one of them is real

-up-to-date. Let's buy a nice monument that'll show from the railroad

-track.'

-

-"I spoke up short off from the back parlour, where I set 'scallopin' a

-bedspread about as big as the carpet.

-

-"'Who to?' I says.

-

-"'Oh, I donno's it makes much differ'nce,' Mis' Holcomb says, warming to

-her theme, 'so's it was some leadin' citizen. We might take a town vote

-on it.'

-

-"Mis' Sturgis set up straight, eyebrows up. I donno how it is, but Mis'

-Sturgis's pompadour always seems so much higher as soon as she gets

-interested.

-

-"'Why, my gracious,' she says, 'we might earn quite a lot o' money that

-way. We might have a regular votin' contest on who that's dead should

-get the monument--so much a vote an' the names of the successful ones

-run every night in the _Daily_--'

-

-"'Well-a, why do it for anybody dead?' says Libby Liberty. 'Why not get

-the monument here and have it on view an' then have folks kind of bid on

-it for their own, real votin' style. In the cities now everybody picks

-out their own monuments ahead of time. That would be doing for the

-Living, the way Mr. Insley said.'

-

-"'Oh, there'd be hard feelin' that way,' spoke up Mis' Uppers, decided.

-'Whoever got it, an' got buried under it, never could feel it was his

-own stone. Everybody that had bought votes for themselves could come out

-walking in the Cemetery Sunday afternoons and could point out the

-monument and tell how much of a money interest they had in it. Oh, no, I

-don't think that'd do at all.'

-

-"'Well, stick to havin' it for the Dead, then,' Libby gives in. 'We've

-got to remember our constitution.'

-

-"Mis' Amanda Toplady was always going down after something in the bottom

-of her pocket, set low in her full black skirt. She done this now, for a

-spool or a lozenger. And she says, meantime: 'Seems like that'd be awful

-irreverent, connectin' up the Dead with votes that way.'

-

-"'_My_ notion,' says Mis' Sykes, with her way of throwin' up one corner

-of her head, 'it ain't one-tenth part as irreverent as forgettin' all

-about 'em.'

-

-"'Of course it ain't,' agreed Mis' Hubbelthwait. 'Real, true irreverence

-is made up of buryin' folks and leavin' 'em go their way. Why, I bet

-you there ain't any one of 'em that wouldn't be cheered up by bein'

-voted for.'

-

-"I couldn't help piping up again from the back parlour. 'What about them

-that don't get no votes?' I asks. 'What about them that is beat in death

-like they may of been in life? What's there to cheer them up? If I was

-them,' says I, 'I'd ha'nt the whole Sodality.'

-

-"'No need to be so sacrilegious in speakin' of the Dead as I know of,

-Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes that was in the chair and could rebuke at

-will.

-

-"That made me kind o' mad, and I answered back, chair or no chair: 'A

-thing is sacrilegious,' says I, 'according to which side of the fence

-you're on. But the fence it don't change none.'

-

-"Mis' Toplady looked over her glasses and out the window and like she

-see far away.

-

-"'Land, land,' she says, 'I'd like to take that Sixty Dollars and hire

-some place to invite the young folks into evenings, that don't have no

-place to go on earth for fun. Friendship Village,' says she, 'is about

-as lively as Cemetery is for the young folks.'

-

-"'Well, but, Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes, reprovin', 'the young folks

-is alive and able to see to themselves. They don't come in Sodality's

-scope. Everything we do has got to be connect' with Cemetery.'

-

-"'I can't help it,' Mis' Toplady answers, 'if it is. I'd like to invite

-'em in for some good safe evenin's somewheres instead of leaving 'em

-trapse the streets. And if I had to have Cemetery in it somehow, I donno

-but I'd make it a lawn party and give it in Cemetery and have done with

-it.'

-

-"We all laughed, but I knew that underneath, Mis' Toplady was kind of

-half-and-half in earnest.

-

-"'The young folks,' says Mis' Sykes, mysterious, 'is going to be took

-care of by the proper means, very, very soon.'

-

-"'I donno,' says Mis' Holcomb, obstinate. 'I think the monument is a

-real nice idea. Grandfather Holcomb, now, him that helped draft the

-town, or whatever it is they do, I bet he'd be real pleased to be voted

-for.'

-

-"But Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, seems she couldn't forget the little way

-Mame had spoke to her before, and she leaned forward and cut her way

-into the talking.

-

-"'Why, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'of course your Grandfather Holcomb can

-be voted on if he wants to and if he thinks he could get it. But dead

-though he is, what he done can't hold a candle to what Grandfather

-Merriman done. That man just about run this town for years on end.'

-

-"'I heard he did,' said Mame, short. 'Those was the days before things

-was called by their true names in politics and in graft and like that.'

-

-"'I'm sure,' says Mis' Merriman, her voice slipping, 'Grandfather

-Merriman was an angel in heaven to his family. And he started the very

-Cemetery by bein' buried in it first himself, and he took a front lot--'

-

-"'Ladies, ladies,' says Mis' Sykes, stern, 'we ain't votin' _yet_. Has

-anybody got anything else to offer? Let the discussion be free.'

-

-"'What do we get a monument for, anyway?' says Mis' Toplady, hemming

-peaceful. 'Why don't we stick the money onto the new iron fence for

-Cemetery, same as we've been trying to do for years?'

-

-"'That's what I was thinking,' says Abagail Arnold, smiling. 'Whenever I

-make one of my layer cakes for Sodality Annual, and frost it white and

-make mounds of frosted nuts on top, I always wish Cemetery had a fence

-around so's I could make a frosting one on the edge of the cake,

-appropriate.'

-

-"'Why, but my land, Abagail,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'can't you see the

-differ'nce between workin' for a dead iron fence and working for the

-real, right down Dead that once was the living? Where's your humanity,

-I'd like to know, and your loyalty to Friendship Village inhabitants

-that was, that you set the old iron fence over against 'em. What's a

-fence beside folks?'

-

-"All this time Mis' Emmons, there in the front parlour, had just sat

-still, stitching away on some little garment or other, but now she

-looked up quick, as if she was going to speak. She even begun to speak

-with a 'Madame President' that covered up several excited beginnings.

-But as she done so, I looked through the folding doors and see her catch

-sight of somebody out in the street. And I looked out the bay-window in

-the back parlour and I see who it was: it was a man, carefully guiding a

-little bit of a man who was walking on the flat board top of the Sykes's

-fence. So, instead of speaking formal, all Mis' Emmons done was to make

-a little motion towards the window, so that her contribution to the

-debating was nothing but--

-

-"'Madame President--look.'

-

-"We all looked, them in the out-of-range corners of the room getting up

-and holding their work in their aprons, and peering past; and us in the

-back parlour tried for glimpses out the side bay-window, past Mis'

-Sykes's big sword fern. And so the most of us see Insley walking with

-Christopher, who was footing it very delicate and grave, picking out his

-places to step as if a real lot depended on it.

-

-"'That's Chris,' says Mis' Emmons, simple, 'that's come to us.' And

-you'd of said she hardly spoke the 'us' real conscious of herself. She

-looked round at us all. 'Let's have him in for a minute,' she says.

-

-"'The little soul! Let's so do,' Mis' Amanda Toplady says, hearty.

-

-"It was Mis' Emmons that went to the door and called them, and I guess

-Insley, when he see her, must of wondered what made her face seem like

-that. He went on up town, and the little chap come trotting up the walk.

-

-"When Chris come in Mis' Sykes's front parlour among all the women,

-there run round that little murmuring sound that a crowd of women uses

-to greet the coming in their midst of any child. And I s'pose it was a

-little more so than ever for Chris, that they hadn't all seen

-yet--'count of so few being out the night he come and 'count of his

-having been up to Proudfit House 'most ever since. Us in the back

-parlour went crowding in the front, and some come down to the hall door

-to be the nearer. Mis' Amanda Toplady, hunting in her deep pocket, this

-time for a lozenger, says fervent above the rest:--

-

-"'The little soul.'

-

-"And he did resemble one, standing there so shy and manly in his new

-little brown clothes.

-

-"Mis' Emmons's eyes was bright, and I thought I see a kind of challenge

-in her way of drawing the child towards her.

-

-"'Chris,' she says, 'tell them what you had in your paper bag when you

-came to the church the other night.'

-

-"Chris remembered: Sugar rolls and cream-puffs and fruit-cake, he

-recites it grand. 'My supper,' he adds, no less grand. 'But that was

-'cause I didn't have my dinner nor my breakfast,' he explains, so's we

-wouldn't think he'd had too much at once.

-

-"'What was the matter with your foot?' Mis' Emmons goes on.

-

-"Christopher had a little smile that just about won you--a sort of

-abashed little smile, that begun over by one side of his mouth, and when

-he was going to smile that way he always started in by turning away his

-head. He done this now; but we could all hear what he said. It was:--

-

-"'My biggest toe went right through a hole, an' it choked me awful.'

-

-"About a child's foot hurting, or a little sore heel, there is something

-that makes mothers out of everybody, for a minute or two. The women all

-twittered into a little ripple of understanding. Probably to every woman

-there come the picture of the little cold, wet foot and the choked toe.

-I know I could see it, and I can see it yet.

-

-"'Lambin',' says Mis' Toplady, in more than two syllables, 'come here

-for a peppermint.'

-

-"Chris went right over to her. 'I been thirsty for a drink of water

-since all day,' he says confidential. 'Have you got one?'

-

-"Mis' Toplady went with the child, and then Mis' Emmons took something

-from her bag and held it up. It was Christopher's father's letter that

-he'd brought with him that night.

-

-"She read the letter out loud, in everybody's perfectly breathless

-silence that was broken only by Christopher laughing out in the kitchen.

-'My friends,' Mis' Emmons says when she'd got through, 'doesn't it seem

-to you as if our work had come to us? And that if it isn't Chris

-himself, at least it ought to be people, live people--and not an iron

-fence or even a monument that will show from the railroad track?'

-

-"And with that, standing in the doorway with my arms full of bedspread,

-I piped right up, just like I'd been longing to pipe up ever since that

-night at Mis' Emmons's when I'd talked with Insley:--

-

-"'Yes, sir,' I says emphatic, 'it does. Without meaning to be

-sacrilegious in the least,' I says toward Mis' Sykes, 'I believe that

-the Dead is a lot better prepared to take care of themselves than a good

-many of the Living is.'

-

-"There was a kind of a little pause at this, all but Mis' Sykes. Mis'

-Sykes don't pause easy. She spoke right back, sort of elevating one

-temple:--

-

-"'The object of this meeting as the chair understands it,' says she, 'is

-to discuss money spending, _not_ idees.'

-

-"But I didn't pay no more attention than as if I'd been a speaker in

-public life. And Mis' Toplady and Christopher, coming back to the room

-just then, I spoke to him and took a-hold of his little shoulder.

-

-"'Chris,' I says, 'tell 'em what you're going to be when you grow up.'

-

-"The little boy stood up with his back against the door-casing, and he

-spoke back between peppermints:--

-

-"'I'm going to drive the loads of hay,' he declares himself.

-

-"'A little bit ago,' I says to 'em, 'he was going to be a cream-puff

-man, and keep a church and manufacture black velvet for people's

-coffins. Think of all them futures--not to spend time on other

-possibilities. Don't it seem like we'd ought to keep him around here

-somewheres and help him decide? Don't it seem like what he's going to be

-is resting with us?'

-

-"But now Mis' Sykes spoke out in her most presidential tone.

-

-"'It would be perfectly impossible,' she says, 'for Sodality to spend

-its money on the child or on anybody else that's living. Our

-constitution says we shall work for Cemetery.'

-

-"'Well,' says I, rebellish, 'then let's rip up our old constitution and

-buy ourselves a new pattern.'

-

-"Mis' Sykes was getting to verge on mad.

-

-"'But Sodality ain't an orphan asylum, Calliope,' says she, 'nor none of

-us is that.'

-

-"'Ain't we--ain't we, Mis' Sykes?' I says. 'Sometimes I donno what we're

-for if we ain't that.'

-

-"And then I just clear forgot myself, in one of them times that don't

-let you get to sleep that night for thinking about, and that when you

-wake up is right there by the bed waiting for you, and that makes you

-feel sore when you think of afterwards--sore, but glad, too.

-

-"'That's it,' I says, 'that's it. I've been thinking about that a good

-deal lately. I s'pose it's because I ain't any children of my own to be

-so busy for that I can't think about their real good. Seems to me there

-ain't a child living no matter how saucy or soiled or similar, but could

-look us each one in the face and say, "What you doing for me and the

-rest of us?" And what could we say to them? We could say: "I'm buying

-some of you ginghams that won't shrink nor fade. Some of you I'm cooking

-food for, and some of you I'm letting go without it. And some of you I'm

-buying school books and playthings and some of you I'm leaving without

-'em. I'm making up some of your beds and teaching you your manners and

-I'm loving you--some of you. And the rest of you I'm leaving walk in

-town after dark with a hole in your stocking." _Where's the

-line--where's the line?_ How do we know which is the ones to do for? I

-tell you I'm the orphan asylum to the whole lot of 'em. And so are you.

-And I move the Cemetery Improvement Sodality do something for this

-little boy. We'd adopt him if he was dead--an' keep his grave as nice

-and neat as wax. Let's us adopt him instead of his grave!'

-

-"My bedspread had slipped down onto the floor, but I never knew when nor

-did I see it go. All I see was that some of them agreed with me--Mis'

-Emmons and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Hubbelthwait and Libby and even Mame

-that had proposed the monument. But some of the others was waiting as

-usual to see how Mis' Sykes was going to believe, and Mis' Sykes she was

-just standing there by the piano, her cheeks getting pinker and pinker

-up high on her face.

-

-"'Calliope,' she said, making a gesture. 'Ladies! this is every bit of

-it out of order. This ain't the subject that we come together to

-discuss.'

-

-"'It kind of seems to me,' says I, 'that it's a subject we was born to

-discuss.'

-

-"Mis' Toplady sort of rolled over in her chair and looked across her

-glasses to Mis' Sykes.

-

-"'Madame President,' says she, 'as I understand it this fits in all

-right. What we're proposing is to spend Sodality's money on this little

-boy just the same as though he was dead. I move we do so.'

-

-"Two-three of 'em seconded it, but scairt and scattering.

-

-"'Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Ladies! This is a good deal too

-headlong. A committee'd ought--'

-

-"'Question--question,' demands Mis' Emmons, serene, and she met my eye

-and smiled some, in that little _we_-understand look that can pierce

-through a roomful of people like the wind.

-

-"'Mis' Emmons,' says Mis' Sykes, wildish. 'Ladies! Sodality has been

-organized over twenty years, doing the same thing. You can't change so

-offhand--' You can't help admiring Mis' Sykes, for she simply don't know

-when she's beat. But this time she had a point with her, too. 'If we

-want to vote to amend the constitution,' she said, 'you've got to lay

-down your wishes on the table for one week.'

-

-"'I daresay you have,' says Mis' Emmons, looking grave. 'Well, I move

-that we amend the constitution of this society, and I move that we do it

-next week at the open annual meeting of the Sodality.'

-

-"'Second the motion,' says I, with my feet on my white bedspread.

-

-"And somehow the phrase caught Christopher's ear, like a tune might to

-march by.

-

-"'Second a motion--second a motion!' he chants to himself, standing by

-Mis' Toplady's knee.

-

-

-

-

-VIII

-

-

-"I had promised Insley to run in the Cadozas' after the meeting, and see

-the little boy; and Mis' Emmons having to go home before she started

-back to the Proudfits', Christopher walked along with me. When we got

-out to the end of Daphne Street, Insley overtook us on his way out to

-the Cadozas', too.

-

-"His shoes were some muddy, and I guessed that he had been where of late

-he'd spent as much time as he could spare, both when he was in the

-village and when he was over to Indian Mound. Without digging down into

-his eyes, the same as some do to folks that's in trouble, I had sensed

-that there had come down on him everybody's hour of cutting something

-out of life, which is as elemental a thing to do as dying is, and I

-donno but it's the same kind as dying is besides. And he had been taking

-his hour in the elemental way, wanting to be alone and to kind of get

-near to the earth. I mean tramping the hills, ploughing along the narrow

-paths close to the barb' wire fences, plunging into the little groves.

-The little groves have such an' I-know look of understanding all about

-any difficulty till you walk inside of them, when all to once they stop

-seeming to know about your special trouble and begin another kind of

-slow soothing, same as summing things up will soothe you, now and then.

-

-"Chris chattered to him, lovable.

-

-"'I had some peppermenges,' he says, 'and I like hot ice-cream, too.

-Don't you? Can you make that?' he inquires, slipping his hand in

-Insley's.

-

-"Of course this made a pang--when you're hurt, 'most everything makes a

-pang. And this must of brought back that one evening with Robin that he

-would have to remember, and all the little stupid jokes they'd had that

-night must of rose up and hit at him, with the awful power of the little

-things that don't matter one bit and yet that matter everything.

-

-"'What can _you_ make, Chris?' Insley says to him. 'Can you make candy?

-And pull it--like this?'

-

-"'Once a lady stirred me some an' cut it up in squares,' Chris

-explained, 'but I never did make any. My mama couldn't make candy, I

-guess, but she could make all other things--pancakes an' mittens an'

-nice stove fires my mama could make. The bag we got the salt in--she

-made me two handkerchiefs out of that bag,' he ended proudly.

-

-"'Did she--did she?' Insley tempted him on.

-

-"'Yes,' Chris went on, hopping beside him, 'but now I've got to hurry

-an' be a man, 'cause litty boys ain't very good things. Can you make

-po'try?' he wound up.

-

-"'Why, Chris--can you?' Insley asked.

-

-"'Well, when I was comin' along with my daddy that night I made one,'

-the child says. And when Insley questions him a little he got this much

-more out of him. 'It started, "Look at the trees so green an' fair,"' he

-says, 'but I forget the rest.'

-

-"'Do you want to be a poet when you grow up?' Insley ask' him.

-

-"'Yes, I do,' the child says ready. 'I think I'll be that first an' then

-I'll be the President, too. But what I'd rather be is the sprinkler-cart

-man, wouldn't you?'

-

-"'Conceivably,' Insley says, and by the look on his face I bet his hand

-tightened up on the child's hand.

-

-"'At Sodality,' I says, 'he just told them he was going to drive loads

-of hay. He's made several selections.'

-

-"He looked at me over the child's head, and I guess we was both

-thinking the same thing: Trust nature to work this out alone?

-'Conceivably,' again. But all of a sudden I know we both burned to help

-to do it. And as Insley talked to the child, I think some touch of his

-enterprise come back and breathed on him. In them few last days I

-shouldn't wonder if his work hadn't stopped soaring to the meaning of

-spirit and sunk down again to be just body drudgery. He couldn't ever

-help having his old possessing love of men, and his man's strong

-resolution to keep a-going, but I shouldn't wonder if the wings of the

-thing he meant to do had got folded up. And Christopher, here, was sort

-of releasing them out again.

-

-"'How's the little Cadoza boy?' I ask' him pretty soon.

-

-"'He's getting on,' he says. 'Dr. Barrows was down yesterday--he wants

-him for a fortnight or so at the hospital in town, where he can have

-good care and food. His mother doesn't want him to go. I hoped you'd

-talk with her.'

-

-"Before we got to the Cadoza house Insley looked over to me, enigmatish.

-'Want to see something?' he says, and he handed me a letter. I read it,

-and some of it I knew what it meant and some of it I didn't. It was

-from Alex Proudfit, asking him up to Proudfit House to the house party.

-

-" ... Ain't it astonishing how awful festive the word 'house party'

-sounds. 'Party' sounds festive, though not much more so than 'company'

-or 'gathering' that we use more common. 'Ball,' of course, is real

-glittering, and paints the inside of your head into pictures,

-instantaneous. But a house party--maybe it's because I never was to one;

-maybe it's because I never heard of one till late in life; maybe it's

-because nobody ever had one before in Friendship Village--but that word

-give me all the sensation that 'her golden coach' and 'his silver

-armour' and 'good fairy' used to have for me when I was a little girl.

-'House party!' Anything shiny might happen to one of them. It's like

-you'd took something vanishin', like a party, and just seized onto it

-and made it stay longer than Time and the World ever intended. It's like

-making a business of the short-lived.

-

-"Well, some of Alex's letter went about like this:--

-

-"'Join us for the whole time, do,' it says, and it went on about there

-being rather an interesting group,--'a jolly individualist,' I recollect

-he says, 'for your special benefit. He'll convert you where I couldn't,

-because he's kept his love for men and I haven't. And of course I've

-some women--pretty, bless them, and thank the Lord not one of them

-troubling whether she loves mankind or not, so long as men love her. And

-there you have Nature uncovered at her task! I shall expect you for

-every moment that you can spare....' I remember the wording because it

-struck me it was all so like Alex that I could pretty near talk to it

-and have it answer back.

-

-"'Tell me,' Insley says, when I handed the letter back to him, 'you

-know--him. Alex Proudfit. Does he put all that on? Is it his mask? Does

-he feel differently and do differently when folks don't know?'

-

-"'Well,' I says, slow, 'I donno. He gives the Cadozas their rent, but

-when Mis' Cadoza went to thank him, once, he sent down word for her to

-go and see his agent.'

-

-"He nodded, and I'd never heard him speak bitter before. 'That's it,' he

-says, 'that's it. That's the way we bungle things....'

-

-"We'd got almost to the Cadozas' when we heard an automobile coming

-behind us, and as we stood aside to let it go by, Robin's face flashed

-past us at the window. Mis' Emmons was with her, that Robin had come

-down after. Right off the car stopped and Robin jumped out and come

-hurrying back towards us. I'll never forget the minute. We met right in

-front of the old tumble-down Cadoza house with the lilacs so high in the

-front yard that the place looked pretty near nice, like the rest of the

-world. It was a splendid afternoon, one that had got it's gold persuaded

-to burst through a gray morning, like colour from a bunch of silver

-buds; and now the air was all full of lovely things, light and little

-wind and late sun and I donno but things we didn't know about. And

-everyone of them seemed in Robin's face as she came towards us, and

-more, too, that we couldn't name or place.

-

-"I think the mere exquisite girlishness of her come home to Insley as

-even her strength and her womanliness, that night he talked with her,

-had not moved him. I donno but in the big field of his man's dream, he

-had pretty near forgot how obvious her charm was. I'm pretty sure that

-in those days when he was tramping the hills alone, the thing that he

-was fighting with was that he was going to lose her companioning in the

-life they both dreamed. But now her hurrying so and her little faint

-agitation made her appeal a new thing, fifty times as lovely, fifty

-times as feminine, and sort of filling in the picture of herself with

-all the different kinds of women she was in one.

-

-"So now, as he stood there with her, looking down in her face, touching

-her friendly hand, I think that was the first real, overhauling minute

-when he was just swept by the understanding that his loss was so many

-times what he'd thought it was going to be. For it was her that he

-wanted, it was her that he would miss for herself and not for any dear

-plans of work-fellowship alone. She understood his dream, but there was

-other things she understood about, too. A man can love a woman for a

-whole collection of little dear things--and he can lose her and grieve;

-he can love her for her big way of looking at things, and he can lose

-her and grieve; he can love her because she is his work-fellow, and he

-can lose her and grieve. But if, on top of one of these, he loves her

-because she is she, the woman that knows about life and is capable of

-sharing all of life with him and of being tender about it, why then if

-he loses her, his grieving is going to be something that there ain't

-rightly no name for. And I think it was that minute there in the road

-that it first come to Insley that Robin was Robin, that of all the many

-women that she was, first and most she was the woman that was capable

-of sharing with him all sides of living.

-

-"'I wanted ...' she says to him, uncertain. 'Oh, I wish very much that

-you would accept the invitation to some of the house party. I wanted to

-tell you.'

-

-"'I can't do that,' he answers, short and almost gruff. 'Really I can't

-do that.'

-

-"But it seemed there was even a sort of nice childishness about her that

-you wouldn't have guessed. I always think it's a wonderful moment when a

-woman knows a man well enough to show some of her childishness to him.

-But a woman that shows right off, close on the heels of an introduction,

-how childish she can be, it always sort o' makes me mad--like she'd told

-her first name without being asked about it.

-

-"'Please,' Robin says, 'I'm asking it because I wish it very much. I

-want those people up there to know you. I want--'

-

-"He shook his head, looking at her, eyes, mouth, and fresh cheeks, like

-he wished he was able to look at her face _all at once_.

-

-"'At least, at least,' she says to him rapid, then, 'you must come to

-the party at the end. You know I want to keep you for my friend--I want

-to make you our friend. That night Aunt Eleanor is going to announce my

-engagement, and I want my friends to be there.'

-

-"That surprised me as much as it did him. Nobody in the village knew

-about the engagement yet except us two that knew it from that night at

-Mis' Emmons's. I wondered what on earth Insley was going to say and I

-remember how I hoped, pretty near fierce, that he wasn't going to smile

-and bow and wish her happiness and do the thing the world would have

-wanted of him. It may make things run smoother to do that way, but

-smoothness isn't the only thing the love of folks for folks knows about.

-I do like a man that now and then speaks out with the breath in his

-lungs and not just with the breath of his nostrils. And that's what

-Insley done--that's what he done, only I'm bound to say that I do think

-he spoke out before he knew he was going to.

-

-"'That would be precisely why I couldn't come,' he said. 'Thank you, you

-know--but please don't ask me.'

-

-"As for Robin, at this her eyes widened, and beautiful colour swept her

-face. And she didn't at once turn away from him, but I see how she stood

-looking at him with a kind of a sharp intentness, less of wonder than of

-stopping short.

-

-"Christopher had run to the automobile and now he come a-hopping back.

-

-"'Robin!' he called. 'Aunt Eleanor says you haf to be in a dress by

-dinner, and it's _now_.'

-

-"'Do come for dinner, Mr. Insley,' Mis' Emmons calls, as Robin and

-Christopher went to join him. 'We've got up a tableau or two for

-afterward. Come and help me be a tableau.'

-

-"He smiled and shook his head and answered her. And that reminded me

-that I'd got to hurry like wild, as usual. It was most six o'clock

-then,--it always _is_ either most six o'clock or most noon when I get

-nearest to being interested,--and that night great things was going to

-be going on. Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and the School Board and I was

-going to have a tableau of our own.

-

-"But for all that I couldn't help standing still a minute and looking

-after the automobile. It seemed as bad as some kind of a planet,

-carrying Robin off for forever and ever. And I wasn't so clear that I

-fancied its orbit.

-

-"'I've got a whole string of minds not to go to that party myself,' I

-says, meditative.

-

-"But Insley never answered. He just come on around the Cadozas' house.

-

-

-

-

-IX

-

-

-"I never speak much about my relations, because I haven't got many. If I

-did have, I suppose I should be telling about how peculiar they take

-their tea and coffee, and what they died of, and showing samples of

-their clothes and acting like my own immediate family made up life, just

-like most folks does. But I haven't got much of any relatives, nor no

-ancestors to brag about. 'Nothing for kin but the world,' I always say.

-

-"But back in the middle of June I had got a letter from a cousin, like a

-bow from the blue. And the morning I got it, and with it yet unopened in

-my hand, Silas Sykes come out from behind the post-office window and

-tapped me on the arm.

-

-"'Calliope,' he says, 'we've about made up our minds--the School Board

-an' some o' the leadin' citizens has--to appoint a Women's Evenin'

-Vigilance Committee, secret. An' we want you an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis'

-Sykes should be it.'

-

-"'Vigilance,' I says, thoughtful. 'I recollect missin' on the meanin'

-of that word in school. I recollect I called it "viligance" an' said it

-meant a 'bus. I donno if I rightly know what it means now, Silas.'

-

-"Silas cleared his throat an' whispered hoarse, in a way he's got:

-'Women don't have no call, much for the word,' he says. 'It means when

-you sic your notice onto some one thing. We want a committee of you

-women should do it.'

-

-"'Notice _what_?' I says, some mystified. 'What the men had ought to be

-up to an' ain't?'

-

-"But customers come streaming into the post-office store then, and some

-folks for their mail, and Silas set a time a couple o' days later in the

-afternoon for Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and me to come down to the

-store and talk it over.

-

-"'An' you be here,' says Silas, beatin' it off with his finger. 'It's

-somethin' we got to do to protect our own public decency.'

-

-"'_Public_ decency,' I says over, thoughtful, and went out fingerin' my

-letter that was in a strange handwriting and that I was dying to read.

-

-"It was a couple of days later that I what-you-might-say finished that

-letter, and between times I had it on the clock-shelf and give every

-spare minute to making it out. Minerva Beach the letter was from--my

-cousin Minnie Beach's girl. Minnie had died awhile before, and Minerva,

-her daughter, was on her way West to look for a position, and should she

-spend a few days with me? That was what I made out, though I donno how I

-done it, for her writing was so big and so up-and-down that every letter

-looked like it had on corsets and high heels. I never see such a mess!

-It was like picking out a crochet pattern to try to read it.

-

-"I recollect that I was just finishing composing my letter telling her

-to come along, and hurrying so's to take it to mail as I went down to

-the Vigilance Committee meeting, when the new photographer in town come

-to my door, with his horse and buggy tied to the gate. J. Horace Myers

-was his name, and he said he was a friend of the Topladys, and he was

-staying with them while he made choice art photographs of the whole

-section; and he wanted to take a picture of my house. He was a dapper

-little man, but awful tired-seeming, so I told him to take the picture

-and welcome, and I put the stone dog on the front porch and looped the

-parlour curtains over again and started off for the meeting.

-

-"'I'll be up to show you the proofs in a few days,' he says as I was

-leaving. He was fixing the black cloth over his head, kind of listless

-and patient.

-

-"'Land!' I says, before I knew it, 'don't you get awful sick of takin'

-pictures of humbly houses you don't care nothin' about?'

-

-"He peeked out from under the black cloth sort of grateful. 'I do,' he

-says, simple,--'sick enough to bust the camera.'

-

-"'Well, I should think you would,' I says hearty; and I went down Daphne

-Street with the afternoon kind of feeling tarnished. I was wondering how

-on earth folks go on at all that dislikes their work like that. There

-was Abe Luck, just fixing the Sykes's eaves-trough--what was there to

-_like_ about fixing eaves-troughs and about the whole hardware business?

-Jimmy Sturgis coming driving the 'bus, Eppleby Holcomb over there

-registering deeds, Mis' Sykes's girl Em'ly washing windows,--what was

-there about any of it to _like_ doing? I looked at Mis' Sykes's Em'ly

-real pitying, polishing panes outside, when Abe Luck come climbing down

-the ladder from the roof; and all of a sudden I see Abe stick his head

-through the rungs, and quick as a flash kiss Mis' Sykes's Em'ly.

-

-"'My land!' I started to think, 'Mis' Sykes had ought to discharge--'

-and then I just stopped short off, sudden. Her hating windows, and him

-hating eaves-troughs, and what else did either of them have? Nothing. I

-could sense their lives like I could sense my own--level and even and

-_darn_. And all at once I had all I could do to keep from being glad

-that Abe Luck had kissed Em'ly. And I walked like lightning to keep back

-the feeling.

-

-"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady was to the post-office store before me. It

-was a slack time of day, and Silas set down on a mail-bag and begun

-outlining the situation that he meant about.

-

-"'The School Board,' says Silas, important, 'has got some women's work

-they want done. It's a thing,' s'he, 'that women can do the best--I mean

-it's the girls an' boys, hangin' round evenin's--you know we've all

-talked about it. But somebody's got to get after 'em in earnest, an' see

-they don't disgrace us with their carryin' on in the streets, evenin's.'

-

-"'Why don't the men do it?' I ask' him, wonderin', 'or is it 'count of

-offending some?'

-

-"'No such thing!' says Silas, touchy. 'Where's your delicate feelin's,

-Calliope? Women can do these things better than men. This is somethin'

-delicate, that had ought to be seen to quiet. It ain't a matter for the

-authorities. It's women's work,' says he. 'It's women that's the

-mothers--it ain't the men,' says Silas, convincing.

-

-"But still I looked at him, real meditative. 'What started you men off

-on that tack at this time?' I ask' him, blunt--because young folks had

-been flooding the streets evenings since I could remember, and no

-Friendship Village man had ever acted like this about it.

-

-"'Well,' says Silas, 'don't you women tell it out around. But the thing

-that's got us desperate is the schoolhouse. The entry to it--they've

-used it shameful. Peanut shucks, down-trod popcorn, paper bags, fruit

-peelin's--every mornin' the stone to the top o' the steps, under the

-archway, is full of 'em. An' last week the Board went up there early

-mornin' to do a little tinkerin', an' there set three beer bottles, all

-empty. So we've figgered on puttin' some iron gates up to the

-schoolhouse entry an' appointin' you women a Vigilance Committee to help

-us out.'

-

-"We felt real indignant about the schoolhouse. It stands up a little

-slope, and you can see it from 'most anywheres daytimes, and we all felt

-kind of an interest--though of course the School Board seemed to own it

-special.

-

-"Mis' Toplady looked warm and worried. 'But what is it you want we

-should do, Silas?' she ask', some irritable. 'I've got my hands so full

-o' my own family it don't seem as if I could vigilance for nobody.'

-

-"'S-h-h, Mis' Toplady. _I_ think it's a great trust,' says Mis' Silas

-Sykes.

-

-"'It is a great trust,' says Silas, warm, 'to get these young folks to

-stop gallivantin' an' set home where they belong.'

-

-"'How you going to get them to set home, Silas?' I ask', some puzzled.

-

-"'Well,' says Silas, 'that's where they ought to be, ain't it?'

-

-"'Why,' I says thoughtful, 'I donno's they had.'

-

-"'_What?_' says Silas, with horns on the word. 'What say, Calliope?'

-

-"'How much settin' home evenings did you do when you was young, Silas?'

-I says.

-

-"'I'd 'a' been a long sight better off if I'd 'a' done more of it,' says

-Silas.

-

-"'However that is, you _didn't_ set home,' I says back at him. 'Neither

-will young folks set there now, I don't believe.'

-

-"'Well,' says Silas, '_anyhow_, they've got to get off'n the streets.

-We've made up our minds to that. They can't set on steps nor in

-stairways down town, nor in entries, nor to the schoolhouse. We've got

-to look out for public decency.'

-

-"'_Public_ decency,' says I, again. 'They can do what they like, so's

-public decency ain't injured, I s'pose, Silas?'

-

-"'No such thing!' shouts Silas. 'Calliope, take shame! Ain't we doin'

-our best to start 'em right?'

-

-"'That's what I donno,' I answers him, troubled. 'Driving folks around

-don't never seem to me to be a real good start towards nowheres.'

-

-"Mis' Amanda Toplady hitched forward in her chair and spoke for the

-first time--ponderous and decided, but real sweet, too. 'What I think is

-this,' she says. 'They won't set home, as Calliope says. And when we've

-vigilanced 'em off the streets, where are we goin' to vigilance 'em

-_to_?'

-

-"'That ain't our lookout,' says Silas.

-

-"'Ain't it?' says Mis' Toplady. '_Ain't it?_' She set thinking for a

-minute and then her face smoothed. 'Anyhow,' she says, comfortable, 'us

-ladies'll vigilance awhile. It ain't clear in my mind yet what to do.

-But we'll do it, I guess.'

-

-"We made up that we three should come down town one night that week and

-look around and see what we see. We all knew--every woman in Friendship

-Village knew--how evenings, the streets was full of young folks, loud

-talking and loud laughing and carrying on. We'd all said to each other,

-helpless, that we _wisht_ something could be done, but that was as far

-as anybody'd got. So we made it up that we three should be down town in

-a night or two, so's to get our ideas started, and Silas was to have

-Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb, that's on the School Board, down to

-the store so we could all talk it over together afterwards. But still I

-guess we all felt sort of vague as to what we was to drive _at_.

-

-"'It seems like Silas wanted us to unwind a ball o' string from the

-middle out,' says Mis' Toplady, uneasy, when we'd left the store.

-

-"A few days after that Minerva come. I went down to the depot to meet

-her, and I would of reco'nized her anywheres, she looked so much like

-her handwriting. She was dressed sort of tawdry swell. She had on a good

-deal. But out from under her big hat with its cheap plume that was goin'

-to shed itself all over the house, I see her face was little and young

-and some pretty and excited. Excited about life and new things and

-moving around. I liked her right off. 'Land!' thinks I, 'you'll try me

-to death. But, you poor, nice little thing, you can if you want to.'

-

-"I took her home to supper. She talked along natural enough, and seemed

-to like everything she et, and then she wiped the dishes for me, and

-looked at herself in the clock looking-glass all the while she was doing

-it. Then, when I'd put out the milk bottles, we locked up the back part

-of the house and went and set in the parlour.

-

-"I'd always thought pretty well of my parlour. It hasn't anything but a

-plush four-piece set and an ingrain and Nottinghams, but it's the

-_parlour_, and I'd liked it. But when we'd been setting there a little

-while, and I'd asked her about everybody, and showed her their pictures

-in the album, all of a sudden it seemed as if they wasn't anything to

-_do_ in the parlour. Setting there and talking was nice, but I missed

-something. And I thought of this first when Minerva got up and walked

-kind of aimless to the window.

-

-"'How big is Friendship Village?' she ask'.

-

-"I told her, real proud.

-

-"'They can't be a great deal goin' on here, is they?' she says.

-

-"'Land, yes!' I says. 'We're so busy we're nearly dead. Ladies' Aid,

-Ladies' Missionary, Cemetery Improvement Sodality, the rummage sale

-coming on, the bazaar, and I donno what all.'

-

-"'Oh,' she says, vague. 'Well--is they many young people?'

-

-"And when I'd told her, 'Quite a few,' she didn't say anything more--but

-just stood looking down the street. And pretty soon I says, 'Land! the

-parlour's kind o' stuffy to-night. Let's go out in the yard.' And when

-we'd walked around out there a minute, smelling in my pinks, I thought,

-'Land! it's kind o' dreary doin' this,' an' I says to her all of a

-sudden, 'Let's go in the house and make some candy.'

-

-"'Oh, _let's_,' she says, like a little girl.

-

-"We went back in and lit the kitchen fire, and made butter-scotch--she

-done it, being real handy at it. She livened up and flew around and

-joked some, and the kitchen looked nice and messy and _used_, and we had

-a real good time. And right in the midst of it there come a rap at the

-side door and there stood the dapper, tired-looking little photograph

-man, J. Horace Myers, seeming as discouraged as he could.

-

-"We spread out the proofs of the pictures of my house and spent some

-time deciding. And while we was deciding, he showed us some more

-pictures that he'd made of the town, and talked a little about them. He

-was a real pleasant, soft-spoken man, and he knew how to laugh and when

-to do it. He see the funny in things--he see that the post-office looked

-like a rabbit with its ears up; he see that the engine-house looked like

-it was lifting its eyebrows; and he see the pretty in things, too--he

-showed us a view or two he'd took around Friendship Village just for the

-fun of it. One was Daphne Street, by the turn, and he says: 'It looks

-like a deep tunnel, don't it? An' like you wanted to go down it?' He was

-a wonderful nice, neutral little man, and I enjoyed looking at his

-pictures.

-

-"But Minerva--I couldn't help watching her. She wasn't so interested in

-the pictures, and she wasn't so quick at seeing the funny in things, nor

-the pretty, either; but even the candy making hadn't livened her up the

-way that little talking done. She acted real easy and told some little

-jokes; and when the candy was cool, she passed him some; and I thought

-it was all right to do. And he sort of spruced up and took notice and

-quit being so down-in-the-mouth. And I thought, 'Land! ain't it funny

-how just being together makes human beings, be they agent or be they

-cousin, more themselves than they was before!'

-

-"Her liking company made me all the more sorry to leave Minerva alone

-that next evening, that was the night Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I

-was due to a tableau of our own in the post-office store. It was the

-night when the Vigilance Committee was to have its first real meeting

-with the School Board. But I lit the lamp for Minerva in the parlour,

-and give her the day's paper, and she had her sewing, and when Mis'

-Toplady and Mis' Sykes come for me, I went off and left her setting by

-the table. My parlour had been swept that day, and it was real tidy and

-quiet and lamp-lit; and yet when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and I

-stepped out into the night, all smelling of pinks and a new moon

-happening, and us going on that mission we wasn't none of us sure what

-it was, the dark and the excitement sort of picked me up and I felt like

-I never felt in my parlour in my life--all kind of young and free and

-springy.

-

-"'Let's us walk right down through town first,' says Mis' Toplady.

-'That's where the young folks gets to, seems though.'

-

-"'Well-a, I don't see the necessity of that,' says Mis' Sykes. 'We've

-all three done that again and again. We know how it is down there

-evenings.'

-

-"'But,' says Mis' Toplady, in her nice, stubborn way, 'let's us, anyway.

-I know, when I walk through town nights, I'm 'most always hurrying to

-get my yeast before the store shuts, an' I never half look around.

-To-night let's _look_.'

-

-"Well, we looked. Along by the library windows in some low stone ledges.

-In front of a store or two they was some more. Around the corner was a

-place where they was some new tombstones piled up, waiting for their

-folks. And half a block down was the canal bridge. And ledges and bridge

-and tombstones and streets was alive with girls and boys--little young

-things, the girls with their heads tied in bright veils and pretty

-ribbons on them, and their laughs just shrilling and thrilling with the

-sheer fun of _hanging around_ on a spring night.

-

-"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, '_what_ is their mothers thinkin' of?'

-

-"But something else was coming home to me.

-

-"'I dunno,' I says, kind of scairt at the way I felt, 'if I had the

-invite, this spring night, all pinks and new moons, I donno but I'd go

-and hang over a tombstone with 'em!'

-

-"'Calliope!' says Mis' Sykes, sharp. But Mis' Toplady, she kind of

-chuckled. And the crowd jostled us--more young folks, talking and

-laughing and calling each other by nicknames, and we didn't say no more

-till we got up in the next block.

-

-"There's a vacant store there up towards the wagon shop, and a house or

-two, and that's where the open stairways was that Silas meant about.

-Everything had been shut up at six o'clock, and there, sure as the

-world, 'most every set of steps and every stairway had its couple,

-sitting and laughing and talking, like the place was differ'nt sofas in

-a big drawing-room, or rocks on a seashore, or like that.

-

-"'Mercy!' says Mis' Sykes. 'Such goin'-ons! Such bringin'-ups!'

-

-"Just then I recollect I heard a girl laugh out, pretty and pleased, and

-I thought I recognized Mis' Sykes's Em'ly's voice, and I thought I knew

-Abe Luck's answering--but I never said a word to Mis' Sykes, because I

-betted she wouldn't get a step farther than discharging Em'ly, and I was

-after more steps than that. And besides, same minute, I got the scent of

-the Bouncing Bet growing by the wagon shop; and right out of thin air,

-and acrost more years than I like to talk about, come the quick little

-feeling that made me know the fun, the sheer _fun_, that Em'ly thought

-she was having and that she had the right to.

-

-"'Oh, well, whoever it is, maybe they're engaged,' says Mis' Toplady,

-soothin'.

-

-"'Oh, but the bad taste!' says Mis' Sykes, shuddering. Mis' Sykes is a

-good cook and a good enough mother, and a fair-to-middling housekeeper,

-but she looks hard on the fringes and the borders of this life, and to

-her 'good taste' is both of them.

-

-"They wasn't nobody on the wagon shop steps, for a wonder, and we set

-down there for a minute to talk it over. And while Mis' Toplady and Mis'

-Sykes was having it out between them, I set there a-thinking. And all of

-a sudden the night sort of stretched out and up, and I almost felt us

-little humans crawling around on the bottom of it. And one little bunch

-of us was Friendship Village, and in Friendship Village some of us was

-young. I kind of saw the whole throng of them--the _young_ humans that

-would some day be the village. There they was, bottled up in school all

-day, or else boxed in a store or a factory or somebody's kitchen, and

-when night come, and summer come, and the moon come--land, land! they

-_wanted_ something, all of them, and they didn't know what they wanted.

-

-"And what had they got? There was the streets stretching out in every

-direction, each house with its parlour--four-piece plush set, mebbe, and

-ingrain and Nottinghams, and mebbe not even that, and mebbe the rest of

-the family flooding the room, anyway. And what was the parlour, even

-with somebody to set and talk to them--what was the parlour, compared to

-the _magic_ they was craving and couldn't name? The feeling young and

-free and springy, and the wanting somehow to express it? Something to

-do, somewheres to go, something to see, somebody to be with and laugh

-with--no wonder they swept out into the dark in numbers, no wonder they

-took the night as they could find it. They didn't have no hotel piazza

-of their own, no boat-rides, no seashore, no fine parties, no

-automobiles--no nothing but the big, exciting dark that belongs to us

-all together. No wonder they took it for their own.

-

-"Why, Friendship Village was no more than a great big ball-room with

-these young folks leaving the main floor and setting in the alcoves, to

-unseen music. If the alcoves had been all palms and expense and

-dressed-up chaperons on the edges, everything would of seemed right. As

-it was, it was all a danger that made my heart ache for them, and for us

-all. And yet it come from their same longing for fun, for joy--and

-where was they to get it?

-

-"'Oh, ladies!' I says, out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, 'if

-only we had some place to invite 'em to!'

-

-"'They wouldn't come if we had,' says Mis' Sykes, final.

-

-"'Not come!' I says. 'With candy making and pictures and music and mebbe

-dancin'? Not come!'

-

-"'Dancin'!' says Mis' Toplady, low. 'Oh, Calliope, I donno as I'd go

-that far.'

-

-"'We've went farther than that long ago,' I says, reckless. 'We've went

-so far that the dangers of dancin' would be safe beside the dangers of

-what is.'

-

-"'But we ain't responsible for that,' says Mis' Sykes.

-

-"'Ain't we--_ain't we?_' I says, like Mis' Toplady had. 'Mis' Sykes, how

-much does Silas rent the post-office hall for, a night?'

-

-"'Ten dollars, if he makes something; and five dollars at cost,' she

-says.

-

-"'That's it,' I says, groaning. 'We never could afford that, even to ask

-them in once a week. Oh, we'd ought to have some place open every night

-for them, and us ladies take turns doing the refreshments; but they

-ain't no place in town that belongs to young folks--'

-

-"And all of a sudden I stopped, like an idee had took me from all four

-sides of my head at once.

-

-"'Why, ladies,' I says, 'look at the schoolhouse, doing nothing every

-night out of the year and _built_ for the young folks!'

-

-"'Oh, well,' says Mis' Sykes, superior, 'you know the Board'd never

-allow 'em to use the schoolhouse _that_ way. The Board wouldn't think of

-it!'

-

-"'_Whose_ Board?' says I, stern. 'Ain't they our Board? Yours and mine

-and Friendship Village's? Come on--come on and put it to 'em,' I says,

-kind o' wild.

-

-"I was climbing down the steps while I spoke. And we all went down, me

-talking on, and Mis' Toplady catching fire on the minute, an' Mis' Sykes

-holding out like she does unless so be she's thought of an idea herself.

-But oh, Mis' Toplady, she's differ'nt.

-

-"'Goodness alive!' she said, 'why ain't some of us thought o' that

-before? Ain't it the funniest thing, the way folks can have a way out

-right under their noses, an' not sense it?'

-

-"I had never had a new-born notion come into my head so ready-made. I

-could hardly talk it fast enough, and Mis' Toplady same way, and we

-hurried back to the post-office store, Mis' Sykes not convinced but

-keeping still because us two talked it so hard.

-

-"Silas and Timothy and Eppleby Holcomb was setting in the back part of

-the post-office store waiting for us, and Mis' Toplady and I hurried

-right up to them.

-

-"'You tell, Calliope,' says Mis' Toplady. 'It's your idee.'

-

-"But first we both told, even Mis' Sykes joining in, shocked, about the

-doorway carryin' ons and all the rest. 'Land, land!' Mis' Toplady says,

-'I never had a little girl. I lost my little girl baby when she was

-eleven months. But I ain't never felt so like _shieldin'_ her from

-somethin' as I feel to-night.'

-

-"'It's awful, awful!' says Timothy Toplady, decided. 'We've just got to

-get some law goin', that's all.'

-

-"Silas agreed, scowling judicial. 'We been talkin' curfew,' he says. 'I

-donno but we'll hev to get the curfew on 'em.'

-

-"'Curfew!' says I. 'So you're thinking of curfewin' 'em off the streets.

-Will you tell me, Silas Sykes, where you're going to curfew 'em _to_?'

-

-"'Yes,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that's what I meant about vigilancin' 'em

-off somewheres. _Where to?_ What say, Silas?'

-

-"'That ain't our concern, woman!' shouts Silas, exasperated by us

-harping on the one string. 'Them young folks has all got one or more

-parents. Leave 'em use 'em.'

-

-"'Yes, indeed,' says Mis' Sykes, nodding once, with her eyes shut brief.

-'An' young people had ought to be encouraged to do evening studyin'.'

-

-"Mis' Toplady jerked her head sideways. 'Evenin' fiddlestick!' she

-snaps, direct. 'If you've got a young bone left in your body, Mis'

-Sykes,' says she, 'you know you're talkin' nonsense.'

-

-"'Ain't you no idees about how well-bred young ladies should conduct

-themselves?' says Mis' Sykes, in her most society way.

-

-"'I donno so much about well-bred young ladies,' says Mis' Toplady,

-frank. 'I was thinkin' about just girls. Human girls. An' boys the

-same.'

-

-"'Me, too,' I says, fervent.

-

-"'What you goin' to _do_?' says Silas, spreading out his hands stiff and

-bowing his knees. 'What's your idee? You've got to have a workin' idee

-for this thing, same as the curfew is.'

-

-"'Oh, Silas,' I says then, 'that's what we've got--that's what we've

-got. Them poor young things wants a good time--same as you and all of

-us did, and same as we do yet. Why not give 'em a place to meet and be

-together, normal and nice, and some of us there to make it pleasant for

-'em?'

-

-"'Heh!' says Silas. 'You talk like a dook. Where you goin' to _get_ a

-place for 'em? Hire the opery-house, air ye?'

-

-"'No, sir,' I says to him. 'Give 'em the place that's theirs. Give 'em

-the schoolhouse, open evenings, an' all lit up an' music an' things

-doin'.'

-

-"'My Lord heavens!' says Silas, that's an elder in the church and ain't

-no more control of his tongue than a hen. 'Air you crazy, Calliope

-Marsh? Plump, stark, starin' ravin'--why, woman alive, who's goin' to

-donate the light an' the coal? _You?_'

-

-"'I thought mebbe the building and the School Board, too, was _for_ the

-good o' the young folks,' I says to him, sharp.

-

-"'So it is,' says Silas, 'it's for their _good_. It ain't for their

-foolishness. Can't you see daylight, Calliope?'

-

-"'Is arithmetic good an' morals _not_, Silas Sykes?' I says.

-

-"Then Timothy Toplady let loose: 'A school-buildin', Calliope',

-s'he,--'why, it's a dignified place. They must respect it, same as they

-would a church. Could you learn youngsters the Constitution of the

-United States in a room where they'd just been cookin' up cough drops

-an' hearin' dance tunes?'

-

-"'Well,' says I, calm, 'if you can't, I'd leave the Constitution of the

-United States _go_. If it's that delicate,' I says back at him, 'gimme

-the cough drops.'

-

-"'You're talkin' treason,' says Silas, hoarse.

-

-"Timothy groans. '_Dancin!_' he says. 'Amanda,' he says, 'I hope you

-ain't sunk so low as Calliope?'

-

-"Mis' Toplady wavered a little. She's kind of down on dancing herself.

-'Well,' she says, 'anyhow, I'd fling some place open and invite 'em in

-for _somethin'_.'

-

-"'_I_ ain't for this, Silas,' says Mis' Sykes, righteous. '_I_ believe

-the law is the law, and we'd best use it. Nothin' we can do is as good

-as enforcin' the dignity of the law.'

-

-"'Oh, _rot_!' says Eppleby Holcomb, abrupt. Eppleby hadn't been saying a

-word. But he looked up from the wood-box where he was setting, and he

-wrinkled up his eyes at the corners the way he does--it wasn't a real

-elegant word he picked, but I loved Eppleby for that 'rot.' 'Asking your

-pardon, Mis' Sykes,' he says, 'I ain't got so much confidence in

-enforcin' the law as I've got in edgin' round an' edgin' round

-accordin' to your cloth--an' your pattern. An' your pattern.'

-

-"'Lord heavens!' says Silas, looking glassy, 'if this was Roosia, you

-an' Calliope'd both be hoofin' it hot-foot for Siberia.'

-

-"Well, it was like arguing with two trees. They wasn't no use talking to

-either Silas or Timothy. I forget who said what last, but the meeting

-broke up, after a little, some strained, and we hadn't decided on

-anything. Us ladies had vigilanced one night to about as much purpose as

-mosquitoes humming. And I said good night to them and went on up street,

-wondering why God lets a beautiful, burning plan come waving its wings

-in your head and your heart if he don't intend you to make a way for

-yourself to use it.

-

-"Then, by the big evergreens a block or so from my house, I heard

-somebody laugh--a little, low, nice, soft, sort of foolish laugh, a

-woman's laugh, and a man's voice joined in with it, pleasant and sort of

-singing. I was right onto them before they see me.

-

-"'I thought it was a lonesome town,' says somebody, 'but I guess it

-ain't.'

-

-"And there, beside of me, sitting on the rail fence under the

-evergreens, was Minerva Beach, my own cousin, and the little, tired

-photograph-taking man. I had just bare time to catch my breath and to

-sense where the minute really belonged--that's always a good thing to

-do, ain't it?--and then I says, cool as you please:

-

-"'Hello, Minerva! My! ain't the night grand? I don't wonder you couldn't

-stay in the house. How do, Mr. Myers? I was just remembering my

-lemon-pie that won't be good if it sets till to-morrow. Come on in and

-let's have it, and make a little lemonade.'

-

-"Ordinarily, I think it's next door to immoral to eat lemon-pie in the

-evening; but I had to think quick, and it was the only thing like a

-party that I had in the butt'ry. Anyhow, I was planning bigger morals

-than ordinary, too.

-

-"Well, sir, I'd been sure before, but that made me certain sure. There

-had been my parlour and my porch, and them two young people was welcome

-to them both; but they wanted to go somewheres, natural as a bird

-wanting to fly or a lamb to caper. And there I'd been living in

-Friendship Village for sixty years or so, and I'd reco'nized the laws of

-housekeeping and debt paying and grave digging and digestion, and I'd

-never once thought of this, that's as big as them all.

-

-"Ain't it nice the way God has balanced towns! He never puts in a Silas

-Sykes that he don't drop in an Eppleby Holcomb somewheres to undo what

-the Silases does. It wasn't much after six o'clock the next morning, and

-I was out after kindling, when they come a shadow in the shed door, and

-there was Eppleby. He had a big key in his hand.

-

-"'I'm a-goin' to the City, Calliope,' says he. 'Silas an' Timothy an' I

-are a-goin' up to the City on the Dick Dasher' (that's our daily

-accommodation train, named for the engineer). 'Silas and Timothy is set

-on buying the iron gates for the schoolhouse entry, an' I'm goin' along.

-He put the key in my hand, meditative. 'We won't be back till the ten

-o'clock Through,' he says, 'an' I didn't know but you might want to get

-in the schoolhouse for somethin' to-night--you an' Mis' Toplady.'

-

-"I must of stood staring at him, but he never changed expression.

-

-"'The key had ought to be left with some one, you know,' he says. 'I'm

-leavin' it with you. You go ahead. I'll go snooks on the blame. Looks

-like it was goin' to be another nice day, don't it?' he says, casual,

-and went off down the path.

-

-"For a minute I just stood there, staring down at the key in my hand.

-And then, 'Eppleby,' I sings after him, 'oh, Eppleby,' I says, 'I feel

-just like I was going to _crow_!'

-

-"I don't s'pose I hesitated above a minute. That is, my head may have

-hesitated some, like your head will, but my heart went right on ahead. I

-left my breakfast dishes standing--a thing I do for the very few--and I

-went straight for Mis' Toplady. And she whips off her big apron and left

-_her_ dishes standing, an' off we went to the half a dozen that we knew

-we could depend on--Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, Mis'

-Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that's going to

-be married again and has got real human towards other folks, like she

-wasn't in her mourning grief--we told 'em the whole thing. And we one

-and all got together and we see that here was something that could be

-done, right there and then, so be we was willing to make the effort, big

-enough and unafraid.

-

-"When I remember back, that day is all of a whirl to me. We got the

-notice in the daily paper bold as a lion, that there would be a party to

-the schoolhouse that night, free to everybody. We posted the notice

-everywheres, and sent it out around by word of mouth. And when we'd gone

-too far to go back, we walked in on Mis' Sykes--all but Abagail, that

-had pitched in to making the cakes--and we told her what we'd done, so

-she shouldn't have any of the blame.

-

-"She took it calm, not because calm is Christian, I bet, but because

-calm is grand lady.

-

-"'It's what I always said,' says she, 'would be the way, if the women

-run things.'

-

-"'Women don't run things,' says Mis' Toplady, placid, 'an' I hope to the

-land they never will. But I believe the time'll come when men an'

-women'll run 'em together, like the Lord meant, an' when women can see

-that they're mothers to all men an' not just to their little two-by-four

-families.'

-

-"'My duty to men is in my own home,' says Mis' Sykes, regal.

-

-"'So is mine,' says Mis' Toplady, 'for a beginning. But it don't stop in

-my wood box nor my clothes-basket nor yet in my mixin'-bowl.'

-

-"We went off and left her--it's almost impossible to federate Mis' Sykes

-into anything. And we went up to the building and made our preparations.

-And then we laid low for the evening, to see what it would bring.

-

-"I was putting on my hat that night in front of the hall-tree

-looking-glass when J. Horace Myers come up on the front porch to call

-for Minerva. He was all dressed up, and she come downstairs in a little

-white dimity she had, trimmed with lace that didn't cost much of

-anything, and looking like a picture. They sat down on the porch for a

-little, and I heard them talking while I was hunting one o' my gloves.

-

-"'Ain't it the dandiest night!' says J. Horace Myers.

-

-"'Ain't it!' says Minerva. 'I should say. My! I'm glad I come to this

-town!'

-

-"'I'm awful glad you did, too,' says J. Horace. 'I thought first it was

-awful lonesome here, but I guess--'

-

-"'They're goin' to have music to-night,' says Minerva, irrelevant.

-

-"'Cricky!' says the little photograph man.

-

-"Minerva had her arm around a porch post and she sort of swung back and

-forth careless, and--'My!' she said, 'I just do love to go. Have you

-ever travelled anywheres?'

-

-"'Texas an' through there,' he says. 'I'm goin' again some day, when--'

-

-"'I'm goin' West now,' says Minerva. 'I just can't stand it long in one

-place, unless,' she added, 'it's _awful_ nice.'

-

-"I'd found my glove, but I recollect I stood still, staring out the

-door. I see it like I never see it before--_They was living_. Them two

-young things out there on my porch, and all the young folks of

-Friendship Village, they was just living--trying to find a future and a

-life of their own. They didn't know it. They thought what they wanted

-was a good time, like the pioneers thought they wanted adventure. But

-here they were, young pioneers of new villages, flocking together

-wherever they could, seeking each other out, just living. And us that

-knew, us that had had life, too, or else had missed it, we was just

-letting them live, haphazard. And us that had ought to of been mothers

-to the town young, no less than to our own young, had been leaving them

-live alone, on the streets and stairways and school entries of

-Friendship Village.

-

-"I know I fair run along the street to the schoolhouse. It seemed as if

-I couldn't get there quick enough to begin the new way.

-

-"The schoolhouse was lit up from cellar to garret and it looked sort of

-different and surprised at itself, and like it was sticking its head up.

-Maybe it sounds funny, but it sort of seemed to me the old brick

-building looked _conscious_, and like it had just opened its eyes and

-turned its face to something. Inside, the music was tuning up, the desks

-that was only part screwed down had been moved back; in one of the

-recitation-rooms we'd got the gas plates for the candy making, and

-Abagail was in there stirring up lemonade in a big crock, and the other

-ladies, with white aprons on, was bustling round seeing to cutting the

-cakes.

-

-"It wasn't a good seven-thirty before they begun coming in, the girls

-nipping in pretty dresses, the boys awkward and grinning, school-girls,

-shop-girls, Mis' Sykes's Em'ly an' Abe Luck and everybody--they come

-from all directions that night, I guess, just to see what it was like.

-

-"And when they got set down, I realized for the first time that the law

-and some of the prophets of time to come hung on what kind of a time

-they had that first night.

-

-"While I was thinking that, the music struck into a tune, hurry-up time,

-and before anybody could think it, there they were on their feet, one

-couple after another. And when the lilty sound of the dance and the

-sliding of feet got to going, like magic and as if they had dropped out

-of the walls, in come them that had been waiting around outside to see

-what we was really going to do. They come in, and they joined in and in

-five minutes the floor was full of them. And after being boxed in the

-house all day, or bottled in shops or polishing windows or mending

-eaves-troughs or taking photographs of humbly houses or doing I donno

-what-all that they didn't like, here they were, come after their good

-time and having it--_and having it_.

-

-"Mis' Toplady was peeking through a crack in the recitation-room door.

-

-"'_Dancin'!_' she says, with a little groan. 'I donno what my

-conscience'll say to me about this when it gets me alone.'

-

-"'Well,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, seeing to the frosting

-on the ends of her fingers, 'I feel like they'd been pipin' to me for

-years an' I'd never let 'em dance. An' now they're dancin' up here safe

-an' light an' with us. An' I'm glad of it, to my marrow.'

-

-"'I know,' says Mis' Toplady, wiping her eyes. 'I donno but _my_ marrow

-might get use' to it.'

-

-"Long about ten o'clock, when we'd passed the refreshments and everybody

-had carried their own plates back and was taking the candy out of the

-tins, I nudged Mis' Toplady and we slipped out into the schoolhouse

-entry and set down on the steps. We'd just heard the Through whistle,

-and we knew the School Board Iron Gate Committee was on it, and that

-they must of seen the schoolhouse lit from 'way acrost the marsh.

-Besides, I was counting on Eppleby to march them straight up there.

-

-"And so he done. Almost before I knew it they stepped out onto us,

-setting there in the starlight. I stood up and faced them, not from

-being brave, but from intending to jump _first_.

-

-"'Silas and Timothy,' I says, 'what's done is done, but the consequences

-ain't. The Women's Evening Vigilance Committee that you appointed

-yourself has tried this thing, and now it's for us all to judge if it

-works.'

-

-"'Heh!' says Silas, showing his teeth. 'Hed a little party, did you?

-Thought you'd get up a little party an' charge it to the Board, did you?

-Be su'prised, won't you, when you women get a bill for rent an' light

-for this night's performance?'

-

-"'Real surprised,' I says, dry.

-

-"'Amanda,' pipes up Timothy, 'air you a fool party to this fool doin's?'

-

-"'Oh, shucks!' says Mis' Toplady, tired. 'I been doin' too real things

-to row, Timothy.'

-

-"'Nev' mind,' says Silas, pacific. 'When the new iron gates gets here

-for this here entry, we won't have no more such doin's as this. They're

-ordered,' says Silas, like a bombshell, 'to keep out the hoodlums.'

-

-"Then Eppleby, that had been peeking through the schoolhouse window,

-whirled around.

-

-"'Yes,' says he. 'Let's put up the gates to keep out the hoodlums. But

-what you going to do for the girls and boys of Friendship Village that

-ain't hoodlums? What you goin' to do for them? I want to tell you that I

-knew all about what was goin' on here to-night, and I give over the

-schoolhouse key myself. And now you look down there.'

-

-"It was Friendship Village he pointed to, laying all around the

-schoolhouse slope, little lights shining for homes. And Eppleby went on

-before Silas and Timothy could get the breath to reply:--

-

-"'The town's nothin' but _roots_, is it?' Eppleby says. 'Roots, sendin'

-up green shoots to the top o' this hill to be trained up here into some

-kind of shape to meet life. What you doin' to 'em? Buildin' 'em a great,

-expensive schoolhouse that they use a few hours a day, part o' the year,

-an' the rest of the time it might as well be a hole in the ground for

-all the good it does anybody. An' here's the young folks, that you built

-it _for_ chasin' the streets to let off the mere flesh-an'-blood energy

-the Lord has give to 'em. Put up your iron gates if you want to, but

-don't put 'em up till the evenin's over an' till there's been some sort

-o' doin's here like this to give 'em what's their right. Put up your

-iron gates, but shame on the schoolhouse that puts 'em up an' stops

-there! Open the buildin' in the name of public decency, but in the name

-of public decency, don't shut it up!'

-

-"Timothy was starting to wave his arms when Mis' Toplady stood up,

-quiet, on the bottom step.

-

-"'Timothy,' she says, 'thirty-five years ago this winter you an' I was

-keepin' company. Do you remember how we done it? Do you remember singin'

-school? Do you remember spellin' school? Did our straw ridin' an' sleigh

-ridin' to the Caledonia district schoolhouse for our fun ever hurt the

-schoolhouse, or do you s'pose we ever learnt any the less in it? Well, I

-remember; an' we both remember; an' answer me this: Do you s'pose them

-young things in there is any differ'nt than we was? An' what's the sin

-an' the crime of what they're doin' now? Look at 'em!'

-

-"She pushed open the door. But just while we was looking, the music

-struck up the 'Home Sweet Home' waltz, and they all melted into dancing,

-the ladies in white aprons standing by the recitation-room doors looking

-on.

-

-"'_Dancin'!_' says Timothy, shuddering--but looking, too.

-

-"'Yes,' says Amanda, brave as you please, 'ain't it pretty? Lots

-prettier than chasin' up an' down Daphne Street. What say, Timothy?'

-

-"Eppleby give Silas a little nudge. 'Le's give it a trial,' he says.

-'This is the Vigilance Committee's idee. Le's give it a trial.'

-

-"Silas stood bitin' the tail of his beard. 'Go on to destruction if you

-want to!' he says. 'I wash my hands of you!'

-

-"'So do I,' says Timothy, echoish, 'wash mine.'

-

-"Eppleby took them both by the shoulders. 'Well, then, go on inside a

-minute,' he says to 'em. 'Don't let's leave 'em all think we got stole a

-march on by the women!'

-

-"And though it was that argument that made them both let Eppleby push

-them inside, still, when the door shut behind them, I knew there wasn't

-anything more to worry over. But me--I waited out there in the entry

-till the waltz was through. And it was kind of like the village down

-there to the foot of the hill was listening, quiet, to great councils.

-

-

-

-

-X

-

-

-"Up to Proudfit House the conservatory wasn't set aside from everyday

-living for just a place to be walked through and looked at and left

-behind for something better. It was a glass regular room, full of green,

-but not so full that it left you out of account. Willow chairs and a

-family of books and open windows into the other rooms made the

-conservatory all of a piece with the house, and at one end the tile was

-let go up in a big You-and-me looking fireplace, like a sort of shrine

-for fire, I use' to think, in the middle of a temple to flowers, and

-like both belonged to the household.

-

-"On the day of the evening company at Proudfit House Robin was sitting

-with a book in this room. I'd gone up that day to do what I could to

-help out, and to see to Christopher some. Him I'd put to taking his nap

-quite awhile before, and I was fussing with the plants like I love to

-do--it seems as if while I pick off dead leaves and give the roots a

-drink I was kind of doing their thinking for them. When I heard Alex

-Proudfit coming acrost the library, I started to go, but Robin says to

-me, 'Don't go, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'stay here and do what you're

-doing--if you don't mind.'

-

-"'Land,' thinks I, turning back to the ferns, 'never tell me that young

-ladies are getting more up-to-date in love than they use' to be. My day,

-she would of liked that they should be alone, so be she could manage it

-without seeming to.'

-

-"I donno but I'm foolish, but it always seems to me that a minute like

-that had ought to catch fire and leap up, like a time by itself. In all

-the relationships of men and women, it seems like no little commonplace

-time is so vital as the minute when the man comes into a room where a

-woman is a-waiting for him. There is about it something of time to be

-when he'll come, not to gloat over his day's kill, or to forget his

-day's care, but to talk with her about their day of hardy work. Habitual

-arriving in a room again and again for ever can never quite take off,

-seems though, the edge of that coming back to where she is.... But

-somehow, that day, Alex Proudfit must have stepped through the door

-before the minute had quite caught fire, and Robin merely smiled up at

-him, calm and idle, from her low chair as he come to a chair beside her.

-

-"'Tea, Robin Redbreast,' says he, 'is going to be here in a minute, with

-magnificent macaroons. But I think that you and I will have it by

-ourselves. Everybody is either asleep or pretending. I'm glad,' he tells

-her, 'you're the sort that can do things in the evening without resting

-up for from nine to ten hours preceding.'

-

-"'I'm resting now,' Robin said; 'this is quite heavenly--this green

-room.'

-

-"He looked at her, eager. 'Do you like it?' he asked. 'I mean the

-room--the house?'

-

-"'Enormously,' she told him. 'How could I help it?'

-

-"'I wanted you to like it,' he says. 'We shall not be here much, you

-know, but we shall be here sometimes, and I'm glad if you feel the

-feeling of home, even with all these people about. It's all going very

-decently for to-night, thanks to Mrs. Emmons. Not a soul that we really

-wanted has failed us.'

-

-"'Except Mr. Insley,' Robin says.

-

-"'Except Insley,' Alex concedes, 'and I own I can't make him out. Not

-because he didn't come here. But because he seems so enthusiastic about

-throwing his life away. Very likely,' he goes on, placid, 'he didn't

-come simply because he wanted to come. Those people get some sort of

-mediæval renunciation mania, I believe. Robin,' he went on, 'where do

-you think you would like to live? Not to settle down, you know, but for

-the Eternal Place To Come Back To?'

-

-"'To come back to?' Robin repeated.

-

-"'The twentieth century home is merely that, you know,' Alex explained.

-'We're just beginning to solve the home problem. We've tried to make

-home mean one place, and then we were either always wanting to get away

-for a while, or else we stayed dreadfully put, which was worse. But I

-think now we begin to see the truth: Home is nowhere. Rather, it is

-everywhere. The thing to do is to live for two months, three months, in

-a place, and to get back to each place at not too long intervals. Home

-is where you like to be for the first two weeks. When that wears off,

-it's home no more. Then home is some other place where you think you'd

-like to be. We are becoming nomadic again--only this time we own the

-world instead of being at its feet for a bare living. You and I, Robin

-Redbreast, are going to be citizens of the whole world.'

-

-"Robin looked over at him, reflective. And it seemed to me as if the

-whole race of women that have always liked one place to get in and be in

-and stay in spoke from her to Alex.

-

-"'But I've always had a little garden,' she says.

-

-"'A little what?' Alex asks, blank.

-

-"'Why, a garden,' she explains, 'to plant from year to year so that I

-know where things are going to come up.'

-

-"She was laughing, but I knew she meant what she said, too.

-

-"'My word,' Alex says, 'why, every place we take shall have a garden and

-somebody to grub about in it. Won't those and the conservatories do

-you?'

-

-"'I like to get out and stick my hands in the spring-smelly ground,' she

-explains, 'and to remember where my bulbs are.'

-

-"'But I've no objection to bulbs,' Alex says. 'None in the world. We'll

-plant the bulbs and take a run round the world and come back to see them

-bloom. No?'

-

-"'And not watch them come up?' Robin says, so serious that they both

-laughed.

-

-"'We want more than a garden can give,' Alex says then, indulgent. 'We

-want what the whole world can give.'

-

-"She nodded. 'And what we can give back?' she says.

-

-"He leaned toward her, touched along her hair.

-

-"'My dear,' he said, 'we've got two of us to make the most of we can in

-this life: that's you and I. The world has got to teach us a number of

-things. Don't, in heaven's name, let's be trying to teach the wise old

-world.'

-

-"He leaned toward her and, elbow on his knee, he set looking at her. But

-she was looking a little by him, into the green of the room, and I guess

-past that, into the green of all outdoors. I got up and slipped out,

-without their noticing me, and I went through the house with one fact

-bulging out of the air and occupying my brain. And it was that sitting

-there beside him, with him owning her future like he owned his own,

-Robin's world was as different from Alex's as the world is from the

-Proudfits' conservatory.

-

-"I went up to Chris, in the pretty, pinky room next to Robin's and found

-him sitting up in bed and pulling the ties out of the down comforter, as

-hard as he could. I just stood still and looked at him, thinking how

-eating and drinking and creating and destroying seems to be the native

-instincts of everybody born. Destroying, as I look at it, was the weapon

-God give us so that we could eat and drink and create the world in

-peace, but we got some mixed up during getting born and we got to

-believing that destruction was a part of the process.

-

-"'Chris,' I says, 'what you pulling out?'

-

-"'I donno those names of those,' he says. 'I call 'em little pulls.'

-

-"'What are they for?' I ask' him.

-

-"'I donno what those are for,' he says, 'but they come out _slickery_.'

-

-"Ain't it funny? And ain't it for all the world the way Nature works,

-destroying what comes out _slickery_ and leaving that alone that resists

-her? I was so struck by it I didn't scold him none.

-

-"After a while I took him down for tea. On the way he picked up a sleepy

-puppy, and in the conservatory door we met the footman with the little

-tea wagon and the nice, drowsy quiet of the house went all to pieces

-with Chris in it:--

-

-"'Supper, supper--here comes supper on a wagon, runnin' on litty wheels

-goin' wound an a-w-o-u-n-d--' says he, some louder than saying and

-almost to shouting. He sat down on the floor and looked up expectant:

-'Five lumps,' he orders, not having belonged to the house party for

-nothing.

-

-"'Tell us about your day, Chris,' Robin asks. 'What did you do?'

-

-"'It isn't _by_, is it?' Chris says, anxious. 'To-day didn't stop yet,

-did it?'

-

-"'Not yet,' she reassures him. 'Now is still now.'

-

-"'I want to-day to keep being now,' Chris said, 'because when it stops,

-then the bed is right there. It don't be anywhere near to-night, is it?'

-he says.

-

-"'Not very near,' Robin told him. 'Well, then, what are you doing

-to-day?' she asks.

-

-"'I'm to the house's party,' he explained. 'The house is having its

-party. An' I'm to it.'

-

-"'Do you like this house, dear?' Robin asked.

-

-"'It's nice,' he affirmed. 'In the night it--it talks wiv its lights. I

-saw it. With my daddy. When I was off on a big road.' Chris looked at

-her intent, from way in his eyes. 'I was thinkin' if my daddy would

-come,' he says, patient.

-

-"Robin stoops over to him, quick, and he let her. He'd took a most

-tremendous fancy to her, the little fellow had, and didn't want her long

-out of his sight. 'Is that Robin?' he always said, when he heard anybody

-coming from any direction. She give him a macaroon, now, for each hand,

-and he run away with the puppy. And then she turned to Alex, her face

-bright with whatever she was thinking about.

-

-"'Alex,' she says, 'he's a dear little fellow--a dear little fellow. And

-all alone. I've wanted so much to ask you: Can't we have him for ours?'

-

-"Alex looks at her, all bewildered up in a minute. 'How ours?' he asks.

-'Do you mean have him educated? That, of course, if you really want it.'

-

-"'No, no,' she says. '_Ours._ To keep with us, bring up, make. Let's let

-him be really ours.'

-

-"He just leaned back in the big chair, smiling at her, meditative.

-

-"'My dear Robin,' he says, 'it's a terrible responsibility to meddle

-that way with somebody's life.'

-

-"She looked at him, not understanding.

-

-"'It's such an almighty assumption,' he went on, 'this jumping blithely

-into the office of destiny--keeping, bringing-up, making, as you

-say--meddling with, I call it--anybody's life.'

-

-"'Isn't it really meddling to let him be in a bad way when we can put

-him in a better one?' she asked, puzzled.

-

-"'I love you, Robin,' says he, light, 'but not for your logic. No, my

-dear girl. Assuredly we will not take this child for ours. What leads

-you to suppose that Nature really wants him to live, anyway?'

-

-"I looked at him over my tea-cup, and for my life I couldn't make out

-whether he was speaking mocking or speaking plain.

-

-"'If Chris is to be inebriate, criminal, vicious, even irresponsible,

-as his father must be,' Alex says, 'Nature wants nothing of the sort.

-She wants to be rid of him as quickly as possible. How do you know what

-you are saving?'

-

-"'How do you know,' Robin says, 'what you are letting go?'

-

-"'I can take the risk if Nature can,' he contends.

-

-"She sat up in her chair, her eyes bright as the daylight, and I thought

-her eagerness and earnestness was on her like a garment.

-

-"'You have nobody to refer the risk to,' Robin says, 'Nature has us. And

-for one, I take it. So far as Chris is concerned, Alex, if no one claims

-him, I want him never to be out of touch with me.'

-

-"But when a woman begins to wear that garment, the man that's in love

-with her--unless he is the special kind--he begins thinking how much

-sweeter and softer and _womaner_ she is when she's just plain gentle.

-And he always gets uneasy and wants her to be the gentle way he

-remembers her being--that is, unless he's special, unless he's special.

-Like Alex got uneasy now.

-

-"'My heavens, dear,' he says--and I judged Alex had got to be one of

-them men that lays a lace 'dear' over a haircloth tone of voice, and so

-solemnly believes they're keeping their temper--'My heavens, dear, don't

-misunderstand me. Experiment as much as you like. Material is cheap and

-abundant. If you don't feel the responsibility, have him educated

-wherever you want to. But don't expect me to play father to him. The

-personal contact is going it a little too strong.'

-

-"'That is exactly what he most needs,' says Robin.

-

-"'Come, dear,' says Alex, 'that's elemental--in an age when everybody

-can do things better than one can do them oneself.'

-

-"She didn't say nothing, and just set there, with her tea. Alex was

-watching her, and I knew just about as sure what he was thinking as

-though I had been his own thought, oozing out of his mind. He was

-watching her with satisfaction, patterned off with a kind of quiet

-amusement and jabbed into by a kind of worryin' wonder. How exactly, he

-was thinking, she was the type everlasting of Wife. She was girlish, and

-in little things she was all I'll-do-as-you-say, and she was even shy;

-he believed that he was marrying a girl whose experience of the world

-was commendably slight, whose ideas about it was kind of

-vague--commendably again; and whose ways was easy-handled, like skein

-silk. By her little firmnesses, he see that she had it in her to be

-firm, but what he meant was that she should adopt his ideas and turn

-firm about them. He had it all planned out that he was going to

-embroider her brain with his notions of what was what. But all of a

-sudden, now and then, there she was confronting him as she had just done

-then with a serious, settled look of Woman--the Woman everlasting,

-wanting a garden, wanting to work, wanting a child....

-

-"In the doorway back of Alex, Bayless come in, carrying a tray, but it

-didn't have no card.

-

-"'It's somebody to speak with you a minute, Mr. Proudfit,' says Bayless.

-'It's Mr. Insley.'

-

-"'Have him come here,' Alex says. 'I hope,' he says, when the man was

-gone, 'that the poor fellow has changed his mind about our little

-festivities.'

-

-"Robin sort of tipped up her forehead. 'Why _poor_?' she asks.

-

-"'Poor,' says Alex, absent, 'because he lives in a pocket of the world,

-instead of wearing the world like a garment--when it would fit him.'

-

-"I was just setting my tea-cup down when she answered, and I recollect I

-almost jumped:

-

-"'He knows something better to do with the world than to wear it at

-all,' was what she said.

-

-"I looked over at her. And maybe it was because she was sort of

-indignant, and maybe it was because she thought she had dared quite a

-good deal, but all of a sudden something sort of seemed to me to set

-fire to the minute, and it leaped up like a time by itself as we heard

-Insley's step crossing the library and coming towards us....

-

-"When he come out where we were, I see right off how pale he looked.

-Almost with his greeting, he turned to Alex with what he had come for,

-and he put it blunt.

-

-"'I was leaving the Cadozas' cottage on the Plank Road half an hour

-ago,' he said. 'A little way along I saw a man, who had been walking

-ahead of me, stagger and sprawl in the mud. He wasn't conscious when I

-got to him. He was little--I picked him up quite easily and got him back

-into the Cadozas' cottage. He still wasn't conscious when the doctor

-came. He gave him things. We got him in bed there. And then he spoke. He

-asked us to hunt up a little boy somewhere in Friendship Village, who

-belonged to him. And he said the boy's name was Chris.'

-

-"It seemed like it was to Alex Proudfit's interested lifting of eyebrows

-rather than to Robin's exclamation of pity that Insley answered.

-

-"'I'm sorry it was necessary to trouble you,' he says, 'but Chris ought

-to go at once. I'll take him down now.'

-

-"'That man,' Robin says, 'the father--is he ill? Is he hurt? How badly

-is he off?'

-

-"'He's very badly off,' says Insley, 'done for, I'm afraid. It was in a

-street brawl in the City--it's his side, and he's lost a good deal of

-blood. He walked all the way back here. A few hours, the doctor thought

-it would be, at most.'

-

-"Robin stood up and spoke like what she was saying was a

-take-for-granted thing.

-

-"'Oh,' she says, 'poor, poor little Chris. Alex, I must go down there

-with him.'

-

-"Alex looks over at her, incredulous, and spoke so: 'You?' says he.

-'Impossible.'

-

-"I was just getting ready to say that of course I'd go with him, if that

-was anything, when from somewheres that he'd gone with the puppy, Chris

-spied Insley, and come running to him.

-

-"'Oh, you are to the house's party, too!' Chris cried, and threw himself

-all over him.

-

-"Robin knelt down beside the child, and the way she was with him made me

-think of that first night when she see him at the church, and when her

-way with him made him turn to her and talk with her and love her ever

-since.

-

-"'Listen, dear,' she said. 'Mr. Insley came here to tell you something.

-Something about daddy--your daddy. Mr. Insley knows where he is, and

-he's going to take you to him. But he's very, very sick, dear

-heart--will you remember that when you see him? Remember Robin told you

-that?'

-

-"There come on his little face a look of being afraid that give it a

-sudden, terrible grown-up-ness.

-

-"'Sick like my mama was?' he asked in a whisper. 'And will he _go out_,

-like my mama?'

-

-"Robin put her arm about him, and he turned to her, clung to her.

-

-"'You come, too, Robin,' he said. 'You come, too!'

-

-"She got up, meeting Alex's eyes with her straight look.

-

-"'I must go, Alex,' she said. 'He wants me--needs me. Why, how could I

-do anything else?'

-

-"Alex smiles down at her, with his way that always seemed to me so much

-less that of living every minute than of watching it live itself about

-him.

-

-"'May I venture to remind you,' he says--like a little thin edge of

-something, paper, maybe, that's smooth as silk, but that'll cut neat and

-deep if you let it--'May I venture to remind you that your aunt is

-announcing our engagement to-night? I think that will have escaped your

-mind.'

-

-"'Yes,' Robin says, simple, 'it had. Everything had escaped my mind

-except this poor little thing here. Alex--it's early. He'll sleep after

-a little. But I must go down with him. What did you come in?' she asked

-Insley, quiet.

-

-"I told her I'd go down, and she nodded that I was to go, but Chris

-clung to her hand and it was her that he wanted, poor little soul, and

-only her. Insley had come up in the doctor's rig. She and I would join

-him with the child, she told him, at the side entrance and almost at

-once. There was voices in the house by then, and some of the young folks

-was coming downstairs and up from the tennis-court for tea. She went

-into the house with Chris. And I wondered if she thought of the thing I

-thought of and that made me glad and glad that there are such men in the

-world: Not once, not once, out of some felt-he-must courtesy, had Insley

-begged her not to go with him. He knew that she was needed down there

-with Chris and him and me--he knew, and he wouldn't say she wasn't.

-Land, land I love a man that don't talk with the outside of his head and

-let what he means lay cramped somewheres underneath, but that reaches

-down and gets up what he means, and holds it out, for you to take or to

-leave.

-

-"Mis' Emmons was overseeing the decorations in the dining room. The

-whole evening party she had got right over onto her shoulders the way

-she does everything, and down to counting the plates she was seeing to

-it all. We found her and told her, and her pity went to the poor fellow

-down there at the Cadozas' almost before it went to Chris.

-

-"'Go, of course,' she said. 'I suppose Alex minds, but leave him to me.

-I've got to be here--but it's not I Chris wants in any case. It's you.

-Get back as soon as you can, Robin.'

-

-"I must say Alex done that last minute right, the way he done

-everything, light and glossy. When Robin come down, I was up in the

-little seat behind the doctor's cart, and Alex stood beside and helped

-her. A servant, he said, would come on after us in the automobile with a

-hamper, and would wait at the Cadozas' gate until she was ready to come

-back. Somehow, it hadn't entered anybody's head, least of all, I guess,

-Alex's own, that he should come, too. He see us off with his manners on

-him like a thick, thick veil, and he even managed to give to himself a

-real dignity so that Robin said her good-by with a kind of wistfulness,

-as if she wanted to be reassured. And I liked her the better for that.

-For, after all, she _was_ going--there was no getting back of that. And

-when a woman is doing the right thing against somebody's will, I'm not

-the one to mind if she hangs little bells on herself instead of going

-off with no tinkle to leave herself be reminded of, pleasant.

-

-"We swung out onto the open road, with Chris sitting still between the

-two of them, and me on the little seat behind. The sunset was flowing

-over the village and glittering in unfamiliar fires on the windows. The

-time was as still as still, in that hour 'long towards night when the

-day seems to have found its harbour it has been looking for and to have

-slipped into it, with shut sails--so still that Robin spoke of it with

-surprise. I forget just what she said. She was one of them women that

-can say a thing so harmonious with a certain minute that you never wish

-she'd kept still. I believe if she spoke to me when I was hearing music

-or feeling lifted up all by myself, I wouldn't mind it. What she'd say

-would be sure to fit what was being. They ain't many folks in anybody's

-life like that. I believe she could talk to me any time, sole unless

-it's when I first wake up in the morning; then any talking always seems

-like somebody stumbling in, busy, among my sleeping brains.

-

-"For a minute Insley didn't say anything. I was almost sure he was

-thinking how unbelievable it was that he should be there, alone with

-her, where an hour ago not even one of his forbidden dreams could have

-found him.

-

-"'Beautifully still,' he answered, 'as if all the things had stopped

-being, except some great thing.'

-

-"'I wonder,' she says, absent, 'what great thing.' And all the time she

-seemed sort of relaxed, and resting in the sense--though never in the

-consciousness--that the need to talk and to be talked to, to suggest and

-to question, had found some sort of quiet, levelling process with which

-she was moving along, assentin'.

-

-"Insley stooped down, better to shield her dress from the mud there was.

-I see him look down at her uncovered hands laying on the robe, and then,

-with a kind of surprise, up at her face; and I knew how surprising her

-being near him seemed.

-

-"'That would be one thing for you,' he answered, 'and another for me.'

-

-"'No,' she says, 'I think it's the same thing for us both.'

-

-"He didn't let himself look at her, but his voice--well, I tell you,

-his voice looked.

-

-"'What do you mean?' he says--just said it a little and like he didn't

-dare trust it to say itself any more.

-

-"'Why, being able to help in this, surely,' she says.

-

-"I could no more of helped watching the two of them than if they had

-been angels and me nothing but me. I tried once or twice to look off

-across the fields that was smiling at each other, same as faces, each

-side of the road; but my eyes come back like they was folks and wanted

-to; and I set there looking at her brown hair, shining in the sun,

-without any hat on it, and at his still face that was yet so many kinds

-of alive. He had one of the faces that looked like it had been cut out

-just the way it was _a-purpose_. There wasn't any unintentional

-assembling of features there, part make-shift and part rank growth of

-his race. No, sir. His face had come to life by being meant to be just

-the way it was, and it couldn't have been better.... It lit up wonderful

-when he answered.

-

-"'Yes,' he said, 'a job is a kind of creation. It's next best to getting

-up a sunrise. Look here,' he remembered, late in the day, 'you'll have

-no dinner. You can't eat with them in that place. And you ought to have

-rest before to-night.'

-

-"Ain't it funny how your voice gets away from you sometimes and goes

-dilly-nipping around, pretty near saying things on its own account? I

-use' to think that mebbe my voice didn't belong to the me I know about,

-but was some of the real me, inside, speaking out with my mouth for a

-trumpet. I donno but I think so yet. For sometimes your voice is a

-person and it says things all alone by itself. So his voice done then.

-The tender concern of it was pretty near a second set of words. It was

-the first time he had struck for her the great and simple note, the note

-of the caring of the man for the physical comfort of the woman. And

-while she was pretending not to need it, he turned away and looked off

-toward the village, and I was certain sure he was terrified at what

-might have been in his voice.

-

-"'I like to think of it down there,' he said, pretty near at random,

-'waiting to be clothed in a new meaning.'

-

-"'The village?' she asked.

-

-"'Everywhere,' he answered. 'Some of the meanings we dress things up in

-are so--dowdy. We wouldn't think of wearing them ourselves.'

-

-"She understood him so well that she didn't have to bother to smile.

-And I hoped she was setting down a comparison in her head: Between

-clothing the world in a new meaning, and wearing it for a garment.

-

-"Chris looked up in Insley's face.

-

-"'I'm new,' he contributes, 'I'm new on the outside of me. I've got on

-this new brown middie.'

-

-"'I've been admiring it the whole way,' says Insley, hearty--and that

-time his eyes and Robin's met, over the little boy's head, as we stopped

-at the cottage gate.

-

-

-

-

-XI

-

-

-"The lonesome little parlour at Mis' Cadoza's was so far past knowing

-how to act with folks in it, that it never changed expression when we

-threw open the shutters. Rooms that are used to folks always sort of

-look up when the shutters are opened; some rooms smile back at you; some

-say something that you just lose, through not turning round from the

-window quite quick enough. But Mis' Cadoza's parlour was such a poor

-folkless thing that it didn't make us any reply at all nor let on to

-notice the light. It just set there, kind of numb, merely enduring

-itself.

-

-"'You poor thing,' I thought, 'nobody come in time, did they?'

-

-"Insley picked out a cane-seat rocker that had once known how to behave

-in company, and drew it to the window. Ain't it nice, no matter what

-kind of a dumb room you've got into, you can open its window and fit the

-sky onto the sill, and feel right at home....

-

-"Robin sat there with Chris in her arms, waiting for any stir in the

-front bedroom. I went in the bedroom, while Dr. Heron told me about the

-medicine, and it seemed to me the bare floor and bare walls and

-dark-coloured bedcovers was got together to suit the haggardy unshaven

-face on the pillow. Christopher's father never moved. I set in the

-doorway, so as to watch him, and Insley went with the doctor to the

-village to bring back some things that was needed. And I felt like we

-was all the first settlers of somewheres.

-

-"Chris was laying so still in Robin's arms that several times she looked

-down to see if he was awake. But every time his eyes was wide and dark

-with that mysterious child look that seems so much like thought. It kind

-of hurt me to see him doing nothing--that's one of the parts about

-sickness and dying and some kinds of trouble that always twists

-something up in my throat: The folks that was so eager and able and

-flying round the house just being struck still and not able to go on

-with everyday doings. I know when Lyddy Ember, the dressmaker, died and

-I looked at her laying there, it seemed to me so surprising that she

-couldn't hem and fell and cut out with her thumb crooked like she

-done--and that she didn't know a dart from a gore; her hands looked so

-much like she knew how yet. It's like being inactive made death or grief

-double. And it's like working or playing around was a kind of life....

-The whole house seemed inactive and silence-struck, even to the kitchen

-where Mis' Cadoza and the little lame boy was.

-

-"Robin set staring into the lilacs that never seemed to bloom, and I

-wondered what she was thinking and mebbe facing. But when she spoke, it

-was about the Cadoza kitchen.

-

-"'Miss Marsh,' she says, 'what kind of people must they be that can stay

-alive in a kitchen like that?'

-

-"'Pioneers,' I says. 'They's a lot of 'em pioneerin' away and not

-knowing it's time to stop.'

-

-"'But the dirt--' she says.

-

-"'What do you expect?' I says. 'They're emergin' out of dirt. But they

-_are_ emergin'.'

-

-"'Don't it seem hopeless?' says she.

-

-"'Oh, I donno,' I says; 'dirt gets to be apples--so be you plant 'em.'

-

-"But the Cadoza kitchen _was_ fearful. When we come through it, Mis'

-Cadoza was getting supper, and she'd woke up nameless smells of greasy

-things. There the bare table was piled with the inevitable mix-up of

-unwashed dishes that go along with the Mis' Cadozas of this world, so

-that you wonder how they ever got so much crockery together. There the

-floor wasn't swept, clothes was drying on a line over the stove, Spudge

-was eating his supper on the window-sill, and in his bed in the corner

-lay little Eph, so white and frail and queer-coloured that you felt you

-was looking on something bound not to last till much after you'd stopped

-looking. And there was Mis' Cadoza. When we had come through the

-kitchen, little Eph had said something glad at seeing Insley and hung

-hold of his hand and told him how he meant to model a clay Patsy,

-because it was Patsy, the dog, that had gone out in the dark and first

-brought Insley in to see him.

-

-"'An' when I'm big,' the child says, 'I'm going to make a clay _you_,

-Mr. Insley.'

-

-"Mis' Cadoza had turned round and bared up her crooked teeth.

-

-"'Don't you be impident!' she had said, raspish, throwing her hand out

-angular.

-

-"Mis' Cadoza was like somebody that hadn't got outside into the daylight

-of _Yet_. She was ignorant, blind to life, with some little bit of a

-corner of her brain working while the rest lay stock-still in her skull;

-unclean of person, the mother to no end of nameless horrors of

-habit--and her blood and the blood of some creature like her had been

-poured into that poor little boy, sickly, bloodless, not ready for the

-struggle.

-

-"'_Is_ there any use trying to do anything with anybody like that?'

-says Robin.

-

-"'_Is_ there?' says I, but I looked right straight at Christopher. If

-there wasn't no use trying to do anything with little Eph, with his

-mother out there in the kitchen, then what was the use of trying to do

-anything with Chris, with his father here in the front bedroom? Sick

-will, tainted blood, ruined body--to what were we all saving Chris?

-Maybe to misery and final defeat and some awful going out.

-

-"'I don't know,' she says, restless. 'Maybe Alex is right....'

-

-"She looked out towards the lilac bushes again, and I knew how all of a

-sudden they probably dissolved away to be the fine green in the

-conservatory at Proudfit House, and how she was seeing herself back in

-the bright room, with its summer of leaves, and before the tea wagon,

-making tea for Alex lounging in his low chair, begging her not, in

-heaven's name, to try to teach the wise old world....

-

-" ... I knew well enough how she felt. Every woman in the world knows.

-In that minute, or I missed my guess, she was finding herself clinging

-passionate and rebellious to the mere ordered quiet of the life Alex

-would make for her; to the mere outworn routine, the leisure of long

-days in pretty rooms, of guests and house parties and all the little

-happy flummery of hospitality, the doing-nothingness, or the nice tasks,

-of travelling; the joy of sinking down quiet into the easy ways to do

-and be. Something of the sheer, clear, mere self-indulgence of the

-last-notch conservative was sweeping over her, the quiet, the order, the

-plain _safety_ of the unchanging, of going along and going along and

-leaving things pretty much as they are, expecting them to work

-themselves out ... the lure of all keeping-stillness. And I knew she was

-wondering, like women do when they're tired or blue or get a big job to

-do or see a house like the Cadozas', why, after all, she shouldn't, in

-Alex's way, make herself as dainty in morals and intellect as she could

-and if she wanted to 'meddle,' to do so at arm's length, with some of

-the material that is cheap and abundant--like Chris....

-

-"'Maybe there isn't any use trying to do anything with Chris, either,' I

-says brutal. 'Mebbe Nature's way _is_ best. Mebbe she knows best when to

-let them die off.'

-

-"Robin's arms kind of shut up on the little kiddie. He looked up.

-

-"'Did you squeeze me on purpose?' he whispered.

-

-"She nodded at him.

-

-"'What for?' he asks.

-

-"'Just loving,' she answered.

-

-"After that, we sat still for a long time. Insley came back with the

-medicine, and told me what to do if the sick man came to. Then he filled

-and lit the bracket lamp that seemed to make more shadows than light,

-and then he stopped beside Robin--as gentle as a woman over a plant--and

-asked her if she wanted anything. He come through the room several

-times, and once him and her smiled, for a still greeting, almost as

-children do. After a while he come with a little basket of food that he

-had had Abagail put up to the bakery, and we tried to eat a little

-something, all of us. And all the while the man on the bed lay like he

-was locked up in some new, thick kind of silence.

-

-"When eight o'clock had gone, we heard what I had been expecting to

-hear--the first wheels and footsteps on the Plank Road directed towards

-Proudfit House. And Insley come in, and went over to Robin, and found

-Chris asleep in her arms, and he took him from her and laid him on the

-sagging Brussels couch.

-

-"'You must go now,' he says to Robin, with his kind of still authority

-that wan't ordering nor schoolmastery, nor you-do-as-I-say, but was

-just something that made you want to mind him. 'I'll wake Chris and take

-him in at the least change--but you must go back at once.'

-

-"And of course I was going to stay. Some of my minds was perfectly

-willing not to be at the party in any case, and anyhow the rest of them

-wanted to stay with Chris.

-

-"Insley picked up some little belongings of hers, seeming to know them

-without being told, and because the time was so queer, and mebbe because

-death was in the next room, and mebbe for another reason or two, I could

-guess how, all the while he was answering her friendly questions about

-the little Cadoza boy--all that while the Personal, the _Personal_, like

-a living thing, hovered just beyond his words. And at last it just

-naturally came in and possessed what he was saying.

-

-"'I can't thank you enough for coming down here,' he says. 'It's meant

-everything to Chris--and to me.'

-

-"She glanced up at him with her pretty near boyish frankness, that had

-in it that night some new element of confidence and charm and just being

-dear.

-

-"'Don't thank me,' she says, 'it was mine to do, too. And besides, I

-haven't done anything. And I'm running away!'

-

-"He looked off up the road towards where, on its hill, Proudfit House

-was a-setting, a-glowing in all its windows, a-waiting for her to come,

-and to have her engagement to another man announced in it, and then to

-belong up there for ever and ever. He started to say something--I donno

-whether he knew what or whether he didn't; but anyhow he changed his

-mind and just opened the door for her, the parlour door that I bet was

-as surprised to be used as if it had cackled.

-

-"The Proudfit motor had stood waiting at the gate all this while, and as

-they got out to it, Dr. Heron drove up, and with him was Mis'

-Hubbelthwait come to enquire. So Robin waited outside to see what Dr.

-Heron should say when he had seen Chris's father again, and I went to

-the door to speak to Mis' Hubbelthwait.

-

-"'Liquor's what ails him fast enough,' Mis' Hubbelthwait whispers--Mis'

-Hubbelthwait would of whispered in the middle of a forty-acre field if

-somebody had said either birth or death to her. 'Liquor's what ails him.

-I know 'em. I remember the nice, well-behaved gentleman that come to the

-hotel and only lived one night after. "Mr. Elder," I says to him,

-severe, "you needn't to tell me your stomach ain't one livin' pickle,

-for I know it is!" An' he proved it by dyin' that very night. If he

-didn't prove it, I don't know what he did prove. "Alcoholism," Dr. Heron

-called it, but I know it was liquor killed him. No use dressin' up

-words. An' I miss my guess if this here poor soul ain't the self-same

-river to cross.'

-

-"She would have come in, but there's no call for the whole town to nurse

-a sick-bed, I always think--and so she sort of hung around a minute,

-sympathetic and mum, and then slimpsed off with very little starch to

-her motions, like when you walk for sick folks. I looked out to where

-Robin and Insley was waiting by the big Proudfit planet that was going

-to take her on an orbit of its own; and all of a sudden, with them in

-front of me and with what was behind me, the awful _good-byness_ of

-things sort of shut down on me, and I wanted to do something or tell

-somebody something, I didn't know what, before it was too late; and I

-run right down to them two.

-

-"'Oh,' I says, scrabblin' some for my words, 'I want to tell you

-something, both of you. If it means anything to either of you to know

-that there's a little more to me, for having met both of you--then I

-want you to know it. And it's true. You both--oh, I donno,' I says,

-'what it is--but you both kind of act like life was a person, and like

-it wasn't just your dinner to be et.... And I kind of know the person,

-too....'

-

-"I knew what I meant, but meant things and said things don't often match

-close. And yet I donno but they understood me. Anyway, they both took

-hold of a hand of mine, and said some little broke-off thing that I

-didn't rightly get. But I guess that we all knew that we all knew. And

-in a minute I went back in the house, feeling like I'd got the best of

-some time when I might of wished, like we all do, that I'd let somebody

-know something while then was then.

-

-"When I got inside the door, I see right off by Dr. Heron's face that

-there'd been some change. And sure enough there was. Chris's father had

-opened his eyes and had spoke. And I done what I knew Robin would have

-wanted; I wheeled round and went to the door and told her so.

-

-"'He's come to,' I says, 'and he's just asked for Chris.'

-

-"Sharp off, Robin turned to say something to the man waiting in the

-automobile. Insley tried to stop her, but she put him by. They come back

-into the cottage together, and the Proudfit automobile started steaming

-back to Proudfit House without her.

-

-"Once again Robin roused Chris, as she had roused him on the night when

-he slept on the church porch; she just slipped her hands round his

-throat and lifted his face, and this time she kissed him.

-

-"'Come with Robin,' she said.

-

-"Chris opened his eyes and for a minute his little senses come

-struggling through his sleep, and then with them come dread. He looked

-up in Robin's face, piteous.

-

-"'Did my daddy _go out_?' he asks, shrill, 'like my mama did?'

-

-"'No, no, dear,' Robin said. 'He wants you to say good-by to him first,

-you know. Be still and brave, for Robin.'

-

-"There wasn't no way to spare him, because the poor little figure on the

-bed was saying his name, restless, to restless movements. I was in there

-by him, fixing him a little something to take.

-

-"'Where's Chris?' the sick man begged. 'Look on the church steps--'

-

-"They took Chris in the room, and Insley lifted him up to Robin's knee

-on the chair beside the bed.

-

-"'Hello--my nice daddy,' Chris says, in his little high voice, and

-smiles adorable. 'I--I--I was waitin' for you all this while.'

-

-"His father put out his hand, awful awkward, and took the child's arm

-about the elbow. I'll never forget the way the man's face looked. It

-didn't looked _used_, somehow--it looked all sort of bare and barren,

-and like it hadn't been occupied. I remember once seeing a brand-new

-house that had burned down before anybody had ever lived in it, and some

-of it stuck up in the street, nice new doors, nice hardwood stairway,

-new brick chimney, and everything else all blackened and spoiled and

-done for, before ever it had been lived in. That was what Chris's

-father's face made me think of. The outline was young, and the eyes was

-young--young and burning--but there was the man's face, all spoiled and

-done for, without ever having been used for a face at all.

-

-"'Hello, sonny,' he says, weak. 'Got a good home?'

-

-"'He's in a good home, with good people, Mr. Bartlett,' Insley told him.

-

-"'For keeps?' Chris's father asks, his eyes burning at Insley's over the

-boy's head.

-

-"'We shall look after him somehow, among us,' Robin says. 'Don't worry

-about him, Mr. Bartlett. He's all right.'

-

-"The father's look turned toward her and it sort of lingered there a

-minute. And then it lit up a little--he didn't smile or change

-expression, but his look lit up some.

-

-"'You're the kind of a one I meant,' he says. 'I wanted he should have a

-good home. I--I done pretty good for you, didn't I, Chris?' he says.

-

-"Chris leaned way over and pulled at his sleeve. 'You--you--you come in

-our house, too,' he says.

-

-"'No, sonny, no,' says the man. 'I guess mebbe I'm--goin' somewheres

-else. But I done well by you, didn't I? Your ma and I always meant you

-should hev a good home. I'm glad--if you've got it. It's nicer than

-bein' with me--ain't it? Ain't it?'

-

-"Chris, on Robin's knee, was leaning forward on the bed, his hand

-patting and pulling at his father's hand.

-

-"'If you was here, then it is,' the child says.

-

-"At that his father smiled--and that was the first real, real look that

-had come into his face. And he looked around slow to the rest of us.

-

-"'I wasn't never the kind to hev a kid,' he says. 'The drink had me--had

-me hard. I knew I'd got to find somebody to show him--about growin' up.

-I'm glad you're goin' to.'

-

-"He shut his eyes and Chris threw himself forward and patted his face.

-

-"'Daddy!' he cried, 'I wanted to tell you--I had that hot ice-cream

-an'--an'--an' tea on a litty wagon....'

-

-"Robin drew him back, hushed him, looked up questioning to Insley. And

-while we all set there, not knowing whether to leave or to stay, the man

-opened his eyes, wide and dark.

-

-"'I wish't it had been different,' he said. 'Oh--_God_....'

-

-"Chris leans right over, eager, towards him.

-

-"'Didn't he say anything back?' he says.

-

-"'I guess so,' the man says, thick. 'I guess if you're a good boy, he

-did.' Then he turned his head and looked straight at Robin. 'Don't you

-forget about his throat, will you?' he says.

-'It--gets--sore--awful--easy....'

-

-"He stopped talking, with a funny upsetting sound in his voice. It

-struck me then, like it has since, how frightful it was that neither him

-nor Chris thought of kissing each other--like neither one had brought

-the other up to know how. And yet Chris kissed all of us when we asked

-him--just like something away back in him knew how, without being

-brought up to know.

-

-"He knew how to cry, though, without no bringing up, like folks do. As

-Robin come with him out of the room, Chris hid his face in her skirts,

-crying miserable. She set down by the window with him in her arms, and

-Insley went and stood side of them, not saying anything. I see them so,

-while Dr. Heron and I was busy for a minute in the bedroom. Then we come

-out and shut the door--ain't it strange, how one minute it takes so many

-people around the bed, and next minute, there's the one that was the one

-left in there all alone, able to take care of itself.

-

-"Dr. Heron went away, and Robin still set there, holding Chris. All of a

-sudden he put up his face.

-

-"'Robin,' he says, 'did--did my daddy leave me a letter?'

-

-"'A letter?' she repeated.

-

-"'To tell me what to do,' says the child. 'Like before. On the church

-steps.'

-

-"'No--why, no, Chris,' she answers him. 'He didn't have to do that, you

-know.'

-

-"His eyes was holding hers, like he wanted so much to understand.

-

-"'Then how'll I know?' he asks, simple.

-

-"It seemed to me it was like a glass, magnifying living, had suddenly

-been laid on life. Here he was, in the world, with no 'letter' to tell

-him what to do.

-

-"All she done was just to lay her cheek right close to his cheek.

-

-"'Robin is going to tell you what to do,' she says, 'till you are big

-enough to know.'

-

-"Insley stood there looking at her, and his face was like something had

-just uncovered it. And the minute seemed real and simple and almost

-old--as if it had begun to be long, long before. It was kind of as if

-Robin's will was the will of all women, away back for ever and ever in

-time, to pour into the world their power of life and of spirit, through

-a child.

-

-

-"Insley went out in the kitchen to see Mis' Cadoza about some

-arrangements--if 'Arrangements' means funerals, it always seems like the

-word was spelt different and stiffer--and we was setting there in that

-sudden, awful idleness that comes on after, when there was the noise of

-an automobile on the Plank Road, and it stopped to the cottage and Alex

-Proudfit come springing up to the front door. He pushed it open and come

-in the room, and he seemed to put the minute in capitals, with his voice

-and his looks and his clothes. I never see clothes so black and so white

-and so just-so as Alex Proudfit's could be, and that night they was more

-just-so than usual. That night, his hands, with their thick, strange

-ring, and his dark, kind of _even_ face was like some fancy picture of a

-knight and a lover. But his face never seemed to me to be made very much

-a-purpose and just for him. It was rather like a good sample of a good

-brand, and like a good sample of any other good brand would have done

-him just as well. His face didn't fit him inevitable, like a cork to a

-bottle. It was laid on more arbitrary, like a window on a landscape, and

-you could have seen the landscape through any other window just as well,

-or better.

-

-"'Robin!' he said, 'why did you let the car come back without you? We've

-been frantic with anxiety.'

-

-"She told him in a word or two what had happened, and he received it

-with his impressions just about half-and-half: one-half relief that the

-matter was well over and one-half anxiety for her to hurry up. Everyone

-was at the house, everyone was wondering. Mrs. Emmons was anxious....

-'My poor Robin, you've overtaxed your strength,' he ends. 'You'll look

-worn and not yourself to-night. It's too bad of it. Come, for heaven's

-sake, let's be out of this. Come, Calliope....'

-

-He asked her if she had anything to bring, and he gathered up what she

-told him was hers. I got ready, too, so's to go up to Proudfit House to

-put Chris to bed and set by him awhile. And just as I was going out to

-let Insley know we was leaving, the door to the other room opened and

-there stood Mis' Cadoza. I see she'd twisted her hair over fresh and

-she'd put on a collar. I remember now the way I felt when she spoke.

-

-"'I've got the coffee pot on and some batter stirred up,' says she, kind

-of shame-faced. 'I thought mebbe some hot pan-cakes and somethin' hot to

-drink'd go good--with Mr. Insley an' all of you.'

-

-"Alex started to say something--heaven knows what--but Robin went right

-straight up to Mis' Cadoza--and afterwards I thought back to how Robin

-didn't make the mistake of being too grateful.

-

-"'How I'd like them!' she says, matter-of-fact. 'But I've got a lot of

-people waiting for me, and I oughtn't to keep them....'

-

-"Insley spoke up from where he was over on the edge of little Eph's bed,

-and I noticed Mis' Cadoza had tried to neaten up the kitchen some, and

-she'd set the table with oil-cloth and some clean dishes.

-

-"'I was afraid you'd all stay,' he says, 'and I do want all the

-pan-cakes. Hurry on--you're keeping back our supper.'

-

-"He nodded to Alex, smiled with us, and come and saw us out the door.

-Mis' Cadoza come too, and Robin and I shook hands with her for

-goodnight. And as Mis' Cadoza stood there in her own door, seeing us

-off, and going to be hostess out in her own kitchen, I wondered to

-myself if it was having a collar on, or what it was, that give her a

-kind of pretty near dignity.

-

-"I got in the front seat of the car. Chris was back in the tonneau

-between Robin and Alex, and as we started he tried to tell Alex what had

-happened.

-

-"'My--my--my daddy----' he says.

-

-"'Poor little cuss,' says Alex. 'But how extremely well for the child,

-Robin, that the beggar died. Heavens, how I hate your going in these

-ghastly places. My poor Robin, what an experience for _to-night_! For

-our to-night....'

-

-"She made a sudden move, abrupt as a bird springing free of something

-that's holding it. She spoke low, but I heard every word of it.

-

-"'Alex,' she said, 'we've made a mistake, you and I. But it isn't too

-late to mend it now.'

-

-

-

-

-XII

-

-

-"'I hope, Calliope,' said Postmaster Silas Sykes to me, 'that you ain't

-in favour of women suffrage.'

-

-"'No, Silas,' says I, 'I ain't.'

-

-"And I felt all over me a kind of a nice wild joy at saying a thing that

-I knew a male creature would approve of.

-

-"Silas was delivering the groceries himself that day, and accepting of a

-glass of milk in my kitchen doorway. And on my kitchen stoop Letty

-Ames--that had come home in time for the Proudfit party--was a-sitting,

-a-stitching away on a violet muslin breakfast-cap. It was the next day

-after the party and my regular wash-day and I was glad to be back in my

-own house, washing quiet, with Emerel Daniel to help me.

-

-"'At school,' says Letty, 'everybody was for it.'

-

-"'I know it,' says Silas, gloomy. 'The schools is goin' to the dogs,

-hot-foot. Women suffrage, tinkerin' pupils' teeth, cremation--I don't

-know what-all their holdin' out for. In my day they stuck to 'rithmetic

-and toed the crack.'

-

-"'That isn't up to date, Mr. Sykes,' says Letty, to get Silas riled.

-

-"It done it. He waved his left arm, angular.

-

-"'Bein' up to date is bein' up to the devil,' he begun, raspish, when I

-cut in, hasty and peaceful.

-

-"'By the way, Silas,' I says, 'speaking of dates, it ain't more'n a

-_year_ past the time you aldermen was going to clear out Black Hollow,

-is it? Ain't you going to get it done _this_ spring?'

-

-"'Oh, dum it, no,' Silas says. 'They're all after us now to get to

-pavin' that new street.'

-

-"'That street off there in the marsh. I know they are,' I says innocent.

-'Your cousin's makin' the blocks, ain't he, Silas?'

-

-"Just then, in from the shed where she was doing my washing come Emerel

-Daniel--a poor little thing that looked like nothing but breath with the

-skin drawn over it--and she was crying.

-

-"'Oh, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'I guess you'll have to leave me go home. I

-left little Otie so sick--I hadn't ought to of left him--only I did want

-the fifty cents....'

-

-"'Otie!' I says. 'I thought Otie was getting better.'

-

-"'I've kept sayin' so because I was ashamed to let folks know,' Emerel

-says, 'an' me leavin' him to work. But I had to have the money--'

-

-"'Land,' I says, 'of course you did. Go on home. Silas'll take you in

-the delivery wagon, won't you, Silas? You're going right that way, ain't

-you?'

-

-"'I wasn't,' says Silas, 'but I can go round that way to oblige.' That's

-just exactly how Silas is.

-

-"'Emerel,' I says, 'when you go by the Hollow, you tell Silas what you

-was tellin' me--about the smells from there into your house. Silas,' I

-says, 'that hole could be filled up with sand-bar sand dirt cheap, now

-while the river's low, and you know it.'

-

-"'Woman--' Silas begins excitable.

-

-"'Of course you can't,' I saved him the trouble, 'not while the council

-is running pavement halfway acrost the swamp to graft off'n the Wooden

-Block folks. That's all, Silas. I know you, head and heart,' I says,

-some direct.

-

-"'You don't understand city dealin's no more'n--Who-a!' Silas yells,

-pretending his delivery horse needed him, and lit down the walk, Emerel

-following. Silas reminds me of the place in the atmosphere where a

-citizen ought to be, and ain't.

-

-"Emerel had left the clothes in the bluing water, so I stood and talked

-with Letty a minute, stitching away on her muslin breakfast-cap.

-

-"'I'd be for women voting just because Silas isn't,' she says, feminine.

-

-"'In them words,' says I to her, 'is some of why women shouldn't do it.

-The most of 'em reason,' I says, 'like rabbits!'

-

-"Letty sort of straightened up and looked at me, gentle. She just

-graduated from the Indian Mound School and, in spite of yourself, you

-notice what she says. 'You're mistaken, Miss Marsh,' says she, 'I

-believe in women voting because we're folks and mothers, and we can't

-bring up our children with men taking things away from 'em that we know

-they'd ought to have. I want to bring up my children by my votes as well

-as by my prayers,' says she.

-

-"'_Your_ children!' says I.

-

-"I donno if you've ever noticed that look come in a girl's face when she

-speaks of her children that are going to be sometime? Up to that minute

-I'd 'a' thought Letty's words was brazen. But when I see how she looked

-when she said it, I sort of turned my eyes away, kind of half reverent.

-We didn't speak so when I was a girl. The most we ever heard mentioned

-like that was when our mothers showed us our first baby dress and told

-us that was for _our_ baby--and then we always looked away, squeamish.

-

-"'That's kind of nice,' I says, slow, 'your owning up, out loud that

-way, that maybe you might possibly have--have one, sometime.'

-

-"'My mother has talked to me about it since I began to

-know--everything,' Letty said.

-

-"That struck awful near home.

-

-"'I always wisht,' I says, 'I'd talked with my mother--like that. I

-always wisht I'd had her tell me about the night I was born. I think

-everybody ought to know about that. But I remember when she begun to

-speak about it, I always kind of shied off. I should think it would of

-hurt her. But then,' I says, 'I never had any of my own. So it don't

-matter.'

-

-"'Oh, yes, you have, Miss Marsh,' says Letty.

-

-"I looked at her, blank.

-

-"'Every child that's born belongs to you,' says Letty to me, solemn.

-

-"'Go on,' says I, to draw her out. 'I wouldn't own most of the little

-jackanapesses.'

-

-"'But you _do_,' says Letty, 'and so do I! So does every woman, mother

-or not.'

-

-"She set the little violet muslin cap on her head to try it, and swept

-up and made me a little bow. Pretty as a picture she looked, and ready

-for loving.... I always wonder if things ain't sometimes arranged to

-happen in patterns, same as crystals. For why else should it be that at

-that instant minute young Elbert Sykes, Silas's son, that was home for

-the party and a little longer, come up to my door with a note from his

-mother--and see Letty in the violet cap, bowing like a rose?

-

-"While they was a-talking easy, like young folks knows how to do

-nowdays, I read the note; and it was about what had started Silas to

-talking suffrage. Mis' Sykes had opened her house to a suffrage meeting

-that evening, and Mis' Martin Lacy from the City was a-going to talk,

-and would I go over?

-

-"'Land, yes,' I says to Elbert. 'Tell her I'll come, just for something

-to do. I wonder if I can bring Letty, too?'

-

-"'Mother'd be proud, I know,' says Elbert, looking at her like words,

-and them words a-praising. They had used to play together when they was

-little, but school had come in and kind of made them over.

-

-"'_So_,' says he to Letty, bantering, 'you're in favour of women voting,

-are you?'

-

-"She broke off her thread and looked up at him.

-

-"'Of course I am,' she says, giving a cunning little kitten nod that run

-all down her shoulders.

-

-"'So you think,' says Elbert, 'that you're just as strong as I am--to

-carry things along? Mind you, I don't say as clever. You're easily that.

-But put it at just _strong_.'

-

-"She done the little nod again, nicer than the first time.

-

-"'You talk like folks voted with their muscles,' says she. 'Well, I

-guess some men do, judging by the results.'

-

-"He laughed, but he went on.

-

-"'And you think,' he says, 'that you would be just as wonderful in

-public life as you would be in your home--your very own home?'

-

-"Letty put the last stitch in her muslin cap and she set it on her

-head--all cloudy and rose-budded, and land, land, she was lovely when

-she looked up.

-

-"'Surely,' she says from under the ruffle, with a little one-cornered

-smile.

-

-"He laughed right into her eyes. 'I don't believe you think so,' he

-says, triumphant. And all of a sudden there come a-sticking up its head

-in his face the regular man look--I can't rightly name it, but every

-woman in the world knows it when she sees it--a kind of an _I'm the one

-of us two but don't let's stop pretending it's you_ look.

-

-"When she see it, what do you suppose Letty done? First she looked

-down. Then she blushed. Then she shrugged up one shoulder and laughed,

-sort of little and low and soft. _And she kept still._ She was about as

-much like the dignified woman that had just been talking to me about

-women's duty as a bow of blue ribbon is like my work apron. And as plain

-as the blue on the sky, I see that _she liked the minute when she let

-Elbert beat her--liked it_, with a sort of a glow and a quiver.

-

-"He laughed again, and, 'You stay just the the way you are,' he says,

-and he contrived to make them common words sort of flow all over her

-like petting.

-

-"That evening, when we marched into the Sykes's house to the meeting, he

-spoke to her like that again. The men was invited to the meeting, too,

-but Mis' Sykes let it be known that they needn't to come till the coffee

-and sandwiches, thus escaping the speech. Mis' Sykes ain't in favour of

-suffrage, but she does love a new thing in town, and Mis' Martin Lacy

-was so well dressed and so soft-spoken that Mis' Sykes would of left her

-preach foot-binding in her parlour if she'd wanted to. Mis' Sykes is

-like that. Letty was about the youngest there, and she was about the

-prettiest I 'most ever saw; and when he'd got them all seated, young

-Elbert Sykes, that was the only man there, just naturally gravitated

-over and set down by her, like the Lord meant. I love to see them little

-things happen, and I never smile at them, same as some. Because it's

-like I got a peek in behind the curtain and see the eternal purpose

-working away, quiet and still.

-

-"Well, Mis' Lacy, she talked, and she put things real sane and plain,

-barring I didn't believe any of what she said. And pretty soon I stopped

-trying to listen and I begun thinking about Emerel Daniel. I'd been down

-to see her just before supper, and I hadn't had her out of my head much

-of the time since. Emerel's cottage wasn't half a block from Black

-Hollow, the great low place beyond the river road that the town used as

-a dump. It was full of things without names, and take it on a day with

-the wind just right, Emerel had to keep her window shut on that side of

-her house. Water was standing in the hollow all the whole time. Flies

-and mosquitoes come from it by the flock and the herd. And when I'd held

-my nose and scud past it that afternoon to get to Emerel's, I'd almost

-run into Dr. Heron, just coming out from seeing Otie, and I burst right

-out with my thoughts all over him, and asked him if Black Hollow wasn't

-what was the matter with Otie and if it wasn't all that was the matter

-with him.

-

-"'Unquestionably,' says Dr. Heron. 'I told Mrs. Daniel six months ago

-that she must move.'

-

-"'Well,' says I, 'not having any of her other country homes open this

-year, Emerel had to stay where she was. And Otie with her. But what did

-you say to the council about filling in the hole?'

-

-"'The council,' says Dr. Heron, 'is paving the county swamp. There's a

-good crop of wooden blocks this year.'

-

-"'True enough,' says I, grim, 'and Otie is a-paying for it.'

-

-"That was exactly how the matter stood. And all the while Mis' Lacy was

-a-talking her women suffrage, I set there grieving for Emerel, and

-wondering how it was that Silas Sykes and Timothy Toplady and Jimmy

-Sturgis and even Eppleby Holcomb, that belonged to the common council,

-_could_ set by and see Otie die, and more or less of the rest of us in

-the same kind of danger.

-

-"Next I knew, Mis' Lacy, that was all silky movements and a sweet voice,

-had got through her own talk and was asking us ladies to express

-ourselves. Everybody felt kind of delicate at first, and then Libby

-Liberty starts up and spoke her mind:--

-

-"'_I_ believe all you've been a-saying,' she says, 'and I hev for

-twenty years. I never kill a hen without I realize how good the women

-can do a human being's work if they're put to it.'

-

-"'I always think of that, too,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, quick, 'about

-the hotel....' She kind of stopped, but we all knew what she meant.

-Threat is seldom if ever sober, especially on election day; but he

-votes, and she only runs the hotel and keeps them both out of the

-poorhouse.

-

-"'Well, look at me,' says Abagail Arnold, 'doin' work to oven and to

-counter, an' can't get my nose near nothin' public but my taxes.'

-

-"'Of course,' says Mis' Uppers, rocking, 'I've almost _been_ the mayor

-of Friendship Village, bein' his wife, so. An' I must say he never done

-a thing I didn't think I could do. Or less it was the junketin' trips.

-I'd 'a' been down with one o' my sick headaches on every one o' them.'

-

-"'Men _know_ more,' admitted Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'but I donno as

-they can _do_ any more than us. When the Fire Chief was alive an'

-holdin' office an' entertaining politicians, I use' often to think o'

-that, when I had their hot dinner to get.'

-

-"'I s'pose men do know more than we do,' says Mis'

-Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, reflective. 'I know Eppleby is lightnin'

-at figures, an' he can tell about time-tables, an' he sees sense to fine

-print parts o' the newspapers that looks like so many doctors'

-prescriptions to me. An' yet honestly, when it comes to some questions

-of sense, I've known Eppleby not to have any.'

-

-"'Jimmy, either,' says Mis' Sturgis, confidential. 'I donno. I've

-thought about that a good deal. It seems as if, if we got the chance, us

-women might not vote brilliant at first, but we would vote with our

-sense. The sense that can pick out a pattern and split a receipt, an'

-dress the children out o' the house money. I bet there's a lot o' that

-kind o' sense among women that don't get used up, by a long shot.'

-

-"Mis' Timothy Toplady drew her shawl up her back, like she does.

-

-"'Well-a,' she says, 'Timothy's an awful good husband, but when I see

-some of the things he buys for the house, an' the way he gets took in on

-real estate, I often wonder if he's such a good citizen as he lets on.'

-

-"I kep' a-wondering why Letty didn't say something, and by and by I

-nudged her.

-

-"'Go on, speak up,' I intimated.

-

-"And, same time, I heard Elbert Sykes, on the other side, say something

-to her, low. 'I could tell them,' he says to her, 'that to look like

-you do is better than being elected!'

-

-"And Letty--what do you s'spose?--she just glanced up at him, and made a

-little kind of a commenting wrinkle with her nose, and looked down and

-kept her silence. Just like he'd set there with a little fine chain to

-her wrist.

-

-"We talked some more and asked some questions and heard Mis' Lacy read

-some, and then it was time for the men. They come in together--six or

-eight of them, and most of them, as it happened, members of the common

-council. And when Mis' Sykes had set them down on the edge of the room,

-and before anybody had thought of any remark to pass, Mis' Lacy she

-spoke up and ask' the men to join in the discussion, and called on Mis'

-Sykes, that hadn't said nothing yet, to start the ball a-rolling.

-

-"'_Well_,' says Mis' Sykes, with her little society pucker, 'I must say

-the home and bring-up my children seems far, far more womanly to me than

-the tobacco smoke and whiskey of public life.'

-

-"She glanced over to the men, kind of with a way of arching her neck and

-they all gave her a sort of a little ripple, approving. And with this

-Mis' Toplady kind of tossed her head up.

-

-"'Oh, well, I don't want the responsibility,' she says. 'Land, if I was

-a votin' woman, I should feel as if I'd got bread in the pan and cake in

-the oven and clothes in the bluin' water all the whole time.'

-

-"'He, he, he!' says Timothy, her lawful lord. And Silas and Jimmy

-Sturgis and the rest joined in, tuneful.

-

-"Then Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, she vied in, and done a small,

-careless laugh.

-

-"'Oh, well, me, too,' she says, 'I declare, as I get older an' wake up

-some mornin's I feel like life was one big breakfast to get an' me the

-hired girl. If I had to vote besides, I donno what I _would_ do.'

-

-"'An',' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'I always feel as if a politician was a

-disgrace to be, same as an actor, _unless_ you got to be a big one. An'

-can us women ever be big ones even if we want? Which I'm sure I don't

-want,' she says, sidling a look towards the men's row.

-

-"'Oh, not only that,' says Abagail Arnold, 'but you'd feel so kind of

-sheepish votin' for the President, away off there in Washington. I

-always feel terrible sheepish even prayin' for him, let alone

-votin'--an' like it _couldn't_ make no real difference.'

-

-"'Oh, an' _ladies_!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, 'really it's bad enough to

-have been the wife of a mayor. If I had to vote an' was in danger of

-coming down with a nomination for somethin' myself, I couldn't get to

-sleep nights.'

-

-"'Mercy,' said Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'a mayor is nothin' but a baby

-in public life compared to a fire chief. A mayor gets his night's rest.

-Could a woman ever chase to fires at three o'clock in the mornin'? An'

-if she votes, what's to prevent her bein' elected to some such job by

-main strength?'

-

-"'Or like enough get put on a jury settin' on a murderer, an' hev to

-look at dug-up bones an' orgins,' says Mis' Sturgis--her that's an

-invalid and gloomy by complexion.

-

-"And one and all, as they spoke, they looked sidewise to the men for

-their approval. And they got it.

-

-"'That's the ticket!' says Timothy Toplady, slapping his knee. 'I tell

-you, gentlemen, we've got a nice set of women folks here in this town.

-They don't prostitute their brains to no fool notions.'

-

-"There was a little hush, owing to that word that Timothy had used kind

-of uncalled for, and then a little quick buzz of talk to try to cover

-it. And in the buzz I heard Elbert saying to Letty:

-

-"'You _know_ you think of yourself in a home afterward--and not around

-at polls and things, Letty.'

-

-"'You don't have to board at the polls because you vote there, you

-know,' Letty said; but she says it with a way, with a way. She said it

-like a pretty woman talking to a man that's looking in her eyes and

-thinking how pretty she is, and she knows he's thinking so. And you

-can't never get much real arguing done that way.

-

-"It always kind of scares me to see myself showed up--and now it was

-like I had ripped a veil off the whole sex, and off me, too. I see us

-face to face. Why was it that before them men had come in, the women had

-all talked kind of doubtful and suffrage-leaning, and then had veered

-like the wind the minute the men had come on the scene? Mis' Toplady had

-defied Timothy time after time, both public and private; Mis'

-Hubbelthwait bosses her husband not only drunk but sober; Mis' Sturgis

-don't do a thing Jimmy wants without she happens to want it too--and so

-on. Yet at the mention of this one thing, these women that had been

-talking intelligent and wondering open-minded had all stopped being the

-way they was and had begun to say things sole to please the men. Even

-Libby Liberty had kept still--her that has a regular tongue in her head.

-And Letty, that believed in it all, and had talked to me so womanly

-that morning, she was listening and blushing for Elbert and holding her

-peace. And then I remembered, like a piece of guilt, sensing that nice,

-wild feeling I myself had felt that morning a-denying woman suffrage in

-the presence of Postmaster Silas Sykes. What in creation ailed us all?

-

-"_What in creation...._ Them words sort of steadied me. It looked to me

-like it was creation itself that ailed us yet. Creation is a thing that

-it takes most folks a good while to recover from....

-

-" ... I remembered seeing Silas's delivery boy go whistling along the

-street one night, and pass a cat. The cat wasn't doing nothing active.

-It was merely idle. But the boy brought up a big shingle he was carrying

-and swished it through the air and says 'Z-t-t-t-t,' to the cat's heels,

-to see the cat take to them--which it done--like the cat immemorial has

-done for immemorial boys, delivery and other. And once, at dusk, a big,

-strange man with a gun on his shoulder passed me on Daphne Street, and

-when he done so, he says to me 'Z-t-t-t,' under his breath, just like

-the boy to the cat, and just like the untamed man immemorial has said

-when he got the chance. It seemed to me like men was created with, so

-to say, a shingle and a gun, for the hunting, and just as there is joy

-in their hunting, so there is a palpitatin' delight in being hunted and

-flattered by being caught and bound, hand and foot and mind.

-

-"'We like it--why, I tell you, we like it,' I says to myself, 'and us

-here in Mis' Sykes's parlour are burning with the old original,

-left-over fire, breathed at creation into women's breasts!'

-

-"And it seemed like I kind of touched hands with all the women that used

-to be. And I looked over to that row of grinning, tired men, not so very

-much dressed up, and I thought:--

-

-"'Why, you're the men of this world and we're the women, and there ain't

-no more thrilling fact in this universe. And why don't we all reco'nize

-it and shut up?'

-

-"That was what I was thinking over in my mind while Mis' Martin Lacy

-said good night to us and rushed off to catch her train for the City,

-hoping she had made us see some light. That was what I was still going

-over when Mis' Sykes called me to help with the refreshments. And then,

-just as I started out to the kitchen, the outside door that was part

-open was pushed in and somebody come in the room. It was Emerel Daniel,

-in calico and no hat. And as soon as we see her face, everybody stopped

-talking and stared. She was white as the table-cloth and shaking.

-

-"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'won't one of you come down to the house?

-Otie's worse--I donno what it is. I donno what to do to take care of

-him.'

-

-"She broke down, poor, nervous little thing, and sort of swallowed her

-whole throat. And Mis' Toplady and we all rushed right over to her.

-

-"'Why, Emerel,' Mis' Toplady says, 'I thought Otie was getting ever so

-much better. Is it the real typhoid, do you s'pose?' she ask' her.

-

-"Emerel looked over to me. 'Isn't it?' she says. And then I spoke right

-up with all there is to me.

-

-"'Yes, sir,' I says, 'it is the real typhoid. And if you want to know

-what's giving it to him, ladies and gentlemen, ask the common council

-that's setting over there by the wall. Dr. Heron says that Black Hollow,

-that's a sink for the whole town, give it to him, and that nothing else

-did--piled full of diseases right in back of Emerel's house. And if you

-want to know who's responsible for his dying if he dies,' I says right

-out, 'look over in the same direction to the men that wouldn't vote to

-fill in the Black Hollow with sand because they needed the money so bad

-for paving up half the county swamp.'

-

-"It was most as still in the room as when Timothy had said 'prostitute.'

-All but me. I went right on--nothing could of kept me still then.

-

-"'Us ladies,' I says, 'has tried for two years to get the Council to

-fill in that hole. We've said and said what would happen to some of us,

-what with our pumps so near the place, and what with flies from it

-visiting our dinner-table dishes, sociable and continual. What did you

-say to us? You said women hadn't no idee of town finances. Mebbe we

-ain't--mebbe we ain't. But we have got some idea of town humanity, if I

-do say it, that share in it. And this poor little boy has gone to work

-and proved it.'

-

-"With that, Emerel, who had been holding in--her that's afraid even to

-ask for starch if you forget to give it to her--she broke right down and

-leaned her head on her arm on the clock shelf:--

-

-"'Oh,' she says, 'all the years I been giving him his victuals and his

-bath and sewing his clothes up, I never meant it to come to this--for no

-reason. If Otie dies, I guess he needn't of--that's the worst. He

-needn't of.'

-

-"Mis' Toplady put her arm right around Emerel and kind of poored her

-shoulder in that big, mother way she's got--and it was her that went

-with her, like it's always Mis' Toplady that does everything. And us

-ladies turned around and all begun to talk at once.

-

-"'Let's plan out right here about taking things in to Emerel,' says Mis'

-Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I've got some fresh bread out of the oven.

-I'll carry her a couple of loaves, and another couple next baking or

-two.'

-

-"'I'll take her in a hen,' says Libby Liberty, 'so be she'll kill it

-herself.'

-

-"Somebody else said a ham, and somebody some butter, and Libby threw in

-some fresh eggs, if she got any. Mis' Hubbelthwait didn't have much to

-do with, but she said she would take turns setting up with Otie. Mis'

-Sykes give a quarter--she don't like to bake for folks, but she's real

-generous with money. And Silas pipes in:--

-

-"'Emerel can have credit to the store till Otie begins to get better,'

-he said. 'I ain't been lettin' her have it. She's looked so peaked I

-been afraid she wan't a-goin' to be able to work, an' I didn't want she

-should be all stacked up with debts.'

-

-"But me, I set there a-thinking. And all of a sudden I says out what I

-thought: 'Ladies,' I says, 'and all of you: What to Emerel is hens and

-hams and credit? They ain't,' I says, 'nothing but patches and poultices

-on what's the trouble up to her house.'

-

-"Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying much, spoke up:--

-

-"'I know,' he says, 'I know. You mean what good do they do to the boy.'

-

-"'I mean just that,' I says. 'What good is all that to Otie that's lying

-over by Black Hollow? And how does it keep the rest of the town safe?'

-

-"'Well,' says Silas, eager, 'let's us get out the zinc wagon you ladies

-bought, and let's us go to collectin' the garbage again so that won't

-all be dumped in Black Hollow. And leave the ladies keep on payin' for

-it. It's real ladies' work, I think, bein' as it's no more'n a general

-scrapin' up of ladies' kitchens.'

-

-"Then Letty Ames, that hadn't been saying anything, spoke up, to nobody

-in particular:--

-

-"'Otie's a dear little soul,' she said, 'a dear little soul!'

-

-"'Ain't he?' says Marne Holcomb. 'Eppleby 'most always has a nut or

-somethin' in his pocket to give him as he goes by. He takes it like a

-little squirrel an' like a little gentleman.'

-

-"'He's awful nice when he comes in the shop,' said Abagail. 'He looks at

-the penny-apiece kind and then buys the two-for-a-cent, so's to give

-his mother one.'

-

-"'He knows how to behave in a store,' Silas admitted. 'I 'most always

-give him a coffee-berry, just to see him thank me.'

-

-"'He come into the hotel one day,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'an' stood by

-me when I was bakin'. I give him a little wad of dough to roll.'

-

-"'I let him drive the 'bus one day, settin' on my knee,' says Jimmy

-Sturgis. 'He was a nice, careful, complete little cuss.'

-

-"Eppleby Holcomb nodded with his eyes shut.

-

-"'We don't like folks to swing on our front gate,' he says. 'He done it,

-but he marched right in and told us he'd done it. I give him a

-doughnut--an' he's kep' right on swingin' an' ownin' up an' eatin'

-doughnuts.'

-

-"'Even when he chased my chickens,' says Libby Liberty, 'he chased 'em

-like a little gentleman--_towards_ the coop an' not down the road. I

-always noticed that about him.'

-

-"'Yes,' says Letty, again, 'he's a dear little soul. _What makes us let

-him die?_'

-

-"She said it so calm that it caught even my breath--and my breath, in

-these things, ain't easy caught. But I got it right back again, and I

-says:--

-

-"'Yes, sir. He was on the way to being somebody that Friendship Village

-could have had for the right kind of an inmate. And now he'll be nothing

-but a grave, that's no good to anybody. And Sodality,' I couldn't help

-adding, 'will likely pitch right in and take care of his grave,

-tasteful.'

-

-"And when I said that, it come over me how Emerel had dressed him and

-bathed him and made his clothes, and done washings, tireless, to get the

-fifty cents--besides bringing him into the world, tedious. And now it

-was all going for nothing, all for nothing--when we could of helped it.

-And I plumped out with what I'd said that morning to Silas:--

-

-"'Why don't you fill up Black Hollow with sand-bar sand out of the

-river, now it's so low? Then, even if it's too late for Otie, mebbe we

-can keep ourselves from murderin' anybody else.'

-

-"Them half a dozen men of the common council set still a minute, looking

-down at Mis' Sykes's parlour ingrain. And I looked over at them, and my

-heart come up in my throat and both of them ached like the toothache.

-Because all of a sudden it seemed to me it wasn't just Timothy and

-Eppleby and Silas and some more of the council setting there by the

-wall--but it was like, in them few men, tired and not so very well

-dressed, was setting the lawmakers of the whole world; and there in

-front of them, wasn't only Mis' Holcomb and Libby and Letty and me, but

-Emerel Daniel, too, and all the women there is--saying to them: 'My

-land, we've dressed 'em an' bathed 'em an' sewed for 'em an' brought 'em

-into the world, tedious. Let 'em live--fix things so's they can live an'

-so's it needn't all go for nothin'.' And I sort of bubbled up and

-spilled over, as if everything we was all of us _for_ had come up in my

-throat.

-

-"'Oh, folks,' I says, 'just look what us in this room could have done

-for Otie--so be we'd begun in time.'

-

-"Right like a dash of cold water into my face, Mis' Sykes spoke up, cold

-as some kind of death:--

-

-"'Well, ladies,' she says, 'I guess we've got our eyes open now. _I_ say

-that's what we'd ought to hev been doin' instead o' talkin' women

-votin',' she says, triumphant.

-

-"Then somebody spoke again, in a soft, new, not-used-to-it little voice,

-and in her chair over beside Elbert, Letty Ames leaned forward, and her

-eyes was like the sunny places in water.

-

-"'Don't you see,' she says, 'don't you see, Mis' Sykes, that's what Mis'

-Lacy meant?'

-

-"'How so?' says Mis' Sykes, short.

-

-"I'll never forget how sweet and shy and unexpected and young Letty

-looked, but she answered, as brave as brave:--

-

-"'Otie Daniel is sick,' she said, 'and all us women can do is to carry

-him broth and bread and nurse him. It's only the men that can bring

-about the things to make him well. And they haven't done it. It's been

-the women who have been urging it--and not getting it done. Wasn't it

-our work to do, too?'

-

-"I see Elbert looking at her--like he just couldn't bear to have her

-speak so, like some men can't. And I guess he spoke out in answer before

-he meant to:--

-

-"'But let them do it womanly, Letty,' he said, 'like your mother did and

-my mother did.'

-

-"Letty turned and looked Elbert Sykes straight in the face:--

-

-"'_Womanly!_' she says. 'What is there womanly about my bathing and

-feeding a child inside four clean walls, if dirt and bad food and

-neglect are outside for him? Will you tell me if there is anything more

-womanly than my right to help make the world as decent for my children

-as I would make my own home?'

-

-"I looked at Letty, and looked; and I see with a thrill I can't tell you

-about how Letty seemed. For she seemed the way she had that morning on

-my kitchen stoop, when she spoke of her children and when I felt like

-I'd ought to turn away--the way I'd used to when my mother showed me my

-baby dress and told me who it would be for. Only now--only now, somehow,

-I didn't want to turn away. Somehow I wanted to keep right on looking at

-Letty, like Elbert was looking. And I see what he see. How Letty was

-what she'd said that morning that she was--and that I was--and that we

-all was: A mother, then and there, whether she ever had any children or

-not. And she was next door to owning up to it right there before them

-all and before Elbert. We didn't speak so when I was a girl. We didn't

-own up, out loud, that we ever thought anything about what we was for.

-But now, when I heard Letty do it....

-

-" ... Now, when I heard Letty do it, all to once, I looked into a window

-of the world. And instead of touching hands like I had with the women

-that use' to be, I looked off and off down all the time there's going to

-be, and for a minute I touched, tip-fingers, the hands of the other

-women that's coming towards me; and out of places inside of me that I

-didn't know before had eyes, I see them, mothers to the whole world,

-_inside their four walls and out_. And they wasn't coming with poultices

-and bread and broth in their hands, to patch up what had been left

-undone; nor with the keys to schoolhouses that they'd got open by

-scheming; nor with newspapers full of health that they'd had to run down

-back alleys to sell; nor national holidays that they'd got a-hold of

-through sheer accident; nor yet with nice new headstones for cemetery

-improvements on the dead and gone--no, sir, their hands wasn't occupied

-with any of these ways of serving that they'd schemed for and stole. But

-their hands--was in men's hands, closer and nearer than they'd ever been

-before. And their eyes was lit up with a look that was a new look, and

-that give new life to the old original left-over blaze. And I looked

-across to that row of tired men, not so very much dressed up, and I

-thought:--

-

-"'You're the men of this world and we're the women. And there ain't no

-more thrilling fact in this universe, save one, _save one_: And that's

-that we're all human beings. That your job and ours is to make the world

-ready for the folks that are to come, and to make the folks that come

-fit to live in that new world. And yet over there by Black Hollow one of

-our children is dying from something that was your job _and_ ours to do,

-and we didn't take hold of hands and do it!'

-

-"'Oh, Letty!' I says out. 'And Silas and all of you! Let's pretend,

-just for a minute, that we was all citizens and equal. And let's figure

-out things for Otie, just like we had the right!'

-

-

-"I'd asked Letty to spend the night with me, and Elbert walked home with

-us. And just as we got there, he says to her again:--

-

-"'Oh, Letty--you ain't _strong_ enough to help carry things along!'

-

-"'You've got more strength,' she says to him, 'and more brains. But it

-isn't so much the strength or the brains in women that is going to help

-when the time comes. It's the--mother in them.'

-

-"And I says to myself:--

-

-"'And it's the--_human beingness_ of them.' But Letty didn't know that

-yet.

-

-"Elbert answered, after a minute:--

-

-"'You may be right and you may be wrong, but, Letty, Letty, what a woman

-you are!'

-

-"And at that Letty looked up at him, just as she had looked at him that

-morning--just for a minute, and then she dipped down the brim of her big

-hat. I donno what she answered him. I didn't care. I didn't care. For

-what I see was the old wild joy of a woman in being glorified by a male

-creature. And I knew then, and I know now, that that won't never die,

-no matter what.

-

-"Elbert put out his hand.

-

-"'Good night, Letty,' he said.

-

-"She gave him hers, and he closed over it light with his other hand.

-

-"'May I see you to-morrow?' he asked her.

-

-"'Oh, I don't know,' said Letty. 'Come and see if I'll see you--will

-you?'

-

-"He laughed a little, looking in her eyes.

-

-"'At about eight,' he promised. 'Good night....'

-

-"I got the key out from under the mat to a tune inside me. Because I'd

-heard, and I knew that Letty had heard, that tone in Elbert's voice that

-is the human tone--I can't rightly name it, but every woman in the world

-knows it when she hears it--a tone that says: _If I have my way, you and

-I are going to live out our lives together_.

-

-"And I knew then, and I know now, that that tone won't ever die, either.

-And some day, away off in a new world right here on this earth, I

-believe there's going to be a wilder joy in being men and women than all

-the men and women up to now have ever lived or dared or dreamed.

-

-

-

-

-XIII

-

-

-"'Miss Marsh,' says Christopher.

-

-"Mis' Emmons's living-room was like a cup of something cool, and I set

-there in the after-supper light having such a nice rested time drinking

-it in that at first I didn't hear him.

-

-"'Miss Marsh,' he says again, and pulled at my dress. I put out my hand

-to him and he took it. Sometimes I donno but hands are a race of beings

-by themselves that talk and answer and do all the work and act like

-slaves and yet really rule the world.

-

-"'Is it me telling my feet where to go or do they tell me where I go?'

-asked Christopher.

-

-"'You can have it either way you want,' I told him. 'Some does one way

-and some does the other. Which way do you like?'

-

-"He thought for a minute, twisting on one foot with the other up in his

-hand.

-

-"'I'd like 'em to know how without our sayin' so,' he announces finally.

-

-"'Well,' I says, 'I left out that way. That's really the best way of

-all.'

-

-"He looked at me eager.

-

-"'Is it a game?' he says.

-

-"'Yes,' I told him.

-

-"'What's its name?' he ask' me.

-

-"'Game of Life,' I told him again.

-

-"He thought about it, still twisting. Then he done one of his littlest

-laughs, with his head turned away.

-

-"'My feet heard you,' he says. 'Now they know how to play.'

-

-"'I hope so, Christopher,' says I, and kissed him on the back of his

-neck. That made him mad, like it usually done.

-

-"'My neck is my neck,' says he, 'and it's shut in my collar. It ain't

-home to-day.'

-

-"'Is your mouth home?' I ask' him.

-

-"And it was.

-

-"I could of set there talking with him all evening, but not on the night

-of Sodality's Annual. I'd stopped by for Mis' Emmons. She was getting

-ready, and while I waited I could hear folks passing on their way to the

-schoolhouse where the meeting was. For the town was all het up about

-what the meeting was going to do.

-

-"I'd seen half-dozen or so of us that afternoon when we was putting

-plants on the hall platform, and we'd all spoke our minds.

-

-"'I'm gaspin',' observed Mis' Sturgis, 'to take a straw vote of us on

-this amendin' business. Near as I can make out, it's going through.'

-

-"'Near as I can make out,' says Marne Holcomb, 'a good deal more than

-amending is going on here to-night. It looks to me as if Sodality was

-just going to get into its own Cemetery and be forgot, and as if

-something else was coming to meet us--something big!'

-

-"Mis' Toplady spoke up, comfortable, down on her knees putting green

-paper on the pots.

-

-"'Well, my land!' she says, 'I've noticed two-three things in my

-lifetime. And one is, that do what whoever will, things do change. And

-so whenever a new change pops up, I always think: "Oh, I guess you're

-comin' along anyway. I donno's I need to help." An' yet somethin' in me

-always prances to pitch in, too.'

-

-"Timothy was there, occupying himself with the high places us ladies

-couldn't get up to.

-

-"'Well,' says he, 'if folks stop dying, like Sodality evidently intends

-they shall if it goes out of business, maybe you'll stay home some,

-Amandy, and not always be off laying folks out.'

-

-"'I know it,' Mis' Toplady returns, 'I've laid out most everybody I

-know, and of course I'm real glad to do it. But the last dead's hair I

-done up, I caught myself thinking how much more interesting it'd be if

-they was alive an' could find fault. Doin' for the dead gets kind of

-monotonous, _I_ think.'

-

-"'_I_ don't,' says Timothy, decided. 'The minute you work for the

-living, you get all upset with being criticised. I s'pose the dead would

-find fault, if they could, over the way you cut the grass for 'em. But

-they can't an' so there's an end to it, an' we get along, peaceful. If

-they was living folks layin' there, you can bet they'd do some back

-talk.'

-

-"'Well,' says I, 'I've been sick of Sodality for years. But it was about

-the most what-you-might-call society I had, and I hated to give it up.'

-

-"'Me, either,' says Mame Holcomb.

-

-"'Me, either,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I declare I've often said I wouldn't

-know what _to_ do if folks stopped dyin' so's Sodality would have to

-close out.'

-

-"Mis' Sykes was setting watching the rest of us.

-

-"'Well,' she observes, cold, 'if I was usin' the dead to keep in

-society, I donno's I'd own it up.'

-

-"Silas Sykes had just come over from the store to see if there was

-anything he could meddle in.

-

-"'Heh!' says he, showing his teeth. 'Not many of Sodality, as I can

-see, _deserves_ to die and be done for, civilized.'

-

-"'Don't you worry yourself, Silas Sykes,' says I, 'we're going to be

-done things for before we die hereafter, and more civilized than ever

-you dreamed of, all up and down your ledger. That's where you do dream,

-ain't it, Silas?' I says. And though I said it gay, I meant it frank.

-

-"I remember I looked off down the room, and all of a sudden I see it as

-it would be that night, packed with folks. Somehow, we'd got to saying

-less about the Sodality part of the meeting, and more about the _open_

-part. Most of the town would be there. We'd got the School Board to

-leave us announce the second party for that night, following the

-meeting, and music was coming, and us ladies had froze the ice-cream,

-and the whole time reminded me of a big bud, flowered slow and bursting

-sudden.

-

-"'Land, land,' I says, fervent, 'I feel like Friendship Village was a

-person that I was going to meet to-night for the first time.'

-

-"'You express yourself so odd sometimes, Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes,

-distant--but Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, they

-both looked up and nodded, and they knew.

-

-"I set holding Christopher in Mis' Emmons's living-room, and thinking

-about this and most everything else, when I looked out and see Insley

-going along. He hadn't been back in town since Christopher's father's

-funeral, two days before, and I'd been wanting to talk over with him a

-thing or two that was likely to come up at the meeting, that of course

-he was going to be at, and that had to be handled with thimbles on every

-finger, or somebody'd get pricked. So I rapped smart on the upper sash

-and called to him through the screen, but not before I had seen the look

-on his face. I've caught that special look only once or twice in my

-life--the look of somebody passing the house that is different to them

-from all other houses in the world. The look that wants to be a look and

-won't let itself be, that tries to turn the other way and can't start,

-that thinks it's unconscious and knows it isn't, and that finally, with

-Insley, give it up and looked Mis' Emmons's house straight in the face

-for a minute, as if he might anyhow let himself have that much intimacy.

-

-"I had a little list of things I wanted to see go through that night.

-Enough of us was ready to have Sodality perform its last cemetery rite

-and bury itself so that that was pretty sure to go through, but I wanted

-more than that, and several of us ladies did; and it looked to me like

-the schoolhouse and the young folks and the milk and the meat of this

-town could be done nice things to, so be we managed the meeting right. I

-even had a wild dream that the whole new society might adopt

-Christopher. Well, I donno why that's funny. It ain't funny when a club

-makes a building or a play or a bazaar or a dinner. Why shouldn't it

-make a man?

-

-"I told some of this to Insley, and he caught fire and lit up into a

-torch and had it all thought out beforehand, better than I could of

-dreamed it. But he made me feel bad. Haunted folks--folks haunted by

-something that was and that isn't--always makes me feel bad. How is it

-possible, I see he was asking himself the old, wore-out question, to

-drive out of the world something that is the world?

-

-"While we talked, Christopher went off to sleep in my arms, and even

-while I was so interested, I was enjoying the change that comes--the

-head growing heavier and heavier on my arm, as if sleep weighed

-something.

-

-"'Poor little kiddie,' I says, stupid.

-

-"'Rich little kiddie,' Insley says, wistful.

-

-"'Dear little kiddie,' says somebody else.

-

-"In the dining room doorway Robin stood--in a doorway as we had first

-seen her.

-

-"'Put him over here on the couch, do,' she says. 'It's much too hot to

-hold him, Calliope.'

-

-"She'd called me that at Mr. Bartlett's funeral, and I recollect how my

-throat went all over me when she done so. Ain't it funny about your own

-first name? It seems so _you_ when somebody nice says it for the first

-time--more you than you ever knew you were.

-

-"Insley lifted Chris in his arms to do as she said, and then stood

-staring at her across the child.

-

-"'I've been thinking,' he said, blunt--it's like watching the sign of

-folks to watch the different kind of things that makes them blunt. 'It's

-not my affair, but do you think you ought to let Chris get so--so used

-to you? What will he do when you're--when you go away?'

-

-"At this she said nothing for a moment, then she smiled up at him.

-

-"'I meant what I told him that night his father died,' she answered.

-'I'm going to keep Chris with me, always.'

-

-"'Always?' He stared at her, saw her face mean what she said. 'How fine

-of you! How fine of Mr. Proudfit!' said Insley.

-

-"She waited just a breath, then she met his eyes, brave.

-

-"'Not fine of me,' she says--'only fine for me. And not--Mr. Proudfit

-at all. I ought to take back what I told you--since I did tell you. That

-is not going to be.'

-

-"I don't think Insley meant for a minute to show any lack of formal

-respect for Christopher's sleep. But what Insley did was simply to turn

-and sit him down, bolt upright, on my lap. Then he wheeled round, trying

-to read her face.

-

-"'Do you mean you aren't going to marry him?' he demanded, rough--it's

-like watching another sign of folks to watch for the one thing that will

-make one or another rough.

-

-"'We are not going to be married,' she said. 'I mean that.'

-

-"I suppose likely the room went away altogether then, Christopher and me

-included, and left Insley there in some place a long ways from

-everywhere, with Robin's face looking at him. And he just naturally took

-that face between his hands.

-

-"'Robin,' he said, 'don't make me wait to know.'

-

-"Insley was the suddenest thing. And land, what it done to her name to

-have him say it. Just for a minute it sounded as if her name was the

-population of the world,--but with room for everybody else, too.

-

-"I think she put up her hands to take down his hands, but when she

-touched them, I think hers must have closed over his, next door to on

-purpose.

-

-"'Dear,' she says, 'tell me afterward.'

-

-"In that minute of stillness in which any new heaven is let down on a

-suitable new earth, a little voice piped up:--

-

-"'Tell it now,' says the voice. 'Is it a story? Tell it now.'

-

-"And there was Christopher, wide awake where he had been set down rude

-on my knee, and looking up at them, patient.

-

-"'I was dreamin' my dream,' he explained, polite. 'It was about all the

-nice things there is: You and you and you and hot ice-cream and the

-house's party.... Is they any more?' he asked, anxious.

-

-"Robin put out her arms for him, and she and Insley and I smiled at one

-another over his head.

-

-"'Ever so many more,' we told him.

-

-

-"I slipped out then and found Mis' Emmons, and I guess I come as near

-shining as anything that's like me can.

-

-"'What's the matter?' she says to me. 'You look as if you'd turned up

-the wick.'

-

-"'I did. They have. I won't tell,' I says. 'Oh, Mis' Emmons, I guess

-the meeting to-night won't need to adopt Christopher.'

-

-"She looked up at me quick, and then she started shining, too.

-

-"'What a universe it is,' she says, '--what a universe it is.'

-

-"Then we went off down to the meeting together. And the village was

-wonderful to go through, like a home some of us had hollowed out of the

-hills and was living in, common. As we went walking to the schoolhouse,

-the sidewalks seemed to me no more than ways dickered up to fasten us

-together, and to fasten us to them whose feet had wore the road before

-us, and to lead us to them that was coming, coming after: Christopher

-and Eph and Spudge Cadoza and Otie Daniel, or them like these. Otie

-Daniel had died the night before. Dr. Barrows had said Eph would not be

-lame, but we see he wan't sure of the value of the boy's physical life.

-But even so, even so we had a chance with Chris, and we had a chance

-with Spudge, and we had millions more. My feet wanted to run along them

-roads to meet the millions and my fingers tingled to get things ready.

-And as we went down Daphne Street to that meeting, I see how we all

-_was_ getting things ready, and I could of sung out for what I saw:--

-

-"For Mame Holcomb, sprinkling clothes on the back porch and hurrying to

-get to the hall.

-

-"For Mis' Uppers, picking her currants before she went, so's to get an

-early start on her jam in the morning.

-

-"For Viny Liberty, setting sponge for her bread loud enough so we heard

-her clear out in the street, and for Libby, shutting up her chicken coop

-that they earned their own living with.

-

-"For Mis' Toplady, driving by with Timothy, and her in the brown silk

-she'd made herself, like she's made all she's got.

-

-"For Abagail Arnold, wiping out her window to be filled to-morrow with

-the pies of her hand.

-

-"For little Mis' Sparks, rocking her baby on the front stoop and

-couldn't come to the meeting at all, 'count of having nobody to leave

-him with.

-

-"For them that had left cloth bleaching in their side yards and was

-saving the price of buying bleached. For them that had done their day's

-work, from parlour to wood-shed, and had hurried up the supper dishes

-and changed their dress and was on their way to the schoolhouse. For

-them that had lived lives like this and had died at it. For all the

-little dog-eared, wore-out account books where every one of them women

-figured out careful what they couldn't spend. And I looked down the

-street till I couldn't see no farther, and yet Daphne Street was going

-on, round and round the world, and acrost and acrost it, full of women

-doing the same identical way. And I could see away off to the places

-that Daphne Street led past, where women has all these things done for

-them and where the factories is setting them free, like us here in the

-village ain't free just yet, and I felt a wicked envy for them that can

-set their hands to the New Work, that us here in Friendship Village is

-trying so hard to get in between whiles. And I could see away ahead to

-times when sponge and currants and clothes and coops and similar won't

-have to be mothered by women 'most as much as children are; but when

-women, Away Off Then, will be mothers and workers and general human

-beings such as yet we only know how to think about being, scrappy and

-wishful. But all the time, in their arms and in ours and nowheres else,

-lays all the rest of the world that is ever going to be. And something

-in me kind of climbed out of me and run along ahead and looked back at

-me over its shoulder and says: 'Keep up, keep up, Calliope.' And before

-I knew it, right out loud, I says: 'I will. I will.'

-

-"An hour later, up in the schoolhouse, Silas Sykes stood arguing, to

-the top of his tone, that the first work of the reorganized

-society--that was to take in the whole town--had ought to be to buy a

-bargain Cupid-and-fish fountain he knew of, for the market square.

-

-"'It's going to take years and years to do--everything,' says Mis'

-Emmons to me, low.

-

-"But that didn't seem like much of anything to either of us. 'What if it

-is,' I says. And she nodded."

-

-

-

-

-

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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mothers to Men, by Zona Gale
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+Title: Mothers to Men
+
+Author: Zona Gale
+
+Release Date: December 2, 2016 [EBook #53650]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHERS TO MEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
+produced from images generously made available by The
+Internet Archive)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+MOTHERS TO MEN
+
+[Illustration: Logo]
+
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+
+NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO
+SAN FRANCISCO
+
+MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
+
+LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA
+MELBOURNE
+
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD.
+
+TORONTO
+
+
+
+
+MOTHERS TO MEN
+
+BY
+
+ZONA GALE
+
+AUTHOR OF "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE," "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE
+LOVE STORIES," "THE LOVES OF PELLEAS
+AND ETARRE," ETC.
+
+New York
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
+1911
+
+_All Rights Reserved_
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1911, BY THE BUTTERICK PUBLISHING COMPANY, THE RIDGEWAY
+COMPANY, THE CROWELL PUBLISHING COMPANY, AND THE STANDARD
+FASHION COMPANY.
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1911,
+
+BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
+
+Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911.
+
+Norwood Press
+J. S. Cushing Co.--Berwick & Smith Co.
+Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+MOTHERS TO MEN
+
+
+"Daddy!"
+
+The dark was so thick with hurrying rain that the child's voice was
+drowned. So he splashed forward a few steps in the mud and puddles of
+the highway and plucked at the coat of the man tramping before. The man
+took a hand from a pocket and stooped somewhat to listen, still plodding
+ahead.
+
+"Daddy! It's the hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went right
+through that hole an' it chokes my toe awful."
+
+The man suddenly squatted in the mud, presenting a broad, scarcely
+distinguishable back.
+
+"Climb up," he commanded.
+
+The boy wavered. His body ached with weariness, his feet were sore and
+cold, something in his head was numb. But in a moment he ran on, two
+steps or three, past the man.
+
+"Nope," he said, "I'm seeing if I could walk all the way. I could--yet.
+I just told you 'bout my toe, daddy, 'cause I _had_ to talk about it."
+
+The man said nothing, but he rose and groped for the child's arm and
+got it about the armpit, and, now and then as they walked, he pulled the
+shoulder awkwardly upward, trying to help.
+
+After a time of silence the rain subsided a little, so that the child's
+voice was less like a drowned butterfly.
+
+"Daddy," he said, "what's velvet?"
+
+"I dunno, sonny. Some kind of black cloth, I guess. Why?"
+
+"It came in my head," the child explained. "I was tryin' to think of
+nice things. Velvet sounds like a king's clothes--but it sounds like a
+coffin too. I didn't know if it's a nice thing."
+
+This, the man understood swiftly, was because _her_ coffin had been
+black velvet--the coffin which he had had no money to buy for her, for
+his wife and the boy's mother, the coffin which had been bought with the
+poor fund of a church which he had never entered. "What other nice thing
+you been thinkin' of?" he asked abruptly.
+
+"Circus. An' angels. An' ice-cream. An' a barrel o' marbles. An' bein'
+warm an' clean stockin's an' rocked...."
+
+"My God!" said the man.
+
+The child looked up expectantly.
+
+"Did he say anything back?" he inquired eagerly.
+
+"Not a word," said the man in his throat.
+
+"Lemme try," said the child. "God--oh, God--_God dear_!" he called into
+the night.
+
+From the top of the hill on the edge of the Pump pasture which in that
+minute they had reached, they suddenly saw, cheery and yellow and alive,
+the lamps of Friendship Village, shining in the valley; and away at one
+side, less in serene contemplation than in deliberate withdrawal, shone
+the lights of a house set alone on its hill.
+
+"Oh, daddy, daddy--look at the lights!" the child cried. "God didn't say
+nothin' with words. Maybe he talks with lights instead of 'em."
+
+The man quickened his steps until, to keep pace with him, the little boy
+broke into uneven running.
+
+"Is those lights where we're goin', daddy?" he asked.
+
+"That's where," said the man. He put his hand in his pocket and felt for
+the fifteen cents that lay there, wrapped in paper. The fancied odour
+and warmth of something to drink caught at him until he could hardly
+bear the longing.
+
+But before he could get to the drink he must do something else. The man
+had been fighting away the thought of what he meant to do. But when they
+entered the village and were actually upon its main street, lonely in
+the rainy, eight o'clock summer dusk, what he meant to do had to be
+faced. So he began looking this way and that for a place to leave the
+child. There was a wagon shop. Old wagons stood under the open shed,
+their thills and tongues hanging, not expectant of journeys like those
+of new wagons, but idle, like the worn arms of beaten men. Some men, he
+thought, would leave the boy there, to sleep under a seat and be found
+in the morning; but he was no such father as that, he reflected
+complacently. He meant to leave the boy in a home, give him a fair
+start. There was a little house with a broken picket fence--someway she
+wouldn't have liked him to be there; _she_ always liked things nice. He
+had never been able to give the boy much that was nice, but now, he said
+to himself, he would take nothing second rate. There was a grocery with
+a light above stairs where very likely the family lived, and there, too,
+was a dry stairway where the child could sit and wait until somebody
+came--no, not there either.... "The best ain't none too good for the
+little fellow," thought the man.
+
+"Dad-_ee_!" cried the child suddenly.
+
+He had run a few steps on and stood with his nose against the misty pane
+of Abagail Arnold's Home Bakery. Covered with pink mosquito-netting were
+a plate of sugar rolls, a fruit cake, a platter of cream puffs, and a
+tall, covered jar of shelled nuts.
+
+"Hustle up--you!" said the man roughly, and took him by the arm again.
+
+"I was comin'," said the little boy.
+
+Why not leave the child at the bakery? No--a house. It must be a house,
+with a porch and a front stair and big upstairs rooms and a look of
+money-in-the-bank. He was giving care to the selection. It was as if he
+were exercising some natural paternal office, to be scrupulously
+discharged. Music issued from the wooden saloon building with the false
+two-story front and the coloured windows; from a protesting piano a
+dance tune was being furiously forced, and, as the door swung open, the
+tap and thud of feet, the swell of voices and laughter, the odour of the
+spirits caught at the cold and weary man. "Hurry along--hurry along!" he
+bade the boy roughly. That was where he would come back afterward, but
+first he must find the right place for the boy.
+
+Vaguely he was seeking for that section of the village which it would
+call "the residence part," with that ugly and naked appropriation of the
+term which excludes all the humbler homes from residence-hood at all.
+But when he had turned aside from the main street he came upon the First
+Church, with lights streaming from the ground-glass windows of the
+prayer-meeting room, and he stood still, staring up at it.
+
+She had cared a good deal about that sort of thing. Churches did
+good--it was a church that had buried her when he could not. Why not
+there? Why not leave the child there?
+
+He turned aside and mounted the three wooden steps and sat down, drawing
+the boy beside him. Grateful for a chance to rest, the child turned
+sidewise and dropped his head heavily on his father's arm. There was
+light enough for the father to see the thick, wet hair on the babyish
+forehead.
+
+"I did walked all the way, didn't I?" the child said triumphantly.
+
+"You bet you did," said his father absently.
+
+Since the boy's mother had died only three months had passed, but in
+that time had been crowded for the child a lifetime of physical misery.
+Before that time, too, there had been hunger and cold and the torture of
+the continual quarreling between that mother, sickly, half-fed,
+irritable, and this father, out of work and drunken. Then the mother had
+died, and the man had started out with the boy, seeking new work where
+they would not know his old vice. And in these three months, for the
+boy's sake, that old vice had been kept bound. For the boy's sake he had
+been sober and, if the chance had come, he would have been industrious.
+But, save for odd jobs, the chance never came; there seemed to be a kind
+of ineffectualness in the way he asked for work which forbade him a
+trial. Then one day, after almost three months of the struggle, he had
+waked to the old craving, to the need, the instant need, for liquor. He
+had faced the situation honestly. He knew, or thought he knew, his power
+of endurance. He knew that in a day or two he would be worsted, and that
+there would follow a period of which, afterward, he would remember
+nothing. Meanwhile, what of the boy? He had a fondness for the boy, and
+there remained to the man some shreds of decency and even of tradition.
+He would not turn him over to the "authorities." He would not cast him
+adrift in the city. He resolved to carry him to the country, to some
+near little town where, dimly it seemed to him, the people would be
+more likely to take him in. "They have more time--an' more room--an'
+more to eat," he sought to explain it to himself. So he had walked, and
+the child had walked, from the City to Friendship Village. He must find
+a place to leave him: why not leave him here on the church steps,
+"outside the meetin'?"
+
+"Don't you go to sleep, kiddie," he said, and shook him lightly.
+
+"I was jus' restin' my eye-flaps. Eye-things. _What_ are they, daddy?"
+
+"Eye-lids."
+
+"Yes. Them. They're tired, too," said the child, and smiled--the sleepy
+smile which gave his face a baby winsomeness. Then he snuggled in the
+curve of arm, like a drowsy, nosing puppy.
+
+The father sat looking down on him, and in his breast something pulled.
+In these three months he had first become really acquainted with the
+boy, had first performed for him little personal offices--sewed on a
+button or two, bought him shoes, bound up a hurt finger. In this time,
+too, he had first talked with him alone, tried to answer his questions.
+"Where _is_ my mamma, an' will she rock somebody else?" "Are you going
+to be my daddy till you die, an' _then_ who'll be?" "What is the biggest
+thing everybody knows? Can I know it too?"... Also, in these three
+months, at night he had gone to sleep, sometimes in a bed, oftener in a
+barn, now and again under the stars, with the child breathing within his
+reach, and had waked to keep him covered with his own coat. Now he was
+going to end all this.
+
+"It ain't fair to the kid not to. It ain't fair to cart him around like
+this," he said over and over, defending himself before some dim
+dissenter.
+
+The boy suddenly swung back from his father's arm and looked up in his
+face. "Will--will there be any supper till morning?" he asked.
+
+You might have thought that the man did not hear, he sat so still
+looking down the wet road-ruts shining under the infrequent lamps.
+Hunger and cold, darkness and wet and ill-luck--why should he not keep
+the boy from these? It was not deserting his child; it was giving him
+into better hands. It did not occur to him that the village might not
+accept the charge. Anything would be better than what he himself had to
+give. Hunger and cold and darkness....
+
+"You stay still here a minute, sonny," said the man.
+
+"You goin' 'way?" the child demanded.
+
+"A minute. You stay still here--right where you are," said the man, and
+went into the darkness.
+
+The little boy sat still. He was wide awake now that he was alone; the
+walls of the dark seemed suddenly to recede, and instead of merely the
+church steps there was the whole black, listening world to take account
+of. He sat alert, trying to warm each hand on the cold wrist of its
+fellow. Where had his father gone? To find them a place to stay? Suppose
+he came back and said that he had found them a home; and they should go
+to it; and it would have a coal stove and a bedstead, and a pantry with
+cookies and brown sugar in the jars. And a lady would come and cook
+molasses candy for him....
+
+All this time something was hurting him intolerably. It was the foot,
+and the biggest toe, and the hole that was "choking" _him_. He fumbled
+at his shoe laces, but they were wet and the shoes were wet and sodden,
+and he gave it up. Where had his father gone? How big the world seemed
+when he was gone, and how _different_ the night was. And when the lady
+had the molasses candy cooked, like in a story, she would cool it at the
+window and they would cut it in squares....
+
+As suddenly as he had gone, his father reappeared from the darkness.
+
+"Here," he said roughly, and thrust in the child's hands a paper bag.
+And when he had opened it eagerly there were sugar rolls and cream puffs
+and a piece of fruit cake and some shelled nuts. Fifteen cents' worth of
+food, badly enough selected, in all conscience, but--fifteen cents'
+worth. The fifteen cents which the man had been carrying in his pocket,
+wrapped in paper.
+
+"Now set there," said his father, "an' eat 'em up. An' listen, son. Set
+there till folks come out from in there. Set there till they come out.
+An' here's somethin' I'm puttin' in your coat pocket--see? It's a paper.
+Don't you look at it. But when the folks come out from in there--an' ask
+you anything--you show 'em that. Remember. Show 'em that."
+
+In the prayer-meeting room the reed organ sent out some trembling,
+throaty chords, and the little group in there sang an old melody. It was
+strange to the man, as he listened--
+
+
+     "Break thou the bread of life
+     To me, to me--"
+
+
+but, "That's it," he thought, "that's it. Break it to him--I can't. All
+I can give him is stuff in a paper bag, an' not always that. Now you
+break it to him--"
+
+"Dad-_ee_!" cried the child. "You!"
+
+Startled, the man looked down at him. It was almost like a counter
+charge. But the child was merely holding out to him half his store. The
+man shook his head and went down the steps to the sidewalk and turned to
+look back at the child munching happily from the paper sack. "Break it
+to him--break it to him--God!" the father muttered, as he might have
+used a charm.
+
+Again the child looked out expectantly.
+
+"Did he say anything back?" he asked eagerly.
+
+"Not a word--not a word," said the man again. This time he laughed,
+nervously and foolishly. "But mebbe he will," he mumbled
+superstitiously. "I dunno. Now, you set there. An' then you give 'em the
+paper--an' go with anybody out o' the church that asks you. Dad may not
+get back for--quite a while...."
+
+The man went. The child, deep in the delight of a cream puff, wondered
+and looked after him troublously, and was vaguely comforted by the
+murmur of voices beyond the doors.
+
+"Why, God didn't answer back because he was to the church meeting," the
+child thought, when he heard the people moving about within.
+
+
+
+
+I
+
+
+"Inside the church that night," Calliope Marsh is wont to tell it, "the
+Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality was having one
+of our special meetings, with hot chocolate and ice lemonade and two
+kinds of wafers. There wasn't a very big attendance, account of the
+rain, and there was so much refreshments ready that us ladies was urgin'
+the men to have all they wanted.
+
+"'Drink both kinds, Timothy,' Mis Toplady says to her husband,
+persuadin'; 'it'll have to be throwed away if somebody don't drink it
+up.'
+
+"'Lord, Amandy,' says Timothy, testy, 'I do hate to be sicked on to my
+food like that. It takes away my appetite, same as poison would.'
+
+"'They always do it,' says Jimmy Sturgis, morose. 'My wife'll say to me,
+"Jimmy, eat up them cold peas. They'll spoil if you don't," and, "Jimmy,
+can't you make 'way with them cold pancakes?" Till I wish't I could
+starve.'
+
+"'Well, if you hadn't et up things,' says Mis' Sturgis, mild, 'we'd of
+been scrappin' in the poor-house by now. I dunno but I'd ruther scrap
+where I am.'
+
+"'Sure!' says Postmaster Silas Sykes, that always pours oil on troubled
+waters except when the trouble is his own; and then he churns them.
+
+"'I dunno what ailed me in business meeting to-night,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I declare, I was full as nervous as a
+witch. I couldn't keep my feet still anywheres.'
+
+"'The fidgets,' comprehends Mis' Uppers, sympathetic. 'I get 'em in my
+feet 'long toward night sometimes. Turn an' twist an' shift--I know the
+feeling. Whenever my feet begin that, I always give right up an' take
+off my shoes an' get into my rubbers.'
+
+"'Well, I wish't I had some rubbers now,' says Mis' Mayor Uppers. 'I
+wore my best shoes out to tea an' come right from tea here, like a
+maniac. An' now look at me, in my Three Dollar-and-a-half kids an' the
+streets runnin' rivers.'
+
+"'You take my rubbers,' Mis' Timothy Toplady offered. 'I've set with 'em
+on all evening because I always get 'em mixed up at Sodality, an' I
+declare the water'll feel good to my poor feet.'
+
+"'No, no, don't you trouble,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I'll just slip my shoes
+off an' track that one block in my stocking feet. Then I'll put 'em in
+good, hot water an' go to bed. I wouldn't of come out to-night at all
+if it hadn't of been for the professor.'
+
+"'For goodness' sakes,' I says, 'don't call him that. You know how he
+hates it.'
+
+"'But I do like to say it,' Mis' Uppers insists, wistful. 'He's the only
+professor I ever knew.'
+
+"'Me either,' I says--and I knew how she felt.
+
+"Just the same, we was getting to like Mr. Insley too much to call him
+that if he didn't want it, or even 'doctor' that was more common, though
+over to Indian Mound College, half way between us and the City, he is
+one or both, and I dunno but his name tapers off with capital letters,
+same as some.
+
+"'I just came over here to work,' he told us when we first see him. 'I
+don't profess anything. And "doctor" means teacher, you know, and I'm
+just learning things. Must you have a formal title for me? Won't Mr.
+do?'
+
+"Most of the College called him just 'Insley,' friendly and approving,
+and dating back to his foot-ball days, and except when we was speaking
+to him, we commonly got to calling him that too. A couple of months
+before he'd come over from the College with a letter of introduction
+from one of the faculty to Postmaster Silas Sykes, that is an alderman
+and our professional leading citizen. The letter from the College said
+that we could use Mr. Insley in any local civic work we happened to be
+doing.
+
+"'Civic work?' Silas says to him, thoughtful. 'You mean shuttin' up
+saloons an' like that?'
+
+"'Not necessarily,' he told him. 'Just work with folks, you know.'
+
+"'Well-a, settin' out bushes?' Silas asks.
+
+"'Whatever you're most interested in, Mr. Sykes,' says he. 'Isn't there
+some organization that's doing things here?'
+
+"Silas wasn't interested in so very much of anything except Silas. But
+the word 'organization' helped him out.
+
+"'There's the Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality,'
+says he. 'That must be the very kind of a thing you mean.'
+
+"Insley laughed a little, but he let Mis' Sykes, that loves new things
+and new people, bring him to our next evening meeting in the church
+parlors, and he'd been back several times, not saying much, but just
+getting acquainted. And that rainy night, when the men met with us to
+talk over some money raising for Sodality, we'd asked him to come over
+too. We all liked him. He had a kind of a used-to-things way, and you
+felt like you'd always known him or, for the time you hadn't, that
+you'd both missed something out; and he had a nice look too, a look that
+seemed to be saying 'good morning' and to be beginning a fine, new
+day--the best day yet.
+
+"He'd set there kind of broodin' the most of that evening, drinking
+whatever anybody brought him, but not putting his mind to it so very
+much; but it was a bright broodin', an' one that made you think of
+something that's going to open and not just of something that's shut up.
+You can brood both ways, but the effect is as different as a bud from a
+core.
+
+"'Speakin' of money raisin' for Sodality,' says Silas Sykes, kind of
+pretend hearty and pretend casual, like he does, 'why don't Sodality
+make some money off'n the Fourth of July? Everybody else is.'
+
+("Sodality always speaks of itself and of the Cemetery real intimate,
+without the _the_, an' everybody's got to doing it.)
+
+"Us ladies all set still and kept still. The Fourth of July, that was
+less than a week off, was a sore point with us, being we'd wanted a
+celebration that would _be_ a celebration, and not merely a money-raiser
+for the town.
+
+"'Oh, I say canvass, house to house,' says Timothy. 'Folks would give
+you a dime to get you off'n the front porch that wouldn't come out to a
+dime entertainment, never.'
+
+"'Why not ask them that's got Dead in their own families, to pay out for
+'em, an' leave them alone that's got livin' mouths to feed?' says Threat
+Hubbelthwait, querulous. Threat ain't no relations but his wife, and he
+claims to have no Dead of his own. I always say they must be either
+living or dead, or else where's Threat come in? But he won't admit it.
+
+"'What you raisin' money for anyhow?' asks Eppleby Holcomb, quiet.
+Eppleby always keeps still a long time, and then lets out something
+vital.
+
+"As a matter of fact, Sodality didn't have no real work on hand,
+Cemetery lookin' real neat and tasty for Cemetery, and no immediate dead
+coming on as far as we could know; but we didn't have much of anything
+in the treasury, either. And when we didn't have any work on hand, we
+was in the habit of raising money, and when we'd got some money earnt,
+we was in the habit of devising some nice way to spend it. And so we
+kept Sodality real alive.
+
+"'Well, there may not be any active dead just now,' Mis' Sykes explains
+it, 'but they are sure to die and need us. We had two country funerals
+to pay for last year. Or I might say, one an' a half, one corpse
+contributing half enough for his own support in Cemetery.'
+
+"With that Insley spoke up, kind of firm and nice, with muscles in his
+tone, like he does:
+
+"'What's the matter with doing something with these folks before they
+die?' he asks.
+
+"I guess we all looked kind of blank--like when you get asked _why_
+Columbus discovered America and all you know how to answer is just the
+date he done so on.
+
+"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'do what?'
+
+"'Mustn't there be something to do with them, living, if there's
+everything to be done for them, dead?' Insley asks.
+
+"'Well-a' says Mis' Sykes, 'I don't know that I understand just how you
+mean that. Perhaps the Mission Band--'
+
+"'No,' says Insley. 'You. Us.'
+
+"I never knew a man to say so little and yet to get so much said.
+
+"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'of course Sodality was formed with the idee
+of caring for Cemetery. You see that lets in the Dead only.'
+
+"'Gosh,' says Eppleby Holcomb, 'how exclusive.' But I don't know as
+anybody heard him but me.
+
+"'I know,' says Insley, slow. 'Well, at any rate, perhaps there are
+things that all of us Living might do together--for the sake, say, of
+earning some money for the Dead. There'd be no objection to that, would
+there?'
+
+"'Oh, no,' says Mis' Sykes. 'I'm sure nobody could take exception to
+_that_. Of course you always have to earn money out of the living.'
+
+"Insley looked at us all kind of shy--at one and another and another of
+us, like he thought he might find some different answer in somebody's
+eyes. I smiled at him, and so did Mis' Toplady, and so did Eppleby; and
+Mis' Eleanor Emmons, the widow-lady, lately moved in, she nodded. But
+the rest set there like their faces was on wrong side out and didn't
+show no true pattern.
+
+"'I mean,' he says, not quite knowing how to make us understand what he
+was driving at, 'I mean, let's get to know these folks while they are
+alive. Aren't we all more interested in folks, than we are in their
+graves?'
+
+"'_Folks_,' Timothy Toplady says over, meditative, like he'd heard of
+members, customers, clients, murderers and the like, but never of folks.
+
+"'I mean,' Insley says again, 'oh, any one of a dozen things. For
+instance, do something jolly that'll give your young people something to
+do evenings--get them to help earn the money for Cemetery, if you want
+to,' he adds, laughing a little.
+
+"'There's goin' to be a Vigilance Committee to see after the young folks
+of Friendship Village, nights,' says Silas Sykes, grim.
+
+"'You might have town parties, have the parties in schools and in the
+town hall,' Insley goes on, 'and talk over the Cemetery that belongs to
+you all, and talk over the other things besides the Cemetery that belong
+to you all. Maybe I could help,' he adds, 'though I own up to you now
+I'm really more fond of folks--speaking by and large--than I am of
+tombstones.'
+
+"He said a little more to us, about how folks was doing in the world
+outside the village, and he was so humorous about it that they never
+knew how something inside him was hopping with hope, like I betted it
+was, with his young, divine enthusiasm. And when he'd got done he
+waited, all grave and eager, for somebody to peep up. And it was, as it
+would be, Silas Sykes who spoke first.
+
+"'It's all right, it's all right,' says he, 'so long as Sodality don't
+go meddling in the village affairs--petitionin' the council and
+protestin' an' so on. That gets any community all upset.'
+
+"'That's so,' says Timothy, nodding. 'Meetin', singin' songs, servin'
+lemonade an' plantin' things in the ground is all right enough. It helps
+on the fellow feelin' amazin'. But pitchin' in for reforms and things--'
+Timothy shook his head.
+
+"'As to reforms,' says Insley, 'give me the fellowship, and the reforms
+will take care of themselves.'
+
+"'Things is quite handy about takin' their course, though,' says Silas,
+'so be we don't yank open the cocoons an' buds an' others.'
+
+"'Well,' says Mis' Uppers, 'I can't do much more, Professor. I'm drove
+to death, as it is. I don't even get time to do my own improvin' round
+the place.' Mis' Uppers always makes that her final argument. 'Sew for
+the poor?' I've heard her say. 'Why, I can't even get my own fall sewing
+done.'
+
+"'Me, too,' and, 'Me, either,' went round the circle. And, 'I can't do a
+great deal myself,' says Mis' Sykes, 'not till after my niece goes
+away.'
+
+"I thought, 'I shouldn't think you could tend to much of anything else,
+not with Miss Beryl Sessions in the house.' That was the Sykes's niece,
+till then unknown to them, that we'd all of us heard nothing but, since
+long before she come. But of course I kept still, part because I was
+expecting an unknown niece of my own in a week or so, and your unknown
+relatives is quite likely to be glass houses.
+
+"'Another thing,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'don't let's us hold any
+doin's in this church, kicking up the new cork that the Ladies' Aid has
+just put down on the floor. It'll all be tracked up in no time, letting
+in Tom, Dick, and Harry.'
+
+"'Don't let's get the church mixed up in anything outside, for pity's
+sakes,' says Silas. 'The trustees'll object to our meeting here, if we
+quit working for a dignified object and go to making things mutual,
+promiscuous. Churches has got to be church-like.'
+
+"'Well, Silas,' says Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying anything,
+'I donno as some of us could bring ourselves to think of Christ as real
+Christ-like, if he come back the way he use' to be.'
+
+"Insley sat looking round on them all, still with his way of saying good
+morning on a good day. I wondered if he wasn't wishing that they'd hang
+on that way to something worth hanging to. For I've always thought, and
+I think now, that they's a-plenty of stick-to-itiveness in the world;
+but the trouble is, it's stuck to the wrong thing.
+
+"The talk broke up after that, like somebody had said something in bad
+taste; and we conversed around in groups, and done our best to make
+'way with the refreshments. And Insley set talking to Mis' Eleanor
+Emmons, the new widow, lately moved in.
+
+"About Mis' Emmons the social judgment of Friendship Village was for the
+present hanging loose. This was partly because we didn't understand her
+name.
+
+"'My land, was her husband a felon or a thief or what that she don't use
+his name?' everybody asked everybody. 'What's she stick her own name in
+front of his last name like that for? Sneaked out of usin' his Christian
+name as soon as his back was turned, _I_ call it,' said some. 'My land,
+I'd use my dead husband's forename if it was Nebuchadnezzar. _My_
+opinion, we'd best go slow till she explains herself.'
+
+"But I guess Insley had more confidence.
+
+"'You'll help, I know?' I heard him say to Mis' Emmons.
+
+"'My friend,' she says back, 'whatever I can do I'll do. It's a big job
+you're talking about, you know.'
+
+"'It's _the_ big job,' says Insley, quiet.
+
+"Pretty soon Mis' Toplady got up on her feet, drawing her shawl up her
+back.
+
+"'Well,' she says, 'whatever you decide, count on me--I'll always do for
+chinkin' in. I've got to get home now and set my bread or it won't be
+up till day _after_ to-morrow. Ready, Timothy? Good night all.'
+
+"She went towards the door, Timothy following. But before they got to
+it, it opened, and somebody come in, at the sight of who Mis' Toplady
+stopped short and the talk of the rest of us fell away. No stranger,
+much, comes to Friendship Village without our knowing it, and to have a
+stranger walk unbeknownst into the very lecture-room of the First Church
+was a thing we never heard of, without he was a book agent or a
+travelling man.
+
+"Here, though, was a stranger--and such a stranger. She was so
+unexpected and so dazzling that it shot through my head she was like a
+star, taking refuge from all the roughness and the rain outside--a star,
+so it come in my head, using up its leisure on a cloudy night with
+peepin' in here and there to give out brightness anyway. The rough, dark
+cheviot that the girl wore was sort of like a piece of storm-cloud
+clinging about that brightness--a brightness of wind-rosy face and blowy
+hair, all uncovered. She stood on the threshold, holding her wet
+umbrella at arm's length out in the entry.
+
+"'I beg your pardon. Are you ready, Aunt Eleanor?' she asked.
+
+"Mis' Eleanor Emmons turned and looked at her.
+
+"'Robin!' she says. 'Why, you must be wet through.'
+
+"'I'm pretty wet,' says the girl, serene, 'I'm so messy I won't come in.
+I'll just stop out here on the steps. Don't hurry.'
+
+"'Wait a minute,' Mis' Emmons says. 'Stay where you are then, please,
+Robin, and meet these people.'
+
+"The girl threw the door wide, and she stepped back into the vestibule,
+where her umbrella had been trailing little puddles; and she stood there
+against the big, black background of the night and the village, while
+Mis' Emmons presented her.
+
+"'This is my niece, Miss Sidney,' she told us. 'She has just come to me
+to-day--for as long as I can keep her. Will you all come to see her?'
+
+"It wasn't much the way Mis' Sykes had done, singing praises of Miss
+Beryl Sessions for weeks on end before she'd got there; nor the way I
+was doing, wondering secret about my unknown niece, and what she'd be
+like. Mis' Emmons introduced her niece like she'd always been one of us.
+She said our names over, and we went towards her; and Miss Sidney leaned
+a little inside the frame of the doorway and put out her hand to us
+all, a hand that didn't have any glove on and that in spite of the rain,
+was warm.
+
+"'I'm so sorry,' she says, 'I'm afraid I'm disgracing Aunt Eleanor. But
+I couldn't help it. I love to walk in the rain.'
+
+"'That's what rain is for,' Insley says to her; and I see the two change
+smiles before Mis' Hubbelthwait's 'Well, I do hope you've got some good
+high rubbers on your feet' made the girl grave again--a sweet grave, not
+a stiff grave. You can be grave both ways, and they're as different from
+each other as soup from hot water.
+
+"'I have, thank you,' she says, 'big storm boots. Did you know,' she
+adds, 'that somebody else is waiting out here? Somebody's little bit of
+a beau? And I'm afraid he's gone to sleep.'
+
+"We looked at one another, wondering. Who was waiting for any of us?
+'Not me,' one after another says, positive. 'We've all raced home alone
+from this church since we was born,' Mis' Uppers adds, true enough.
+
+"We was curious, with that curiosity that it's kind of fun to have, and
+we all crowded forward into the entry. And a little to one side of the
+shining lamp path was setting a child--a little boy, with a paper bag in
+his arms.
+
+
+
+
+II
+
+
+"Who on earth was he, we wondered to ourselves, and we all jostled
+forward, trying to see down to him, us women lifting up our skirts from
+the entry wet. He was like a little wad of clothes, bunched up on the
+top step, but inside them the little fellow was all curled up, sleeping.
+And we knew he hadn't come for any of us, and he didn't look like he was
+waiting for anybody in particular.
+
+"Silas fixed up an explanation, ready-done:--
+
+"'He must belong down on the flats,' says Silas. 'The idear of his
+sleepin' here. I said we'd oughter hev a gate acrost the vestibule.'
+
+"'Roust him up an' start him home,' says Timothy Toplady, adviceful.
+
+"'I will,' says Silas, that always thinks it's his share to do any
+unclaimed managing; and he brought down his hand towards the child's
+shoulder. But his hand didn't get that far.
+
+"'Let me wake him up,' says Robin Sidney.
+
+"She laid her umbrella in the wet of the steps and, Silas being
+surprised into giving way, she stooped over the child. She woke him up
+neither by speaking to him nor grasping his arm, but she just slipped
+her hands along his cheeks till her hands met under his chin, and she
+lifted up his chin, gentle.
+
+"'Wake up and look at me,' she says.
+
+"The child opened his eyes, with no starting or bewildering, and looked
+straight up into her face. There was light enough for us all to see that
+he smiled bright, like one that's real glad some waiting is done. And
+she spoke to him, not making a point of it and bringing it out like
+she'd aimed it at him, but just matter-of-fact gentle and commonplace
+tender.
+
+"'Whose little boy are you?' she ask' him.
+
+"'I'm goin' with whoever wants me to go with 'em,' says the child.
+
+"'But who are you--where do you live?' she says to him. 'You live, don't
+you--in this town?'
+
+"The child shook his head positive.
+
+"'I lived far,' he told her, 'in that other place. I come up here with
+my daddy. He says he might not come back to-night.'
+
+"Robin Sidney knelt right down before him on the wet steps.
+
+"'Truly,' she said, 'haven't you any place to go to-night?'
+
+"'Oh, yes,' says the child, 'he says I must go with whoever wants me to
+go with 'em. Do--do you?'
+
+"At that Miss Sidney looked up at us, swift, and down again. The wind
+had took hold of a strand of her hair and blew it across her eyes, and
+she was pushing it away as she got up. And by then Insley was standing
+before her, back of the little boy, that he suddenly stooped down and
+picked up in his arms.
+
+"'Let's get inside, shall we?' he says, commanding. 'Let's all go back
+in and see about him.'
+
+"We went back into the church, even Silas taking orders, though of
+course that was part curiosity; and Insley sat down with the child on
+his knee, and held out the child's feet in his hand.
+
+"'He's wet as a rat,' he says. 'Look at his shoes.'
+
+"'Well-a, make him tell his name, why don't you?' says Mis' Sykes,
+sharp. '_I_ think we'd ought to find out who he is. What's your name,
+Boy?' she adds, brisk.
+
+"Insley dropped the boy's feet and took a-hold of one of his hands.
+'Yes,' he says, hasty, 'we must try to do that.' But he looked right
+straight over Mis' Sykes's shoulder to where, beyond the others, Robin
+Sidney was standing. 'He was your friend first,' he said to her. 'You
+found him.'
+
+"She come and knelt down beside the child where, on Insley's knee, he
+sat staring round, all wondering and questioning, to the rest of us. But
+she seemed to forget all about the rest of us, and I loved the way she
+was with that little strange boy. She kind of put her hands on him,
+wiping the raindrops off his face, unbuttoning his wet coat, doing a
+little something to his collar; and every touch was a kind of a little
+stroke that some women's hands give almost without their knowing it. I
+loved to watch her, because I'm always as stiff as a board with a
+child--unless I'm alone with them. Then I ain't.
+
+"'My name's Robin,' she says to the little fellow. 'What's yours, dear?'
+
+"'Christopher,' he says right off. 'First, Christopher. An' then John.
+An' then Bartlett. Have you only got one name?' he asked her.
+
+"'Yes, I've got two,' she says. 'The rest of mine is Sidney. Where--'
+
+"'Only two?' says the child. 'Why, I've got three.'
+
+"'Only two,' she answers. 'Where did your father go--don't you know
+that, Christopher?'
+
+"That seemed to make him think of something, and he looked down at his
+paper bag.
+
+"'First he bringed me these,' he says, and his face lighted up and he
+held out his bag to her. 'You can have one my cream-puffs,' he offers
+her, magnificent. I held my breath for fear she wouldn't take it, but
+she did. 'What fat ones!' she says admiring, and held it in her hand
+while she asked him more. It was real strange how we stood around, us
+older women and all, waiting for her to see what she could get out of
+him. But there wasn't any use. He was to go with whoever asked him to
+go--that was all he knew.
+
+"Silas Sykes snaps his watch. 'It's gettin' late,' he gives out, with a
+backward look at nothing in particular. 'Hadn't we best just leave him
+at the police station? Threat Hubbelthwait and me go right past there.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady, she sweeps round on him, pulling her shawl over her
+shoulders--one of them gestures of some women that makes it seem like
+even them that works hard and don't get out much of anywhere has motions
+left in them that used to be motioned in courts and castles and like
+that. 'Police station! Silas Sykes,' says she, queenly, 'you put me in
+mind of a stone wall, you're that sympathizin'.'
+
+"'Well, _we_ can't take him, Amandy,' Timothy Toplady reminds her,
+hurried. 'We live too far. 'Twouldn't do to walk him 'way there.'
+Timothy will give, but he wants to give to his own selected poor that he
+knows about; an' he won't never allow himself no luxuries in givin' here
+an' there, when something just happens to come up.
+
+"'Land, he may of come from where there's disease--you can't tell,' says
+Mis' Uppers. 'I think we'd ought to go slow.'
+
+"'Yes,' says two-three others, 'we'd best go slow. Why, his father may
+be looking for him.'
+
+"Mis' Eleanor Emmons spoke up serene.
+
+"'While we're going slow,' she says, 'I think I'll just take him home
+and get his feet dry. I live the nearest. Mr. Sykes, you might report
+him at the police station as you go by, in case someone is looking for
+him. And if nobody inquires, he can sleep on my couch beside my grate
+fire to-night. Can't he, Robin?'
+
+"'I'd love it,' says the girl.
+
+"'Excellent,' says Insley, and set the little boy on his feet.
+
+"But when he done that, the child suddenly swung round and caught Miss
+Sidney's arm and looked up in her face; and his little nose was screwed
+up alarming.
+
+"'What _is_ it--what's the matter, Christopher?' she ask' him. And the
+rest of us that had begun moving to go, stopped to listen. And in that
+little stillness Christopher told us:--
+
+"'Oh,' he says, 'it's that hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went
+right through that hole. And it's _chokin'_ me.'
+
+"Just exactly as if a hand had kind of touched us all, a nice little
+stir went round among us women. And with that, Insley, who had been
+standing there so big and strong and able and willing, and waiting for a
+chance to take hold, he just simply put his hands on his knees and
+stooped over and made his back right for the little fellow to climb up
+on. The child knew what it was for, soon enough--we see somebody
+somewheres must of been doing it for him before, for he scrambled right
+up, laughing, and Miss Sidney helping him. And a kind of a little
+ripple, that wan't no true words, run round among us all. Most women and
+some men is strong on ripples of this sort, but when it comes right down
+to doing something in consequence, we ain't so handy.
+
+"'Leave me come along and help take care of him a little while,' I says;
+and I thought it was because I was ashamed of myself and trying to make
+up for not offering before. But I think really what was the matter with
+me was that I just plain wanted to go along with that little boy.
+
+"'I'm your automobile,' says Insley to the little fellow, and he laughed
+out, delighted, hanging onto his paper sack.
+
+"'If you'll give me the big umbrella, Aunt Eleanor,' says Miss Sidney on
+the church steps, 'I'll try to keep the rain off the automobile and the
+passenger.'
+
+"The rain had just about stopped when we four started down Daphne
+Street. The elms and maples along the sidewalk was dripping soft, and
+everybody's gardens was laying still, like something new had happened to
+them. It smelled good, and like everything outdoors was going to start
+all over again and be something else, sweeter.
+
+"When we got most to Mis' Emmon's gate, I stopped stock still, looking
+at something shining on the hill. It was Proudfit House, lit up from top
+to bottom--the big house on the hill that had stood there, blind and
+dark, for months on end.
+
+"'Why, some of the Proudfits must of come home,' I says out loud.
+
+"Mis' Emmons answered up, all unexpected to me, for I never knew she
+knew the Proudfits. 'Mr. Alex Proudfit is coming on to-morrow,' she
+says. And I sort of resented her that was so near a stranger in the
+village hearing this about Alex Proudfit before I did, that had known
+him since he was in knickerbockers.
+
+"'Am I keeping the rain off you two people?' Miss Sidney asks as, at the
+corner, we all turned our backs on Proudfit House.
+
+"'Nobody,' Insley says--and his voice was always as smooth and round as
+wheels running along under his words, 'nobody ever kept the rain off as
+you are keeping it off, Miss Sidney.'
+
+"And, 'I did walked all that way--in that rain,' says Christopher,
+sleepy, in his automobile's collar.
+
+
+
+
+III
+
+
+"If it was anyways damp or chilly, Mis' Emmons always had a little blaze
+in the grate--not a heat blaze, but just a Come-here blaze. And going
+into her little what-she-called living-room at night, I always thought
+was like pushing open some door of the dark to find a sort of
+cubby-corner hollowed out from the bigger dark for tending the homey
+fire. That rainy night we went in from the street almost right onto the
+hearth. And it was as pleasant as taking the first mouthful of
+something.
+
+"Insley, with Christopher still on his back, stood on the rug in front
+of the door and looked round him.
+
+"'How jolly it always looks here, Mrs. Emmons,' he says. 'I never saw
+such a hearty place.'
+
+"I donno whether you've ever noticed the difference in the way women
+bustle around? Most nice women do bustle when something comes up that
+needs it. Some does it light and lifty, like fairies going around on
+missions; and some does it kind of crackling and nervous, like goblins
+on business. Mis' Emmons was the first kind, and it was real
+contagious. You caught it yourself and begun pulling chairs around and
+seeing to windows and sort of settling away down deep into the minute.
+She begun doing that way now, seeing to the fire and the lamp-shade and
+the sofa, and wanting everybody to be dry and comfortable, instant.
+
+"'You are so good-natured to like my room,' she says. 'I furnished it
+for ten cents--yes, not much more. The whole effect is just colour,' she
+says. 'What I have to do without in quality I go and wheedle out of the
+spectrum. What _should_ we do without the rainbow? And what in the world
+am I going to put on that child?'
+
+"Insley let Christopher down on the rug by the door, and there he stood,
+dripping, patient, holding his paper bag, and not looking up and around
+him, same as a child will in a strange room, but just looking hard at
+the nice, red, warm blaze. Miss Sidney come and stooped over him, with
+that same little way of touching him, like loving.
+
+"'Let's go and be dry now,' she says, 'and then let's see what we can
+find in the pantry.'
+
+"The little fellow, he just laughed out, soft and delicious, with his
+head turned away and without saying anything.
+
+"'I never said such a successful thing,' says Miss Sidney, and led him
+upstairs where we could hear Mis' Emmons bustling around cosey.
+
+"Mr. Insley and I sat down by the fire. I remember I looked over towards
+him and felt sort of nervous, he was so good looking and so silent. A
+good-looking _talking_ man I ain't afraid of, because I can either
+admire or despise him immediate, and either way it gives me something to
+do answering back. But one that's still, it takes longer to make out,
+and it don't give you no occupation for your impressions. And Insley,
+besides being still, was so good looking that it surprised me every new
+time I see him. I always wanted to say: Have you been looking like that
+all the time since I last saw you, and how _do_ you keep it up?
+
+"He had a face and a body that showed a good many men looking out of 'em
+at you, and all of 'em was men you'd like to of known. There was
+scholars that understood a lot, and gentlemen that acted easy, and
+outdoor men that had pioneered through hard things and had took their
+joy of the open. All of them had worked hard at him--and had give him
+his strength and his merriness and his big, broad shoulders and his
+nice, friendly boyishness, and his eyes that could see considerably
+more than was set before them. By his own care he had knit his body
+close to life, and I know he had knit his spirit close to it, too. As I
+looked over at him that night, my being nervous sort of swelled up into
+a lump in my throat and I wanted to say inside me: O God, ain't it nice,
+ain't it nice that you've got some folks like him?
+
+"He glanced over to me, kind of whimsical.
+
+"'Are you in favour of folks or tombstones?' he asks, with his eyebrows
+flickering up.
+
+"'Me?' I says. 'Well, I don't want to be clannish, but I do lean a good
+deal towards folks.'
+
+"'You knew what I meant to-night?' he says.
+
+"'Yes,' I answered, 'I knew.'
+
+"'I thought you did,' he says grave.
+
+"Then he lapsed into keeping still again and so did I, me through not
+quite knowing what to say, and him--well, I wasn't sure, but I thought
+he acted a good deal as if he had something nice to think about. I've
+seen that look on people's faces sometimes, and it always makes me feel
+a little surer that I'm a human being. I wondered if it was his new work
+he was turning over, or his liking the child's being cared for, or the
+mere nice minute, there by the grate fire. Then a door upstairs shut,
+and somebody come down and into the room, and when he got up, his look
+sort of centred in that new minute.
+
+"It was Miss Sidney that come in, and she set down by the fire like
+something pleased her.
+
+"'Aunt Eleanor is going to decorate Christopher herself,' she says. 'She
+believes that she alone can do whatever comes up in this life to be
+done, and usually she's right.'
+
+"Insley stood looking at her for a minute before he set down again. She
+had her big black cloak off by then, and she was wearing a
+dress-for-in-the-house that was all rosy. She wasn't anything of the
+star any longer. She was something more than a star. I always think one
+of the nicest commonplace minutes in a woman's everyday is when she
+comes back from somewheres outside the house where she's been, and sets
+down by the fire, or by a window, or just plain in the middle of the
+room. They always talk about pigeons 'homing'; I wish't they kept that
+word for women. It seems like it's so exactly what they _do_ do.
+
+"'I love the people,' Miss Sidney went on, 'that always feel that
+way--that if something they're interested in is going to be really well
+done, then they must do it themselves.'
+
+"Insley always knew just what anybody meant--I'd noticed that about
+him. His mind never left what you'd said floating round, loose ends in
+the room, without your knowing whether it was going to be caught and
+tied; but he just nipped right onto your remark and _tied it in the
+right place_.
+
+"'I love them, too,' he says now. 'I love anybody who can really feel
+responsibility, from a collie with her pups up. But then I'm nothing to
+go by. I find I'm rather strong for a good many people that can't feel
+it, too--that are just folks, going along.'
+
+"I suppose he expected from her the nice, ladylike agreeing, same as
+most women give to this sort of thing, just like they'd admit they're
+fond of verbenas or thin soles. But instead of that, she caught fire.
+Her look jumped up the way a look will and went acrost to his. I always
+think I'd rather have folks say 'I know' to me, understanding, than to
+just pour me out information, and that was what she said to him.
+
+"'I know,' she says, 'on the train to-day--if you could have seen them.
+Such dreadful-looking people, and underneath--the _giving-up-ness_. I
+believe in them,' she added simple.
+
+"When a thing you believe gets spoke by somebody that believes it, too,
+it's like the earth moved round a little faster, and I donno but it
+does. Insley looked for a minute like he thought so.
+
+"'I believe in them,' he says; 'not the way I used to, and just because
+I thought they must be, somehow, fundamentally decent, but because it's
+true.'
+
+"'I know just when I first knew that,' Miss Sidney says. 'It come to me,
+of all places, in a subway train, when I was looking at a row of faces
+across the car. Nobody, _nobody_ can look interesting in that row along
+the side of a subway car. And then I saw....'
+
+"She thought for a minute and shook her head.
+
+"'I can't tell you,' she says, 'it sounds so little and--no account. It
+was a little thing, just something that happened to a homely woman with
+a homely man, in a hat like a pirate's. But it almost--let me in. I can
+do it ever since--look into people, into, or through, or with ...' she
+tries to explain it. Then her eyes hurried up to his face, like she was
+afraid he might not be understanding. He just nodded, without looking at
+her, but she knew that he knew what she meant, and that he meant it,
+too.
+
+" ... I thought it was wonderful to hear them. I felt like an old
+mountain, or anything natural and real ancient, listening to the Song of
+Believing, sung by two that's young and just beginning. We all sing it
+sometime in our lives--or Lord grieve for them that never do--and I
+might as well own up that I catch myself humming that same song a good
+deal of the time, to keep myself a-going. But I love to hear it when
+it's just begun.
+
+"They was still talking when Mis' Emmons come downstairs with
+Christopher. Land, land but the little chap looked dear, dragging along,
+holding up a long-skirted lounging dress of Mis' Emmons's. I never had
+one of them lounging dresses. There's a lot of common things that it
+never seems to me I can buy for myself: a nice dressing-gown, a block of
+black pins, a fancy-headed hat pin, and a lemon-squeezer. I always use a
+loose print, and common pins, and penny black-headed hat pins, and go
+around squeezing my lemons by hand. I donno why it is, I'm sure.
+
+"'I'm--I'm--I'm--a little boy king!' Christopher stutters, all excited
+and satisfied, while Insley was a-packing him in the Morris chair.
+
+"'Rained on!' says Mis' Emmons, in that kind of dismay that's as pure
+feminine as if it had on skirts. 'Water isn't a circumstance to what
+that dear child was. He was saturated--bless him. He must have been out
+for perfect hours.'
+
+"Christopher, thinking back into the rain, mebbe, from the pleasantness
+of that minute, smiled and took a long breath.
+
+"'I walked from that other place,' he explains, important.
+
+"Mis' Emmons knew he was hungry, and she took Miss Sidney and Insley off
+to the kitchen to find something to eat, and left me with the little
+fellow, me spreading out his clothes in front of the fire to dry. He set
+real still, like being dry and being with somebody was all he wanted.
+And of course that is a good deal.
+
+"I don't always quite know how to start talking to a child. I'm always
+crazy to talk with them, but I'm so afraid of that shy, grave,
+criticizin' look they have. I feel right off like apologizing for the
+silly question I've just asked them. I felt that way now when
+Christopher looked at me, real dignified and wondering. 'What you going
+to be when you grow up to be a man?' was what I had just asked him. And
+yet I don't know what better question I could of asked him, either.
+
+"'I'm goin' to have a cream-puff store, an' make it all light in the
+window,' he answers ready.
+
+"'All light in the window?' I says puzzled.
+
+"'And I'm going to keep a church,' he goes on, 'and I'm going to make
+nice, black velvet for their coffings.'
+
+"I didn't know quite what to make of that, not being able to think back
+very far into his mind. So I kept still a few minutes.
+
+"'What was you doin' in the church?' he says to me, all at once.
+
+"'I don't really know. Waiting for you to come, I guess, Christopher,' I
+says.
+
+"'_Was_ you?' he cried, delighted. 'Pretty soon I came!' He looked in
+the fire, sort of troubled. 'Is God outdoors nights?' he says.
+
+"I said a little something.
+
+"'Well,' he says, 'I thought he was in the house by the bed when you say
+your prayer. An' I thought he was in church. But I don't think he stays
+in the dark, much.'
+
+"'Mebbe you don't,' I says, 'but you wait for him in the dark, and mebbe
+all of a sudden some night you can tell that something is there. And
+just you wait for that night to come.'
+
+"'That's a nice game,' says Christopher, bright. 'What game is that?'
+
+"'I donno,' I says. 'Game of Life, I guess.'
+
+"He liked the sound; and he set there--little waif, full of no supper,
+saying it over like a chant:--
+
+"'Game o' life--game o' life--game o' l-i-f-e--'
+
+"Just at that minute I was turning his little pockets wrong side out to
+dry them, and in one of them I see a piece of paper, all crumpled up and
+wrinkled. I spread it out, and I see it had writing on. And I held it up
+to the light and read it, read it through twice.
+
+"'Christopher,' I says then, 'where did you get this piece of paper? It
+was in your pocket.'
+
+"He looked at it, blank, and then he remembered.
+
+"'My daddy,' he says. 'My daddy told me to give it to folks. I forgot.'
+
+"'To folks?' I says. 'To what folks?'
+
+"'To whoever ask' me anything,' he answers. 'Is it a letter?' he ask'.
+
+"'Yes,' I says, thoughtful, 'it's a letter.'
+
+"'To tell me what to do?' he ask' me.
+
+"'Yes,' I says, 'but more, I guess, to tell us what to do.'
+
+"I talked with him a little longer, so's to get his mind off the paper;
+and then I told him to set still a minute, and I slipped out to where
+the rest was.
+
+"The pantry had a close, spicey, foody smell of a pantry at night, when
+every tin chest and glass jar may be full up with nice things to eat
+that you'd forgot about--cocoanut and citron and cinnamon bark. In
+grown-up folks one of the things that is the last to grow up is the
+things a pantry in the evening promises. You may get over really liking
+raisins and sweet chocolate; you may get to wanting to eat in the
+evening things that you didn't use' to even know the names of and don't
+know them now, and yet it never gets over being nice and eventive to go
+out in somebody's pantry at night, especially a pantry that ain't your
+own.
+
+"'Put everything on a tray,' Mis' Emmons was directing them, 'and find
+the chafing-dish and let's make it in there by Christopher. Mr. Insley,
+can you make toast? Don't equivocate,' she says; '_can_ you make toast?
+People fib no end over what they can make. I'm always bragging about my
+omelettes, and yet one out of every three I make goes flat, and I know
+it. And yet I brag on. Beans, buckwheat, rice--what do you want to
+cream, Robin? Well, look in the store-room. There may be something
+there. We must tell Miss Sidney about Grandma Sellers' store-room, Mr.
+Insley,' she says, and then tells it herself, laughing like a girl, how
+Grandma Sellers, down at the other end of Daphne Street, has got a
+store-room she keeps full of staples and won't let her son's wife use a
+thing out. 'I've been hungry,' Grandma Sellers says, 'and I ain't
+ashamed of that. But if you knew how good it feels to have a still-room
+stocked full, you wouldn't ask me to disturb a can of nothing. I want
+them all there, so if I should want them.' 'She's like me,' Mis' Emmons
+ends, 'I always want to keep my living-room table tidy, to have a place
+in case I should want to lay anything down. And if I put anything on it,
+I snatch it up, so as to have a place in case I want to lay anything
+down.'
+
+"They was all laughing when I went out into the kitchen, and I went up
+to Mis' Emmons with the paper.
+
+"'Read that,' I says.
+
+"She done so, out loud--the scrawlin', downhill message:--
+
+
+     "'Keep him will you,' the paper said, 'I don't chuck him to get rid
+     of but hes only got me since my wifes dead and the drinks got me
+     again. Ive stood it quite awhile but its got me again so keep him
+     and oblidge. will send money to him to the P O here what I can
+     spare I aint chuckin him but the drinks got me again.
+
+     "'resp, his father.
+
+     "'P S his name is Christopher Bartlett he is a good boy his throat
+     gets sore awful easy.'
+
+
+"When Mis' Emmons had got through reading, I remember Miss Sidney's face
+best. It was so full of a sort of a leaping-up pity and wistfulness that
+it went to your heart, like words. I knew that with her the minute
+wasn't no mere thrill nor twitter nor pucker, the way sad things is to
+some, but it was just a straight sounding of a voice from a place of
+pain. And so it was to Insley. But Mis' Emmons, she never give herself
+time to be swamped by anything without trying to climb out right while
+the swamping was going on.
+
+"'What'll we do?' she says, rapid. 'What in this world shall we do? Did
+you ever hear of anything--well, I wish somebody would tell me what
+we're going to do.'
+
+"'Let's be glad for one thing,' says Allen Insley, 'that he's here with
+you people to-night. Let's be glad of that first--that he's here with
+you.'
+
+"Miss Sidney looked away to the dark window.
+
+"'That poor man,' she says. 'That poor father....'
+
+"We talked about it a little, kind of loose ends and nothing to fasten
+to, like you will. Mis' Emmons was the first to get back inside the
+minute.
+
+"'Well,' she says, brisk, 'do let's go in and feed the child while we
+have him. Nobody knows when he's had anything to eat but those unholy
+cream-puffs. Let's heat him some broth and let's carry in the things.'
+
+"Back by the fire Christopher set doing nothing, but just looking in the
+blaze like his very eyesight had been chilly and damp and needed seeing
+to. He cried out jolly when he see all the pretty harness of the
+chafing-dish and the tray full of promises.
+
+"'Oh,' he cries, '_Robin!_'
+
+"She went over to him, and she nestled him now like she couldn't think
+of enough to do for him nor enough things to say to keep him company. I
+see Insley watching her, and I wondered if it didn't come to him like it
+come to me, that for the pure art of doing nothing so that it seems like
+it couldn't be got along without, a woman--some women--can be commended
+by heaven to a world that always needs that kind of doing nothing.
+
+"'Children have a genius for getting rid of the things that don't
+count,' Miss Sidney says. 'I love his calling me "Robin." Mustn't there
+be some place where we don't build walls around our names?'
+
+"Insley thought for a minute. 'You oughtn't to be called "Miss," and
+you oughtn't to wear a hat,' he concluded, sober. 'Both of them make
+you--too much _there_. They draw a line around you.'
+
+"'I don't feel like Miss to myself,' she says, grave. 'I feel like
+Robin. I believe I _am_ Robin!'
+
+"And I made up my mind right then and there that, to myself anyway, I
+was always going to call her Robin. It's funny about first names. Some
+of them fit right down and snuggle up close to their person so that you
+can't think of them apart. And some of them slip loose and dangle along
+after their person, quite a ways back, so that you're always surprised
+when now and then they catch up and get themselves spoke by someone. But
+the name Robin just seemed to wrap Miss Sidney up in itself so that, as
+she said, she _was_ Robin. I like to call her so.
+
+"It was her that engineered the chafing-dish. A chafing-dish is a thing
+I've always looked on a little askant. I couldn't cook with folks
+looking at me no more than I could wash my face in company. I remember
+one hot July day when there was a breeze in my front door, I took my
+ironing-board in the parlor and tried to iron there. But land, I felt
+all left-handed; and I know it would be that way if I ever tried to
+cook in there, on my good rug. Robin though, she done it wonderful. And
+pretty soon she put the hot cream gravy on some crumbled-up bread and
+took it to Christopher, with a cup of broth that smelled like when they
+used to say, 'Dinner's ready,' when you was twelve years old.
+
+"He looked up at her eager. 'Can you cut it in squares?' he asked.
+
+"'In what?' she asks him over.
+
+"'Squares. And play it's molasses candy--white molasses candy?' he says.
+
+"'Oh,' says Robin, 'no, not in squares. But let's play it's hot
+ice-cream.'
+
+"'_Hot ice-cream_,' he says, real slow, his eyes getting wide. To play
+Little Boy King and have hot ice-cream was about as much as he could
+take care of, in joy. Sometimes I get to wondering how we ever do
+anything else except collect children together and give them nice little
+simple fairylands. But while, on the sly, we was all watching to see
+Christopher sink deep in the delight of that hot toothsome supper, he
+suddenly lays down his spoon and stares over to us with wide eyes, eyes
+that there wasn't no tears gathering in, though his little mouth was
+quivering.
+
+"'What is it--what, dear?' Robin asks, from her stool near his feet.
+
+"'My daddy,' says the little boy. 'I was thinking if he could have some
+this.'
+
+"Robin touched her cheek down on his arm.
+
+"'Blessed,' she says, 'think how glad he'd be to have you have some.
+He'd want you to eat it--wouldn't he?'
+
+"The child nodded and took up his spoon, but he sighed some. 'I wish't
+he'd hurry,' he says, and ate, obedient.
+
+"Robin looked up at us--I don't think a woman is ever so lovely as when
+she's sympathizing, and it don't make much difference what it's over, a
+sore finger or a sore heart, it's equally becoming.
+
+"'I know,' she says to us, 'I know just the _place_ where that hurts. I
+remember, when I was little, being in a house that a band passed, and
+because mother wasn't there, I ran inside and wouldn't listen. It's such
+a special kind of hurt....'
+
+"From the end of the settle that was some in the shadow, Insley set
+watching her, and he looked as if he was thinking just what I was
+thinking: that she was the kind that would most always know just the
+place things hurt. And I bet she'd know what to do--and a thousand kinds
+of things that she'd go and do it.
+
+"'O ...' Christopher says. 'I like this most next better than molasses
+candy, cutted in squares. I do, Robin!' He looked down at her, his spoon
+waiting. 'Is you that Robin Redbreast?' he inquired.
+
+"'I'm any Robin you want me to be,' she told him. 'To-morrow we'll play
+that, shall we?'
+
+"'Am I here to-morrow? Don't I have to walk to-morrow?' he ask' her.
+
+"'No, you won't have to walk to-morrow,' she told him.
+
+"Christopher leaned back, altogether nearer to luxury than I guess he'd
+ever been.
+
+"'I'm a little boy king, and it's hot ice-cream, and I love _you_,' he
+tops it off to Robin.
+
+"She smiled at him, leaning on his chair.
+
+"'Isn't it a miracle,' she says to us, 'the way we can call out--being
+liked? We don't do something, and people don't pay any attention and
+don't know the difference. Then some little thing happens, and there
+they are--liking us, doing a real thing.'
+
+"'I know it,' I says, fervent. 'Sometimes,' I says, 'it seems to me
+wonderful cosey to be alive! I'm glad I'm it.'
+
+"'So am I,' says Insley, and leaned forward. 'There's never been such a
+time to be alive,' he says. 'Mrs. Emmons, why don't we ask Miss Sidney
+for some plans for our plan?'
+
+"Do you know how sometimes you'll have a number of floating ideas in
+your mind--wanting to do this, thinking that would be nice, dreaming of
+something else--and yet afraid to say much about it, because it seems
+like the ideas or the dreams is much too wild for anybody else to have,
+too? And then mebbe after a while, you'll find that somebody had the
+same idea and dreamed it out, and died with it? Or somebody else tried
+to make it go a little? Well, that was what begun to happen to me that
+night while I heard Insley talk, only I see that my floating ideas, that
+wan't properly attached to the sides of my head, was actually being
+worked out here and there, and that Insley knew about them.
+
+"I donno how to tell what my ideas was. I'd had them from time to time,
+and a good many of us ladies had, only we didn't know what to do with
+them. And an idea that you don't know what to do with is like a wild
+animal out of its cage: there ain't no performance till it's adjusted.
+For instance, when we'd wanted to pave Daphne Street and the whole town
+council had got up and swung its arms over its head and said that having
+an economical administration was better than paving--why, then us ladies
+had all had the same idee about that.
+
+"'Is the town run for the sake of being the town, with money in its
+treasury, or is the town run for the folks in it?' I remember Mis'
+Toplady asking, puzzled. 'Ain't the folks the town really?' she ask'.
+'And if they are, why can't they pave themselves with their own money?
+Don't that make sense?' she ask' us, and we thought it did.
+
+"Us ladies had got Daphne Street paved, or at least it was through us
+they made the beginning, but there was things we hadn't done. We was all
+taking milk of Rob Henney that we knew his cow barns wasn't at all
+eatable, but he was the only milk wagon, nobody else in town delivering,
+so we kept on taking, but squeamish, squeamish. Then there was the
+grocery stores, leaving their food all over the sidewalk, dust-peppered
+and dirt-salted. But nobody liked to say anything to Silas Sykes that
+keeps the post-office store, nor to Joe Betts, that his father before
+him kept the meat market, being we all felt delicate, like at asking a
+church member to come out to church. Then us ladies had bought a zinc
+wagon and started it around to pick up the garbage to folks' doors, but
+the second summer the council wouldn't help pay for the team, because it
+was a saving council, and so the wagon was setting in a shed, with its
+hands folded. Then there was Black Hollow, that we'd wanted filled up
+with dirt instead of scummy water, arranging for typhoid fever and other
+things, but the council having got started paving, was engaged in paving
+the swamp out for miles, Silas Sykes's cousin being in the wooden block
+business. And, too, us ladies was just then hopping mad over the doings
+they was planning for the Fourth of July, that wasn't no more than
+making a cash register of the day to earn money into. All these things
+had been disturbing us, and more; but though we talked it over
+considerable, none of us knew what to do, or whether anything could be.
+It seemed as though every way we moved a hand, it hit out at the council
+or else went into some business man's pocket. And not having anybody to
+tell us what other towns were doing, we just set still and wished,
+passive.
+
+"Well, and that night, while I heard Insley talking, was the first I
+knew that other towns had thought about these things, too, and was
+beginning to stir and to stir things. Insley talked about it light
+enough, laughing, taking it all casual on the outside, but underneath
+with a splendid earnestness that was like the warp to his words. He
+talked like we could pick Friendship Village up, same as a strand if we
+wanted, and make it fine and right for weaving in a big pattern that
+his eyes seemed to see. He talked like our village, and everybody's
+village and everybody's city wasn't just a lot of streets laid down and
+walls set up, and little families and little clubs and little separate
+groups of folks organized by themselves. But he spoke like the whole
+town was just one street and _no_ walls, and like every town was a piece
+of the Big Family that lives on the same street, all around the world
+and back again. And he seemed to feel that the chief thing all of us was
+up to was thinking about this family and doing for it and being it, and
+getting it to be the way it can be when we all know how. And he seemed
+to think the things us ladies had wanted to do was some of the things
+that would help it to be the way it can.
+
+"When he stopped, Robin looked up at him from the hearth-rug: '"The
+world is beginning,"' she quotes to him from somewheres; "'I must go and
+help the king."'
+
+"He nodded, looking down at her and seeing, as he must have seen, that
+her face was all kindled into the same kind of a glory that was in his.
+It was a nice minute for them, but I was so excited I piped right up in
+the middle of it:--
+
+"'Oh,' I says, '_them_ things! Was it them kind of things you meant
+about in Sodality to-night that we'd ought to do? Why, us ladies has
+wanted to do things like that, but we felt sort of sneaking about it and
+like we was working against the council and putting our interests before
+the town treasury--'
+
+"'And of the cemetery,' he says.
+
+"'Is _that_,' I ask' him, 'what you're professor of, over to Indian
+Mound college?'
+
+"'Something like that,' he says.
+
+"'Nothing in a book, with long words and italics?' I ask' him.
+
+"'Well,' he says, 'it's getting in books now, a little. But it doesn't
+need any long words.'
+
+"'Why,' I says, 'it's just being professor of human beings, then?'
+
+"'Trying to be, perhaps,' he says, grave.
+
+"'Professor of Human Beings,' I said over to myself; 'professor of being
+human....'
+
+"On this nice minute, the front door, without no bell or knock, opened
+to let in Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, with a shawl over her head
+and a tin can in her hand.
+
+"'No, I won't set any, thanks,' she says. 'I just got to
+thinking--mercy, no. Don't give me any kind of anything to eat any such
+time of night as this. I should be up till midnight taking soda. That's
+what ails folks' stomachs, my notion--these late lunches on nobody
+knows what. No, I got to bed and I was just dropping off when I happened
+to sense how wringing wet that child was, and that I betted he'd take
+cold and have the croup in the night, and you wouldn't have no
+remedy--not having any children, so. It rousted me right up wide awake,
+and I dressed me and run over here with this. Here. Put some on a rag
+and clap it on his chest if he coughs croupy. I donno's it would hurt
+him to clap it on him, anyway, so's to be sure. No, I can't stop. It's
+'way past my bed-time....'
+
+"'There's lots of professors of being human, Miss Marsh,' Insley says to
+me, low.
+
+"Mis' Holcomb stood thinking a minute, brushing her lips with the fringe
+of her shawl.
+
+"'Mebbe somebody up to the Proudfits' would do something for him,' she
+says. 'I see they're lit up. Who's coming?'
+
+"'Mr. Alex Proudfit will be here to-morrow,' Mis' Emmons told her. 'He
+has some people coming to him in a day or two, for a house party over
+the Fourth.'
+
+"'Will he be here so soon?' says Insley. 'I've been looking forward to
+meeting him--I've a letter to him from Indian Mound.'
+
+"'Whatever happens,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'I'll get up attic first thing
+in the morning and find some old clothes for this dear child. I may be
+weak in the pocket-book, but I'm strong on old duds.'
+
+"Insley and I both said good night, so's to walk home with Mis' Holcomb,
+and Christopher kissed us both, simple as belonging to us.
+
+"'We had that hot ice-cream,' he announced to Mis' Holcomb.
+
+"'The lamb!' says she, and turns her back, hasty.
+
+"I wondered a little at Mis' Emmons not saying anything to her about the
+letter we'd found, that made us know somebody would have to do
+something. But just as we was starting out, Mis' Emmons says to me low,
+'Don't let's say anything about his father yet. I have a plan--I want to
+think it over first.' And I liked knowing that already she had a plan,
+and I betted it was a plan that would be born four-square to its own
+future.
+
+"Insley stood holding the door open. The rain had stopped altogether
+now, and the night was full of little things sticking their heads up in
+deep grasses and beginning to sing about it. I donno about what, but
+about something nice. And Insley was looking toward Robin, and I see
+that all the ancestors he'd ever had was lingering around in his face,
+like they knew about something he was just beginning to know about.
+Something nice--nicer than the little outdoor voices.
+
+"'Good night, Miss Sidney,' he says. 'And what a good night for
+Christopher!' And he looked as if he wanted to add: 'And for me.'
+
+"'Good night, Mis' Emmons,' I says. 'It's been an evening like a full
+meal.'
+
+
+
+
+IV
+
+
+"By messenger the next day noon come a letter for me that made me laugh
+a little and that made me a little bit mad, too. This was it:--
+
+
+     "'Dear Calliope:
+
+     "'Come up and help straighten things out, do. This place breathes
+     desolation. Everything is everywhere except everything which
+     everyone wants, which is lost. Come at once, Calliope, pray, and
+     dine with me to-night and give me as much time as you can for a
+     fortnight. I'm having some people here next week--twenty or so for
+     over the Fourth--and a party. A company, you know! I need you.
+
+     "'ALEX PROUDFIT.'
+
+
+"It was so exactly like Alex to send for me just plain because he wanted
+me. Never a word about if I was able or if I wasn't putting up berries
+or didn't have company or wasn't dead. I hadn't heard a sound from him
+in the two years or more that he'd been gone, and yet now it was just
+'Come,' like a lord. And for that matter like he used to do when he was
+in knickerbockers and coming to my house for fresh cookies, whether I
+had any baked or not. But I remember actually baking a batch for him one
+day while he galloped his pony up and down the Plank Road waiting for
+them. And I done the same way now. I got my work out of the way and went
+right up there, like I'd always done for that family in the forty years
+I could think back to knowing them, when I was a girl. I guessed that
+Alex had lit down sudden, a day or so behind his telegram to the
+servants; and I found that was what he had done.
+
+"Proudfit House stands on a hill, and it looks like the hill had
+billowed up gentle from underneath and had let some of the house flow
+down the sides. It was built ambitious, of the good cream brick that
+gives to a lot of our Middle West towns their colour of natural flax in
+among the green; it had been big in the beginning, and to it had been
+added a good many afterthoughts and postscripts of conservatory and
+entrance porch and sun room and screened veranda, till the hill couldn't
+hold them all. The house was one of them that was built fifty years ago
+and that has since been pecked and patted to suit modern uses, pinched
+off here and pulled off there to fit notions refining themselves
+gradual. And all the time the house was let to keep some nice, ugly
+things that after a while, by mere age and use-to-ness, were finally
+accepted wholesale as dignified and desirable. The great brown mansard
+roof, niched and glassed in two places for statues--and having them,
+too, inside my memory and until Mr. Alex pulled them down; the scalloped
+tower on a wing; the round red glass window on a stairway--these we all
+sort of come to agree to as qualities of the place that couldn't be
+changed no more'n the railroad track. Tapestries and water-colours and
+Persian carpets went on inside the house, but outside was all the little
+twists of a taste that had started in naked and was getting dressed up
+by degrees.
+
+"Since the marriage of her daughter Clementina, Madame Proudfit had
+spent a good deal of time abroad, and the house had been shut up. This
+shutting up of people's houses always surprises me. When I shut up my
+house to go away for a couple of months or so, I just make sure the
+kitchen fire is out, and I carry the bird down to Mis' Holcomb's, and I
+turn the key in the front door and start off. But land, land when
+Proudfit House is going to be shut, the servants work days on end. Rugs
+up, curtains down, furniture covered and setting around out of place,
+pictures and ornaments wrapped up in blue paper--I always wonder _why_.
+Closing my house is like putting it to sleep for a little while, but
+closing Proudfit House is some like seeing it through a spasm and into a
+trance. They done that to the house most every summer, and I used to
+think they acted like spring was a sort of contagion, or a
+seventeen-year locust, or something to be fumigated for. I supposed that
+was the way the house looked when Alex got home to it, and of course a
+man must hate it worse than a woman does, because he doesn't know which
+end to tell them to take hold of to unravel. So I went right up there
+when he sent for me--and then it was a little fun, too, to be on the
+inside of what was happening there, that all the village was so curious
+about.
+
+"He'd gone off when I got there, gone off on horseback on some business,
+but he'd left word that he'd be back in a little while, and would I help
+him out in the library. I knew what that meant. The books was all out of
+the shelves and packed in paper, and he wanted me to see that they got
+back into their right places, like I'd done many and many a time for his
+mother. So I worked there the whole afternoon, with a couple of men to
+help me, and the portrait of Linda Proudfit on the wall watching me like
+it wanted to tell me something, maybe about the way she went off and
+died, away from home; and a little after four o'clock a servant let
+somebody into the room.
+
+"I looked up expecting to see Alex, and it surprised me some to see
+Insley instead. But I guessed how it was: that Alex Proudfit being a
+logical one to talk over Friendship Village with, Insley couldn't lose a
+day in bringing him his letter.
+
+"'Well, Miss Marsh,' says he, 'and do you live everywhere, like a good
+fairy?'
+
+"I thought afterwards that I might have said to him: 'No, Mr. Insley.
+And do you appear everywhere, like a god?' But at the time I didn't
+think of anything to say, and I just smiled. I'm like that,--if I like
+anybody, I can't think of a thing to say back; but to Silas Sykes I
+could talk back all day.
+
+"We'd got the room part in order by then, and Insley sat down and looked
+around him, enjoyable. It was a beautiful room. I always think that that
+library ain't no amateur at its regular business of being a vital part
+of the home. Some rooms are awful amateurs at it, and some ain't no more
+than apprentices, and some are downright enemies to the house they're
+in. But that library I always like to look around. It seems to me, if I
+really knew about such things, and how they ought to be, I couldn't
+like that room any better. Colour, proportion, window, shadow--they was
+all lined up in a kind of an enjoyable professionalism of doing their
+best. The room was awake now, too--I had the windows open and I'd
+started the clock. Insley set looking around as if there was sighs
+inside him. I knew how, down in New England, his father's home sort of
+behaved itself like this home. But after college, he had had to choose
+his way, and he had faced about to the new west, the new world, where
+big ways of living seemed to him to be sweeping as a wind sweeps. He had
+chose as he had chose, and I suppose he was glad of that; but I knew the
+room he had when he was in town, at Threat Hubbelthwait's hotel, must be
+a good deal like being homesick, and that this library was like coming
+home.
+
+"'Mr. Proudfit had just returned and would be down at once,' the man
+come back and told him. And while he waited Insley says to me:
+
+"'Have you seen anything of the little boy to-day, Miss Marsh?'
+
+"I was dying to answer back: 'Yes, I see Miss Sidney early this
+morning,' but you can't answer back all you die to. So I told him yes,
+I'd seen all three of them and they was to be up in the city all day to
+buy some things for Christopher. Mis' Emmons and Robin was both to come
+up to Proudfit House to Alex's house party--seems they'd met abroad
+somewheres a year or more back; and they was going to bring Christopher,
+who Mis' Emmons didn't show any sign of giving up while her plan,
+whatever it was, was getting itself thought over. So they'd whisked the
+child off to the city that day to get him the things he needed. And
+there wasn't time to say anything more, for in come Alex Proudfit.
+
+"He was in his riding clothes--horseback dress we always call it in the
+village, which I s'pose isn't city talk, proper. He was long and thin
+and brown, and sort of slow-moving in his motions, but quick and nervous
+in his talk; and I don't know what there was about him--his clothes, or
+his odd, old-country looking ring, or the high white thing wound twice
+around his neck, or his way of pronouncing his words--but he seemed a
+good deal like a picture of a title or a noted man. The minute you
+looked at him, you turned proud of being with him, and you pretty near
+felt distinguished yourself, in a nice way, because you was in his
+company. Alex was like that.
+
+"'I don't like having kept you waiting,' he says to Insley. 'I'm just
+in. By Jove, I've left Topping's letter somewhere--Insley, is it? thank
+you. Of course. Well, Calliope, blessings! I knew I could count on you.
+How are you--you look it. No, don't run away. Keep straight on--Mr.
+Insley will pardon us getting settled under his nose. Now what can I get
+you, Mr. Insley? If you've walked up, you're warm. No? As you will. It's
+mighty jolly getting back--for a minute, you know. I couldn't stop here.
+How the devil do you stop here all the time--or do you stop here all the
+time?...' All this he poured out in a breath. He always had talked fast,
+but now I see that he talked more than fast--he talked foreign.
+
+"'I'm here some of the time,' says Insley; 'I hoped that you were going
+to be, too.'
+
+"'I?' Alex said. 'Oh, no--no. I feel like this: while I'm in the world,
+I want it at its best. I want it at its latest moment. I want to be
+living _now_. Friendship Village--why, man, it's living half a century
+ago--anyway, a quarter. It doesn't know about A.D. nineteen-anything. I
+love the town, you know, for what it is. But confound it, I'm living
+_now_.'
+
+"Insley leaned forward. I was dusting away on an encyclopædia, but I see
+his face and I knew what it meant. This was just what he'd been hoping
+for. Alex Proudfit was a man who understood that the village hadn't
+caught up. So he would want to help it--naturally he would.
+
+"'I'm amazed at the point of view,' Alex went on. 'I never saw such
+self-sufficiency as the little towns have. In England, on the continent,
+the villages know their place and keep it, look up to the towns and all
+that--play the peasant, as they are. Know their betters. Here? Bless
+you. Not a man down town here but will tell you that the village has got
+everything that is admirable. They believe it, too. Electric light,
+water, main street paved, cemetery kept up, "nice residences,"
+telephones, library open two nights a week, fresh lettuce all
+winter--fine, up-to-date little place! And, Lord, but it's a back-water.
+With all its improvements the whole _idea_ of modern life somehow
+escapes it--music and art, drama, letters, manners, as integral parts of
+everyday living--what does it know of them? It thinks these things are
+luxuries, outside the scheme of real life, like monoplanes. Jove, it's
+delicious!'
+
+"He leaned back, laughing. Insley must have felt his charm. Alex always
+was fascinating. His eyes were gray and sort of hobnobbed with your
+own; his square chin just kind of threatened a dimple without breaking
+into one; his dark hair done clusters like a statue; and then there was
+a lot of just plain charm pouring off him. But of course more than with
+this, Insley was filled with his own hope: if Alex Proudfit understood
+some things about the village that ought to be made right, it looked to
+him as though they might do everything together.
+
+"'Why,' Insley says, 'you don't know--you don't know how glad I am to
+hear you say this. It's exactly the thing my head has been full of....'
+
+"'Of course your head is full of it,' says Alex. 'How can it help but be
+when you're fast here some of the time? If you don't mind--what is it
+that keeps you here at all? I don't think I read Topping's letter
+properly....'
+
+"Insley looked out from all over his face.
+
+"'I stay,' he says, 'just because all this _is_ so. It needs somebody to
+stay, don't you think?'
+
+"'Ah, yes, I see,' says Alex, rapid and foreign. 'How do you mean,
+though? Surely you don't mean renouncing--and that sort of thing?'
+
+"'Renouncing--no!' says Insley. 'Getting into the game.'
+
+"He got his enthusiasm down into still places and outlined what he
+meant. It was all at the ends of his fingers--what there was to do if
+the town was to live up to itself, to find ways to express the everyday
+human fellowship that Insley see underneath everything. And Alex
+Proudfit listened, giving that nice, careful, pacifying attention of
+his. He was always so polite that his listening was like answering. When
+Insley got through, Alex's very disagreeing with him was sympathizing.
+
+"'My dear man,' says he--I remember every word because it was something
+I'd wondered sometimes too, only I'd done my wondering vague, like you
+do--'My dear man, but are you not, after all, anticipating? This is just
+the way Nature works--beating these things into the heads and hearts of
+generations. Aren't you trying to do it all at once?'
+
+"'I'm trying to help nature, to be a part of nature--exactly,' says
+Insley, 'and to do it here in Friendship Village.'
+
+"'Why,' says Alex, 'you'll be talking about facilitating God's plan
+next--helping him along, by Jove.'
+
+"Insley looks at him level. 'I mean that now,' he says, 'if you want to
+put it that way.'
+
+"'Good Lord,' says Alex, 'but how do you know what--what he wants?'
+
+"'Don't you?' says Insley, even.
+
+"Alex Proudfit turned and touched a bell. 'Look here,' he says, 'you
+stay and dine, won't you? I'm alone to-night--Calliope and I are. Stay.
+I always enjoy threshing this out.'
+
+"To the man-servant who just about breathed with a well-trained stoop of
+being deferential, his master give the order about the table. 'And,
+Bayless, have them hunt out some of those tea-roses they had in bloom
+the other day--you should see them, Calliope. Oh, and, Bayless, hurry
+dinner a bit. I'm as hungry as lions,' he added to us, and he made me
+think of the little boy in knickerbockers, asking me for fresh cookies.
+
+"He slipped back to their topic, ranking it right in with tea-roses. In
+the hour before dinner they went on 'threshing it out' there in that
+nice luxurious room, and through the dinner, too--a simple, perfect
+dinner where I didn't know which to eat, the plates or the food, they
+was both so complete. Up to Proudfit House I can hardly ever make out
+whether I'm chewing flavours or colours or shapes, but I donno as I
+care. Flavours, thank my stars, aren't the only things in life I know
+how to digest.
+
+"First eager, then patient, Insley went over his ground, setting forth
+by line and by line, by vision and by vision, the faith that was in
+him--faith in human nature to come into its own, faith in the life of a
+town to work into human life at its best. And always down the same road
+they went, they come a-canterin' back with Alex Proudfit's 'Precisely.
+It is precisely what is happening. You can't force it. You mustn't force
+it. To do the best we can with ourselves and to help up an under dog or
+two--if he deserves it--that's the most Nature lets us in for. Otherwise
+she says: "Don't meddle. I'm doing this." And she's right. We'd bungle
+everything. Believe me, my dear fellow, our spurts of civic
+righteousness and national reform never get us anywhere in the long run.
+In the long run, things go along and go along. You can't stop them. If
+you're wise, you won't rush them.'
+
+"At this I couldn't keep still no longer. We was at the table then, and
+I looked over to Alex between the candlesticks and felt as if he was
+back in knickerbockers again, telling me God had made enough ponies so
+he could gallop his all day on the Plank Road if he wanted to.
+
+"'You and Silas Sykes, Alex,' I says, 'have come to the same motto.
+Silas says Nature is real handy about taking her course so be you don't
+yank open cocoons and buds and like that.'
+
+"'Old Silas,' says Alex. 'Lord, is he still going on about everything?
+Old Silas....'
+
+"'Yes,' I says, 'he is. And so am I. Out by my woodshed I've got a
+Greening apple tree. When it was about a year old a cow I used to keep
+browst it down. It laid over on the ground, broke clean off all but one
+little side of bark that kept right on doing business with sap, like it
+didn't know its universe was sat on. I didn't get time for a week or two
+to grub it up, and when I did go to it, I see it was still living,
+through that little pinch of bark. I liked the pluck, and I straightened
+it up and tied it to the shed. I used to fuss with it some. Once in a
+storm I went out and propped a dry-goods box over it. I kept the earth
+rich and drove the bugs off. I kind of got interested in seeing what it
+would do next. What it done was to grow like all possessed. It was
+twenty years ago and more that the cow come by it, and this year I've
+had seven bushels of Greenings off that one tree. Suppose I hadn't tied
+it up?'
+
+"'You'd have saved yourself no end of trouble, dear Calliope,' says
+Alex, 'to say nothing of sparing the feelings of the cow.'
+
+"'I ain't so anxious any more,' says I, 'about sparing folks' feelings
+as I am about sparing folks. Nor I ain't so crazy as I used to be about
+saving myself trouble, either.'
+
+"'Dear Calliope,' says Alex, 'what an advocate you are. Won't you be my
+advocate?'
+
+"He wouldn't argue serious with me now no more than he would when he was
+in knickerbockers. But yet he was adorable. When we got back to the
+library, I went on finishing up the books and I could hear him being
+adorable. He dipped down into the past and brought up rich things--off
+down old ways of life in the village that he'd had a part in and then
+off on the new ways where his life had led him. Java--had Insley ever
+been in Java? He must show him the moonstone he got there and tell him
+the story they told him about it. But the queerest moonstone story was
+one he'd got in Lucknow--so he goes on, and sends Bayless for a cabinet,
+and from one precious stone and another he just naturally drew out
+romances and adventures, as if he was ravelling the stones out into
+them. And then he begun taking down some of his old books. And when it
+come to books, the appeal to Insley was like an appeal of friends, and
+he burrowed into them musty parchments abundant.
+
+"'By George,' Insley says once, 'I didn't dream there were such things
+in Friendship Village.'
+
+"'Next thing you'll forget they're in the world,' says Alex,
+significant. 'Believe me, a man like you ought not to be down here, or
+over to Indian Mound, either. It's an economic waste. Nature has fitted
+you for her glorious present and you're living along about four decades
+ago. Don't you think of that?...'
+
+"Then the telephone on the library table rang and he answered a call
+from the city. 'Oh, buy it in, buy it in, by all means,' he directs.
+'Yes, cable to-night and buy it in. That,' he says, as he hung up, 'just
+reminds me. There's a first night in London to-night that I've been
+promising myself to see.... What a dog's life a business man leads. By
+the way,' he goes on, 'I've about decided to put in one of our plants
+around here somewhere--a tannery, you know. I've been off to-day looking
+over sites. I wonder if you can't give me some information I'm after
+about land around Indian Mound. I'm not saying anything yet,
+naturally--they'll give other people a bonus to establish in their
+midst, but the smell of leather is too much for them. We always have to
+surprise them into it. But talk about the ultimate good of a town ... if
+a tannery isn't that, what is it?'
+
+"It was after nine o'clock when I got the books set right--I loved to
+handle them, and there was some I always looked in before I put them up
+because some of the pictures give me feelings I remembered, same as
+tasting some things will--spearmint and caraway and coriander. Insley,
+of course, walked down with me. Alex wanted to send us in the
+automobile, but I'm kind of afraid of them in the dark. I can't get it
+out of my head that every bump we go over may be bones. And then I guess
+we both sort of wanted the walk.
+
+"Insley was like another man from the one that had come into the library
+that afternoon, or had been talking to us at Mis' Emmons's the night
+before. Down in the village, on Mis' Emmons's hearth, with Robin sitting
+opposite, it had seemed so easy to know ways to do, and to do them.
+Everything seemed possible, as if the whole stiff-muscled universe could
+be done things to if only everybody would once say to it: _Our_
+universe. But now, after his time with Alex, I knew how everything had
+kind of _tightened_, closed in around him, shot up into high walls.
+Money, tanneries, big deals by cable, moonstones from Java, they almost
+made me slimpse too, and think, What's the use of believing Alex
+Proudfit and me belong to the same universe? So I guessed how Insley was
+feeling, ready to believe that he had got showed up to himself in his
+true light, as a young, emotioning creature who dreams of getting
+everybody to belong together, and yet can't find no good way. And Alex
+Proudfit's parting words must of followed him down the drive and out on
+to the Plank Road:--
+
+"'Take my advice. Don't spend yourself on this blessed little hole. It's
+dear to me, but it _is_ a hole ... eh? You won't get any thanks for it.
+Ten to one they'll turn on you if you try to be one of them. Get out of
+here as soon as possible, and be in the real world! This is just
+make-believing--and really, you know, you're too fine a sort to throw
+yourself away like this. Old Nature will take care of the town in good
+time without you. Trust her!'
+
+"Sometimes something happens to make the world seem different from what
+we thought it was. Them times catch all of us--when we feel like we'd
+been let down gentle from some high foot-path where we'd been going
+along, and instead had been set to walk a hard road in a silence that
+pointed its finger at us. If we get really knocked down sudden from a
+high foot-path, we can most generally pick ourselves up and rally. But
+when we've been let down gentle by arguments that seem convincing, and
+by folks that seem to know the world better than we do, then's the time
+when there ain't much of any rally to us. If we're any good, I s'pose we
+can climb back without rallying. Rallying gives some spring to the
+climb, but just straight dog-climbing will get us there, too.
+
+"It was a lovely July night, with June not quite out of the world yet.
+There was that after-dark light in the sky that makes you feel that the
+sky is going to stay lit up behind and shining through all night, as if
+the time was so beautiful that celestial beings must be staying awake to
+watch it, and to keep the sky lit and turned down low.... We walked
+along the Plank Road pretty still, because I guessed how Insley's own
+thoughts was conversation enough for him; but when we got a ways down,
+he kind of reached out with his mind for something and me being near by,
+his mind clutched at me.
+
+"'What if it _is_ so, Miss Marsh?' he says. 'What if the only thing for
+us to do is to tend to personal morality and an occasional lift to an
+under dog or two--"if he deserves it." What if that's all--they meant us
+to do?'
+
+"It's awful hard giving a reason for your chief notions. It's like
+describing a rose by the tape-measure.
+
+"'Shucks!' I says only. 'Look up at the stars. I don't believe it.'
+
+"He laughed a little, and he did look up at them, but still I knew how
+he felt. And even the stars that night looked awful detached and able to
+take care of themselves. And they were a-shining down on the Plank Road
+that would get to be Daphne Street and go about its business of leading
+to private homes--_private_ homes. The village, that little cluster of
+lights ahead there, seemed just shutting anybody else out, going its own
+way, kind of mocking anybody for any idea of getting really inside it.
+It was plain enough that Insley had nothing to hope for from Alex
+Proudfit. And Alex's serene sureness that Nature needed nobody to help,
+his real self-satisfied looking on at processes which no man could
+really hurry up--my, but they made you feel cheap, and too many of
+yourself, and like none of you had a license to take a-hold. For a
+second I caught myself wondering. Maybe Nature--stars and streets and
+processes--_could_ work it out without us.
+
+"Something come against my foot. I pushed at it, and then bent over and
+touched it. It was warm and yieldy, and I lifted it up. And it was a
+puppy that wriggled its body unbelievable and flopped on to my arm its
+inch and a quarter of tail.
+
+"'Look at,' I says to Insley, which, of course, he couldn't do; but I
+put the little thing over into his hands.
+
+"'Well, little brother,' says he. 'Running away?'
+
+"We was just in front of the Cadozas', a tumble-down house halfway
+between Proudfit House and the village. It looked like the puppy might
+belong there, so we turned in there with it. I'd always sort of dreaded
+the house, setting in back among lilacs and locusts and never lit up.
+When I stopped to think of it, I never seemed to remember much about
+those lilacs and locusts blooming--I suppose they did, but nobody caught
+them at it often. Some houses you always think of with their lilacs and
+locusts and wisteria and hollyhocks going all the time; and some you
+never seem to connect up with being in bloom at all. Some houses you
+always seem to think of as being lit up to most of their windows, and
+some you can't call to mind as showing any way but dark. The Cadozas'
+was one of the unblossoming, dark kind, and awful ramshackle, besides.
+I always use' to think it looked like it was waiting for some kind of
+happening, I didn't know what. And sometimes when I come by there in the
+dark, I used to think: It ain't happened yet.
+
+"We went around to the back door to rap, and Mis' Cadoza opened it--a
+slovenly looking woman she is, with no teeth much, and looking like what
+hair she's got is a burden to her. I remember how she stood there
+against a background of mussy kitchen that made you feel as if you'd
+turned something away wrong side out to where it wasn't meant to be
+looked at.
+
+"'Is it yours, Mis' Cadoza?' I says, Insley holding out the puppy.
+
+"'Murder, it's Patsy,' says Mis' Cadoza. 'Give 'm here--he must of
+followed Spudge off. Oh, it's you, Miss Marsh.'
+
+"Over by the cook stove in the corner I see past her to something that
+made me bound to go inside a minute. It was a bed, all frowzy and
+tumbled, and in it was laying a little boy.
+
+"'Why,' I says, 'I heard Eph was in bed. What's the matter with him?'
+And I went right in, past his mother, like I was a born guest. She drew
+off, sort of grudging--she never liked any of us to go there, except
+when some of them died, which they was always doing. 'Come in and see
+Eph, Mr. Insley,' I says, and introduced him.
+
+"The little boy wasn't above eight years old and he wasn't above six
+years big.... He was laying real still, with his arms out of bed, and
+his little thin hands flat down on the dark covers. His eyes, looking up
+at us, watching, made me think of some trapped thing.
+
+"'Well, little brother,' says Insley, 'what's the trouble?'
+
+"Mis' Cadoza come and stood at the foot of the bed and jerked at the top
+covers.
+
+"'I've put him in the bed,' she says, 'because I'm wore out lifting him
+around. An' I've got the bed out here because I can't trapse back an'
+forth waitin' on him.'
+
+"'Is he a cripple?' asks Insley, low. I liked so much to hear his
+voice--it was as if it lifted and lowered itself in his throat without
+his bothering to tell it which kind it was time to do. And I never heard
+his voice make a mistake.
+
+"'Cripple?' says Mis' Cadoza, in her kind of undressed voice. 'No. He
+fell in a tub of hot water years ago, and his left leg is witherin' up.'
+
+"'Let me see it,' says Insley, and pulled the covers back without
+waiting.
+
+"There ain't nothing more wonderful than a strong, capable, quick human
+hand doing something it knows how to do. Insley's hands touched over the
+poor little leg of the child until I expected to see it get well right
+there under his fingers. He felt the cords of the knee and then looked
+up at the mother.
+
+"'Haven't they told you,' he says, 'that if he has an operation on his
+knee, you can have a chance at saving the leg? I knew a case very like
+this where the leg was saved.'
+
+"'I ain't been to see nobody about it,' says Mis' Cadoza, leaving her
+mouth open afterwards, like she does. 'What's the good? I can't pay for
+no operation on him. I got all I can do to keep 'm alive.'
+
+"Eph moved a little, and something fell down on the floor. Mis' Cadoza
+pounced on it.
+
+"'Ain't I forbid you?' she says, angry, and held out to us what she'd
+picked up--a little dab of wet earth. 'He digs up all my house plants,'
+she scolds, like some sort of machinery grating down on one place
+continual, 'an' he hauls the dirt out and lays there an' makes
+_figgers_. The idear! Gettin' the sheets a sight....'
+
+"The child looked over at us, defiant. He spoke for the first time, and
+I was surprised to hear how kind of grown-up his voice was.
+
+"'I can get 'em to look like faces,' he says. 'I don't care what _she_
+says.'
+
+"'Show us,' commands Insley.
+
+"He got back the bit of earth from Mis' Cadoza, and found a paper for
+the crumbs, and pillowed the boy up and sat beside him. The thin, dirty
+little hands went to work as eager as birds pecking, and on the earth
+that he packed in his palm he made, with his thumb nail and a pen handle
+from under his pillow, a face--a boy's face, that had in it something
+that looked at you. 'But I can never get 'em to look the same way two
+times,' he says to us, shy.
+
+"'He's most killed my Lady Washington geranium draggin' the clay out
+from under the roots,' Mis' Cadoza put in, resentful.
+
+"Insley sort of sweeps around and looks acrost at her, deep and gentle,
+and like he understood about her boy and her geranium considerable
+better than she did.
+
+"'He won't do it any more,' he says. 'He'll have something better.'
+
+"The boy looked up at him. 'What?' he asks.
+
+"'Clay,' says Insley, 'in a box. With things for you to make the clay
+like. Do you want that?'
+
+"The boy kind of curled down in his pillow and come as near to shuffling
+as he could in the bed, and he hadn't an idea what to say. But I tell
+you, his eyes, they wasn't like any trapped thing any more; they was
+regular _boy's_ eyes, lit up about something.
+
+"'Mrs. Cadoza,' Insley says, 'will you do something for me? We're trying
+to get together a little shrubbery, over at the college. May I come in
+and get some lilac roots from you some day?'
+
+"Mis' Cadoza looked at him--and looked. I don't s'pose it had ever come
+to her before that anybody would want anything she had or anything she
+could do.
+
+"'Why, sure,' she says, only. 'Sure, you can, Mr. What's-name.'
+
+"And then Insley put out his hand, and she took it, I noted special. I
+donno as I ever see anybody shake hands with her before, excep' when
+somebody was gettin' buried out of her house.
+
+"When we got out on the road again, I noticed that Insley went swinging
+along so's I could hardly keep up with him; and he done it sort of
+automatic, and like it was natural to him. I didn't say anything. If
+I've learned one thing living out and in among human beings, it's that
+if you don't do your own keeping still at the right time, nobody else is
+going to do it for you. He spoke up after a minute like I thought he
+would; and he spoke up buoyant--kind of a reverent buoyant:--
+
+"'I don't believe we're discharged from the universe, after all,' he
+says, and laughed a little. 'I believe we've still got our job.'
+
+"I looked 'way down the Plank Road, on its way to its business of being
+Daphne Street, and it come to me that neither the one nor the other
+stopped in Friendship Village. But they led on out, down past the wood
+lots and the Pump pasture and across the tracks and up the hill, and
+right off into that sky that somebody was keeping lit up and turned down
+low. And I said something that I'd thought before:
+
+"'Ain't it,' I says, 'like sometimes everybody in the world come and
+stood right close up beside of you, and spoke through the walls of you
+for something inside of you to come out and be there with them?'
+
+"'That's it,' he says, only. 'That's it.' But I see his mind nipped onto
+what mine meant, and tied it in the right place.
+
+"When we got to Mis' Emmons's corner, I turned off from Daphne Street
+to go that way, because I'd told her I'd look in that night and see what
+they'd bought in town. It was late, for the village, but Mis' Emmons
+never minded that. The living-room light was showing through the
+curtains, and Insley, saying good night to me, looked towards the
+windows awful wistful. I guessed why. It was part because he felt as if
+he must see Robin Sidney and they must talk over together what Alex
+Proudfit had said to him. And part it was just plain because he wanted
+to see her again.
+
+"'Why don't you come in a minute,' I says, 'and ask after Christopher?
+Then you can see me home.'
+
+"'Wouldn't they mind it being late?' he asks.
+
+"I couldn't help smiling at that. Once Mis' Emmons had called us all up
+by telephone at ten o'clock at night to invite us to her house two days
+later. She explained afterwards that she hadn't looked at the clock for
+a week, but if she had, she might have called us just the same. 'For my
+life,' she says, 'I _can't_ be afraid of ten o'clock. Indeed, I rather
+like it.' I told him this, while we was walking in from her gate.
+
+"'Mrs. Emmons,' he says, when she come to the door, 'I've come because I
+hear that you like ten o'clock, and so do I. I wanted to ask if you've
+ever been able to make it last?'
+
+"'No,' she says. 'I prefer a new one every night--and this one to-night
+is an exceptionally good one.'
+
+"She always answered back so pretty. I feel glad when folks can. It's
+like they had an extra brain to 'em.
+
+"Insley went in, and he sort of filled up the whole room, the way some
+men do. He wasn't so awful big, either. But he was pervading.
+Christopher had gone to bed, and Robin Sidney was sitting there near a
+big crock of hollyhocks--she could make the centre and life of a room a
+crock full of flowers just as you can make it a fireplace.
+
+"'Come in,' she says, 'and see what we bought Christopher. I wanted to
+put him in black velvet knickerbockers or silver armour, but Aunt
+Eleanor has bought chiefly khaki middies. She's such a sensible
+relative.'
+
+"'What are we going to do with him?' Insley asks. I loved the way he
+always said 'we' about everything. Not 'they' or 'you,' but always,
+'What are _we_ going to do.'
+
+"'I'll keep him awhile,' Mis' Emmons says, 'and see what develops. If I
+weren't going to Europe this fall--but something may happen. Things do.
+Calliope,' she says to me, 'did I buy what I ought to have bought?'
+
+"I went over to see the things spread out on the table, and Insley
+turned round to where Robin was. I don't really believe he had been very
+far away from where she was since the night before, when Christopher
+come. And he got right into what he had to say, like he was impatient
+for the sympathy in her eyes and in her voice.
+
+"'I must tell you,' he says. 'I could hardly wait to tell you. Isn't it
+great to be knocked down and picked up again, without having to get back
+on your own feet. I--wanted to tell you.'
+
+"'Tell me,' she says. And she looked at him in her nice, girl way that
+lent him her eyes in good faith for just a minute and then took them
+back again.
+
+"'I've been to see Alex Proudfit,' he said. 'I've dined with him.'
+
+"I don't think she said anything at all, but Insley went on, absorbed in
+what he was saying.
+
+"'I talked with him,' he says, 'about what we talked of last night--the
+things to do, here in the village. I thought he might care--I was
+foolish enough for that. Have you ever tried to open a door in a solid
+wall? When I left there, I felt as if I'd tried just that. Seriously,
+have you ever tried to talk about the way things are going to be and to
+talk about it to a perfectly satisfied man?'
+
+"Robin leaned forward, but I guess he thought that was because of her
+sympathy. He went right on:--
+
+"'I want never to speak of this to anyone else, but I can't help telling
+you. You--understand. You know what I'm driving at. Alex Proudfit is a
+good man--as men are counted good. And he's a perfect host, a
+fascinating companion. But he's a type of the most dangerous selfishness
+that walks the world--'
+
+"Robin suddenly laid her hand, just for a flash, on Insley's arm.
+
+"'You mustn't tell me,' she says. 'I ought to have told you before. Alex
+Proudfit--I'm going to be Alex Proudfit's wife.'
+
+
+
+
+V
+
+
+"In the next days things happened that none of us Friendship Village
+ladies is likely ever to forget. Some of the things was nice and some
+was exciting, and some was the kind that's nice after you've got the
+introduction wore off; but all of them was memorable. And most all of
+them was the kind that when you're on the train looking out the car
+window, or when you're home sitting in the dusk before it's time to
+light the lamp, you fall to thinking about and smiling over, and you
+have them always around with you, same as heirlooms you've got ready for
+yourself.
+
+"One of these was the Fourth of July that year. It fell a few days after
+Alex Proudfit come, and the last of the days was full of his guests
+arriving to the house party. The two Proudfit cars was racking back and
+forth to the station all day long, and Jimmy Sturgis, he went near crazy
+with getting the baggage up. I never see such a lot of baggage. 'Land,
+land,' says Mis' Toplady, peeking out her window at it, 'you'd think
+they was all trees and they'd come bringing extra sets of branches,
+regular forest size.' Mis' Emmons and Robin and Christopher went up the
+night before the Fourth--Mis' Emmons was going to do the chaperoning,
+and Alex had asked me to be up there all I could to help him. He knows
+how I love to have a hand in things. However, I couldn't be there right
+at first, because getting ready for the Fourth of July was just then in
+full swing.
+
+"Do you know what it is to want to do over again something that you
+ain't done for years and years? I don't care what it is--whether it's
+wanting to be back sitting around the dinner table of your home when you
+was twelve, and them that was there aren't there now; or whether it's
+rocking in the cool of the day on the front porch of some old house that
+got tore down long ago; or whether it's walking along a road you use' to
+know every fence post of; or fishing from a stream that's dried up or
+damned these twenty years; or eating spice' currants or pickle' peaches
+that there aren't none put up like them now; or hearing a voice in a
+glee club that don't sing no more, or milking a dead cow that _wasn't_
+dead on the spring mornings you mean about--no, sir, I don't care what
+one of them all it happens to be, if you know what it is to want to do
+it again and can't, 'count of death and distance and long-ago-ness,
+then I tell you you know one of the lonesomest, hurtingest feelings the
+human heart can, sole outside of the awful things. And that was what had
+got the matter with me awhile ago.
+
+"It had come on me in the meeting of townspeople called by Silas Sykes a
+few weeks before, to discuss how Friendship Village should celebrate the
+Fourth. We hadn't had a Fourth in the village in years. Seeing the
+Fourth and the Cemetery was so closely connected, late years, Sodality
+had took a hand in the matter and had got fire-crackers and pistols
+voted out of town, part by having family fingers blowed off and clothes
+scorched full of holes, and part through Silas and the other dealers
+admitting they wan't no money in the stuff and they'd be glad to be
+prevented by law from having to sell it. So we shut down on it the year
+after little Spudge Cadoza bit down on a cap to see if it'd go off, and
+it done so. But we see we'd made the mistake of not hatching up
+something to take the place of the noise, because the boys and girls all
+went off to the next-town Fourths and come home blowed up and scorched
+off, anyway. And some of the towns, especially Red Barns, that we can
+see from Friendship Village when it's clear, was feeling awful touchy
+and chip-shouldered towards us, and their two weekly papers was saying
+we borrowed our year's supply of patriotism off the county, and sponged
+on public spirit, and like that. So the general Friendship feeling was
+that we'd ought to have a doings this year, and Postmaster Sykes, that
+ain't so much public spirited as he is professional leading
+citizen,--platform introducer of all visiting orators and so on,--he
+called a mass-meeting to decide what to do.
+
+"Mis' Sykes, she was awful interested, too, through being a born leader
+and up in arms most of the time to do something new. And this year she
+was anxious to get up something fancy to impress her niece with--the new
+niece that was coming to visit her, and that none of us had ever see,
+and that the Sykes's themselves had only just developed. Seems she was
+looking for her family tree and she wrote to Mis' Sykes about being
+connect'. And the letter seemed so swell, and the address so
+mouth-melting and stylish that Mis' Sykes up and invited her to
+Friendship Village to look herself up in their Bible, Born and Died
+part.
+
+"The very night of that public mass-meeting Miss Beryl Sessions--such
+was the niece's name--come in on the Through, and Mis' Sykes, she
+snapped her up from the supper table to bring her to the meeting and
+show her off, all brimming with the blood-is-thicker-than-water
+sentiments due to a niece that looked like that. For I never see
+sweller. And being in the Glee Club I set where I got a good view when
+Mis' Sykes rustled into the meeting, last minute, in her best black
+cashmere, though it was an occasion when the rest of us would wear our
+serges and alapacas, and Mis' Sykes knew it. All us ladies see them both
+and took in every stitch they had on without letting on to unpack a
+glance, and we see that the niece was wearing the kind of a dress that
+was to ours what mince-pie is to dried apple, and I couldn't blame Mis'
+Sykes for showing her off, human.
+
+"Silas had had Dr. June open the meeting with prayer, and I can't feel
+that this was so much reverence in Silas as that he isn't real
+parliamentary nor yet real knowledgeable about what to do with his
+hands, and prayer sort of broke the ice for him. That's the way Silas
+is.
+
+"'Folks,' says he, 'we're here to consider the advisability of bein'
+patriotic this year. Of having a doings that'll shame the other towns
+around for their half-an'-half way of giving things. Of making the
+glorious Fourth a real business bringer. Of having a speech that'll
+bring in the country trade--the Honourable Thaddeus Hyslop has been
+named by some. And of getting our city put in the class of the wide
+awake and the hustlers and the up-to-date and doing. It's a grand chance
+we've passed up for years. What are we going to do for ourselves this
+year? To decide it is the purpose of this mass-meetin'. Sentiments are
+now in order.'
+
+"Silas set down with a kitterin' glance to his new niece that he was
+host and uncle of and pleased to be put in a good light before, first
+thing so.
+
+"Several men hopped up--Timothy Toplady saying that Friendship Village
+was a city in all but name and numbers, and why not prove it to the
+other towns? Jimmy Sturgis that takes tintypes, besides running the 'bus
+and was all primed for a day full of both--'A glorious Fourth,' says he,
+'would be money in our pockets.' And the farm machinery and furniture
+dealers, and Gekerjeck, that has the drug store and the ice-cream
+fountain, and others, they spoke the same. Insley had to be to the
+college that night, or I don't believe the meeting would have gone the
+way it did go. For the first line and chorus of everything that all the
+men present said never varied:--
+
+"'The Fourth for a business bringer.'
+
+"It was Threat Hubbelthwait that finally made the motion, and he wasn't
+real sober, like he usually ain't, but he wound up on the key-note:--
+
+"'I sold two hundred and four lunches the last Fourth we hed in
+Friendship Village,' says he, pounding his palm with his fist, 'an' I
+move you that we celebrate this comin' Fourth like the blazes.'
+
+"And though Silas softened it down some in putting it, still that was
+substantially the sentiment that went through at that mass-meeting, that
+was real pleased with itself because of.
+
+"Well, us ladies hadn't taken no part. It ain't our custom to appear
+much on our feet at public gatherings, unless to read reports of a
+year's work, and so that night we never moved a motion. But we looked at
+each other, and us ladies has got so we understand each other's
+eyebrows. And we knew, one and all, that we was ashamed of the men and
+ashamed of their sentiments. But the rest didn't like to speak out,
+'count of being married to them. And I didn't like to, 'count of not
+being.
+
+"But when they got to discussing ways and means of celebrating, a woman
+did get onto her feet, and a little lilt of interest run round the room
+like wind. It was Miss Beryl Sessions, the niece, that stood up like
+you'd unwrapped your new fashion magazine and unrolled her off'n the
+front page.
+
+"'I wonder,' says she--and her voice went all sweet and chirpy and
+interested, 'whether it would amuse you to know some ways we took to
+celebrate the Fourth of July last year at home ...' and while the men
+set paying attention to her appearance and thinking they was paying
+attention to her words alone, she went on to tell them how 'at home' the
+whole town had joined in a great, Fourth of July garden party on the
+village 'common,' with a band and lanterns and fireworks at night, and a
+big marquee in the middle, full of ice-cream. 'We made it,' she wound
+up, 'a real social occasion, a town party with everybody invited. And
+the business houses said that it paid them over and over.'
+
+"Well, of course that went with the men. Land, but men is easy tamed, so
+be the tameress is somebody they ain't used to and is gifted with a good
+dress and a kind of a 'scalloped air. But when she also has some idea of
+business they go down and don't know it. 'Why, I should think that'd
+take here like a warm meal,' says Timothy Toplady, instant--and I see
+Mis' Amanda Toplady's chin come home to place like she'd heard Timothy
+making love to another woman. 'Novel as the dickens,' says Simon
+Gekerjeck. 'Move we adopt it.' And so they done.
+
+"While they was appointing committees I set up there in the Glee Club
+feeling blacker and blacker. Coming down to the meeting that night, I
+recollect I'd been extra gentle in my mind over the whole celebration
+idea. Walking along in the seven-o'clock light, with the sun shining
+east on Daphne Street and folks all streaming to the town-meeting, and
+me sensing what it was going to be for, I'd got all worked up to 'most a
+Declaration of Independence lump in my throat. When I went in the door
+to the meeting, little Spudge Cadoza and some other children was hanging
+around the steps and Silas Sykes was driving them away; and it come to
+me how deathly ridiculous that was, to be driving _children_ away from a
+meeting like that, when children is what such meetings is for; and I'd
+got to thinking of all the things Insley was hoping for us, and I'd been
+real lifted up on to places for glory. And here down had come the men
+with their talk about a _paying_ Fourth, and here was Miss Beryl
+Sessions showing us how to celebrate in a way that seemed to me real
+sweet but not so very patriotic. It was then that all of a sudden it
+seemed to me I'd die, because I wanted so much to feel the way I'd use
+to feel when it was going to be the Fourth o' July. And when they sung
+'Star Spangled Banner' to go home on and all stood up to the sentiment,
+I couldn't open my mouth. I can't go folks that stands up and carols
+national tunes and then talks about having a Fourth that'll be a real
+business bringer.
+
+"'What'd you think of the meeting?' says Mis' Toplady, low, to me on the
+way out.
+
+"'I think,' says I, frank, 'it was darn.'
+
+"'There's just exactly what we all think,' says Mis' Toplady, in a
+whisper.
+
+"But all the same, preparations was gone into head first. Most of us was
+put on to from one to five committees--I mean most of them that works.
+The rest of the town was setting by, watching it be done for them,
+serene or snarling, according to their lights. Of course us ladies
+worked, not being them that goes to a meeting an' sets with their mouths
+shut and then comes out and kicks at what the meetin' done. Yet, though
+we wan't made out of that kind of meal, we spoke our minds to each
+other, private.
+
+"'What under the canopy _is_ a marquee?' asks Mis' Amanda Toplady, when
+we met at her house to plan about refreshments.
+
+"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke right up.
+
+"'Why, it's a finger ring,' she says. 'One of them with stones running
+the long way. The minister's wife's got a blue stone one....'
+
+"'Finger ring!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, scornful. 'It's a title. That's
+what it is. From England.'
+
+"We looked at them both, perplexish. Mis' Holcomb is always up on
+things--it was her that went into short sleeves when the rest of us was
+still crocheting cuff turnovers, unconscious as the dead. But Mis'
+Uppers had been the Mayor's wife, and though he'd run away, 'count o'
+some money matter, still a title is a title, an' we thought Mis' Uppers
+had ought to know.
+
+"Then Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, she spoke up timid. 'I
+see,' she says, 'in the _Caterer's Gazette_ a picture called "Marquee
+Decorated for Fête." The picture wan't nothing but a striped tent. Could
+a tent have anything to do with it?'
+
+"'Pity sakes, no,' says Mis' Uppers. 'This is somethin' real city done,
+Abagail.'
+
+"We worked on what we could, but we all felt kind of lost and left out
+of it, and like we was tinkering with tools we didn't know the names of
+and a-making something we wasn't going to know how to use. And when the
+article about our Fourth flared out in the _Friendship Daily_ and Red
+Barns and Indian Mound weeklies, we felt worse than we had before:
+'Garden Party.' 'All Day Fête.' '_Al Fresco_ Celebration,' the editors
+had wrote it up.
+
+"'All _what_?' says Mis' Uppers, listening irritable to the last one. 'I
+can't catch that word no more'n a rabbit.'
+
+"'It's a French word,' Mis' Holcomb told her, superior. 'Seems to me
+I've heard it means a failure. It's a funny way to put it, ain't it? I
+bet, though, that's what it'll be.'
+
+"But the men, my, the men thought they was doing things right. The
+Committee on Orator, with Silas for rudder, had voted itself Fifty
+Dollars to squander on the speech, and they had engaged the Honourable
+Thaddeus Hyslop, that they'd hoped to, and that was formerly in our
+legislature, to be the orator of the day; they put up a platform and
+seats on the 'common'--that wan't nothing but the market where loads of
+wood stood to be sold; they was a-going to cut evergreens and plant them
+there for the day; the Committee on Fireworks was a-going to buy set
+pieces for the evening; they was a-going to raise Ned. Somebody that was
+on one of the committees wanted to have some sort of historic scenes,
+but the men wouldn't hear to it, because that would take away them that
+had to do the business in the stores; no caluthumpians, no grand basket
+dinner--just the garden party, real sweet, with Miss Beryl Sessions and
+a marquee full of ice-cream that the ladies was to make.
+
+"'It sounds sort of sacrilegious to me,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'connectin'
+the Fourth up with society and secular doin's. When I was young, my
+understandin' of a garden party would of been somethin' worldly. Now it
+seems it's patriotic. Well, I wonder how it's believed to be in the
+sight of the Lord?'
+
+"But whether it was right or whether it was wrong, none of it rung like
+it had ought to of rang. They wan't no _glow_ to it. We all went around
+like getting supper on wash-day, and not like getting up a meal for
+folks that meant a lot to us. It wan't going to be any such Fourth as
+I'd meant about and wanted to have come back. The day come on a pacing,
+and the nearer it come, the worse all us ladies felt. And by a few days
+before it, when our final committee meeting come off in Abagail Arnold's
+home bakery, back room, 'count of being central, we was all blue as the
+grave, and I donno but bluer. We set waiting for Silas that was having
+a long-distance call, and Abagail was putting in the time frosting dark
+cakes in the same room. We was most all there but the niece Miss Beryl
+Sessions. She had gone home, but she was coming back on the Fourth in an
+automobile full o' city folks.
+
+"'The _marquee's_ come,' says Mis' Holcomb, throwing out the word
+clickish.
+
+"Nobody said anything. Seems it _was_ a tent all along.
+
+"'Silas has got in an extra boy for the day,' says Mis' Sykes,
+complacent. 'It's the littlest Cadoza boy, Spudge. He's goin' to walk up
+an' down Daphne Street all day, with a Prize Coffee board on his back.'
+
+"'Where's Spudge's Fourth comin' in?' I couldn't help askin'.
+
+"Mis' Sykes stared. She always could look you down, but she's got a much
+flatter, thicker stare since her niece come. 'What's them kind o' folks
+_for_ but such work?' says she, puckering.
+
+"'Oh, I donno, I donno,' says I. 'I thought mebbe they was partly made
+to thank the Lord for bein' born free.'
+
+"'How unpractical you talk, Calliope,' she says.
+
+"'I donno that word,' says I, reckless from being pent up. 'But it
+seems like a liberty-lovin' people had ought to hev _one_ day to love
+liberty on an' not tote groceries and boards and such.'
+
+"'_Don't it!_' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, explosive.
+
+"'What you talking?' says Mis' Sykes, cold. 'Don't you know the Fourth
+of July can be made one of the best days of the year for your own town's
+good? What's that if it ain't patriotic?'
+
+"'It's Yankee shrewd,' says I, snapping some, 'that's what it is. It
+ain't Yankee spirited, by a long shot.'
+
+"'"_By a long shot_,"' quotes Mis' Sykes, withering. She always was
+death on wording, and she was far more death after her niece come. But I
+always thought, and I think now, that correcting your advisary's grammar
+is like telling him there's a smooch on his nose, and they ain't either
+of them parliamental _or_ decent.
+
+"Mis' Uppers sighed. 'The whole thing,' says she, candid, 'sounds to me
+like Fourth o' July in Europe or somewheres. No get-up-an'-get anywheres
+to it. What do they do in Europe on the Fourth o' July, anyway?' she
+wondered. 'I donno's I ever read.'
+
+"'I donno, either,' says Mis' Holcomb, dark, 'but I bet you it's one of
+these All Frost celebrations--or whatever it is they say.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady set drying her feet by Abagail's stove, and she looked
+regular down in the mouth. 'Well, sir,' she said, 'a Fourth o' July all
+rosettes an' ribbins so don't sound to me one bit like the regular
+Fourth at all. It don't sound to me no more'n the third--or the fifth.'
+
+"I was getting that same homesick feeling that I'd had off and on all
+through the getting ready, that hankering for the old kinds of Fourths
+of Julys when I was a little girl. When us girls had a quarter apiece to
+spend, and father'd cover the quarter with his hands on the gate-post
+for us to guess them; and when the boys picked up scrap-iron and sold
+old rubbers to get their Fourth money. It wan't so much what we used to
+do that I wanted back as it was the _feeling_. Why, none of our spines
+use' to be laid down good and flat in our backs once all day long. And I
+wisht what I'd wisht more than once since the mass-meeting, that some of
+us ladies had of took hold of that Fourth and had run it so's 'twould of
+been like you mean 'way inside when you say 'The Fourth of July'--and
+that death and distance and long-ago-ness is awful in the way of.
+
+"'We'd ought to of had a grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods,' I
+says, restless.
+
+"'An' a p'rade,' says Mis' Toplady. 'I donno nothin' that makes me feel
+more patriotic than the minute before the p'rade comes by.'
+
+"'An' children in the Fourth somehow,' Mis' Uppers says. 'Land, children
+is who it's for, anyhow,' she says, like I'd been thinking; 'an' all
+we've ever done for 'em about it is to leave 'em kill 'emselves with
+it.'
+
+"Well, it was there, just there, and before Mis' Sykes could dicker a
+reply that in come tearing her husband from his long-distance
+telephoning, and raced into the room like he hadn't a manner in his kit.
+
+"'We're all over with,' Silas shouts. 'It's all done for! Thaddeus
+Hyslop is smashed an' bleedin'. He can't come. We ain't got no speech.
+His automobile's turned over on top of his last speakin' place.
+Everybody else that ain't one-horse is sure to be got for somewheres
+else. Our Fourth of July is rooned. We're done for. The editor's gettin'
+it in the _Weekly_ so's to warn the county. We'll be the Laughing Stock.
+Dang the luck!' says Silas; 'why don't some o' you say somethin'?'
+
+"But it wasn't all because Silas was doing it all that the men didn't
+talk, because when he'd stopped, they all stood there with their mouths
+open and never said a word. Seems to me I did hear Timothy Toplady bring
+out, 'Blisterin' Benson,' but nobody offered nothing more fertile. That
+is, nobody of the men did. But 'most before I got my thoughts together I
+heard two feet of a chair come down onto the floor, and Mis' Amanda
+Toplady stood up there by Abagail's cook stove, and she took the griddle
+lifter and struck light on the side of the pipe.
+
+"'Hurrah!' she says. 'Now we can have a real Fourth. A Fourth that does
+as a Fourth is.'
+
+"'What you talkin', Amanda Toplady?' says Silas, crisp; and ''Mandy,
+what the blazes do you mean?' says Timothy, her lawful lord. But Mis'
+Toplady didn't mind them, nor mind Mis' Sykes, that was staring at her
+flat and thick.
+
+"'I mean,' says Mis' Toplady, reckless, 'I been sick to death of the
+idea of a Fourth with no spirit to it. I mean I been sick to death of a
+Fourth that's all starched white dresses an' company manners an' no
+hurrahs anywheres about it. An' us ladies, most all of us, feels the
+same. We didn't like to press in, bein' you men done the original
+plannin', an' so not one of us has said "P'rade," nor nothin' else to
+you. But now that your orator has fell through on himself, you men just
+leave us ladies in on this thing to do more'n take orders, an' you
+needn't be the Laughin' Stock o' nothin' an' nobody. I guess you'll all
+stand by me. What say, ladies?'
+
+"Well, sir, you'd ought to of heard us. We joined in like a patch of
+grasshoppers singing. They wasn't one of us that hadn't been dying to
+get our hands on that Fourth and make it a Fourth full of unction and
+oil of joy, like the Bible said, and must of meant what we meant.
+
+"'Oh, ladies,' I remember I says, fervent, 'I feel like we could make a
+Fourth o' July just like stirrin' up a white cake, so be we was let.'
+
+"'What d' you know about managin' a Fourth?' snarls Silas. 'You'll have
+us all in the hole. You'll have us shellin' out of our own pockets to
+make up--'
+
+"Mis' Toplady whirled on him. 'Would you druther have Red Barns an'
+Indian Mound a-jumpin' on you through the weekly press for bein'
+bluffers, an' callin' us cheap an' like that, or would you druther not?'
+she put it to him.
+
+"'Dang it,' says Silas, 'I never tried to do a thing for this town that
+it didn't lay down an' roll all over me. I wish I was dead.'
+
+"'You wan't tryin' to do this thing for this town,' says Mis' Toplady
+back at him, like the wind. 'You was tryin' to do it for the _stores_
+of this town, an' you know it. You was tryin' to ride the Fourth for a
+horse to the waterin' trough o' good business, an' you know it, Silas
+Sykes,' says she, 'an' so was Jimmy and Threat an' all of you. The hull
+country tries to get behind the Fourth of July an' make money over its
+back like a counter. It ain't what was meant, an' us ladies felt it all
+along. An' neither was it meant for a garden party day alone, though
+_that_,' says Mis' Toplady, gracious, 'is a real sweet side idea. An'
+Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Sessions had ought to go on an' run that part of it,
+bein' the--tent's here,' she could _not_ bring herself to use that other
+word. 'But,' she says, 'that ain't all of a real Fourth, nor yet a
+speech ain't, though he did use to be in the legislature. Them things
+alone don't make a real flag, liberty-praisin' Fourth, to me nor to none
+of us.'
+
+"'Well,' says Silas, sour, 'what you goin' to _do_ if the men decides to
+let you try this?'
+
+"'That ain't the way,' says Mis' Toplady, like a flash; 'it ain't for
+the men to _let us do_ nothin'. It's for us all to do it together, yoke
+to yoke, just like everything else ought to be done by us both, an' no
+talk o' "_runnin_'" by either side.'
+
+"'But what's the idee--what's the idee?' says Silas. 'Dang it all,
+somebody's got to hev an idee.'
+
+"'Us ladies has got 'em,' says Mis' Toplady, calm. 'An',' says she, 'one
+o' the first of 'em is that if we have anything to do with runnin' the
+Fourth of our forefathers, then after 10 A.M., all day on that day,
+every business house in town has got to shut down.'
+
+"'What?' says Silas, his voice slippin'. 'Gone crazy-headed, hev ye?'
+
+"'No, Silas,' says Mis' Toplady, 'nor yet hev we gone so graspin' that
+we can't give up a day's trade to take notice of our country.'
+
+"'Lord Harry,' says Silas, 'you can't get a dealer in town to do it, an'
+you know it.'
+
+"'Oh, yes, you can, Silas,' says somebody, brisk. And it was Abagail,
+frosting dark cakes over by the side of the room. 'I was goin' to shut
+up shop, anyway, all day on the Fourth,' Abagail says.
+
+"'An' lose the country trade in lunches?' yells Silas. 'Why, woman,
+you'd be Ten Dollars out o' pocket.'
+
+"'I wan't never one to spend the mornin' thankin' God an' the afternoon
+dippin' oysters,' says Abagail. And Silas scrunched. He done that one
+year when his Thanksgiving oysters come late, and he knew he done it.
+
+"Well, they went over it and over it and tried to think of some other
+way, and tried to hatch up some other speaker without eating up the
+whole Fifty Dollars in telephone tolls, and tried most other things. And
+then we told them what we'd thought of different times, amongst us as
+being features fit for a Fourth in the sight of the Lord and the sight
+of men. And they hemmed and they hawed and they give in about as
+graceful as a clothes-line winds up when you've left it out in the
+sleet, but they did give in and see reason. Timothy last--that's quite
+vain of being firm.
+
+"'If we come out with a one-horse doin's, seems like it'd be worse than
+sittin' down flat-foot failed,' he mourns, grieving.
+
+"Amanda, his wife, give him one of her looks. 'Timothy,' says she,
+'when, since you was married to me, did I ever fail to stodge up a
+company dinner or a spare bed or a shroud when it was needed sudden?
+When did any of us ladies ever fail that's here? Do you sp'ose we're any
+more scant of idees about our own nation?'
+
+"And Timothy had to keep his silence. He knew what she said was the Old
+Testament truth. But I think what really swung them all round was the
+thought of Red Barns and Indian Mound. Imagination of what them two
+weekly papers would say, so be we petered out on our speech and didn't
+offer nothing else, was too much for flesh and blood to bear. And the
+men ended by agreeing to seeing to shutting every business house in
+Friendship Village and they went off to do it,--resolved, but groaning
+some, like men will.
+
+"Mis' Sykes, she made some excuse and went, too. 'I'll run the garden
+party part,' says she. 'My niece an' I'll do that, an' try our best to
+get some novelty into your Fourth. An' we'll preside on the marquee,
+like we'd agreed. More I don't say.'
+
+"But the rest of us, we stayed on there at Abagail's, and we planned
+like mad.
+
+"We didn't look in no journal nor on no woman's page for something new.
+We didn't rush to our City relations for novelties. We didn't try for
+this and that nor grasp at no agony whatever. We just went down deep
+into the inside of our understanding and thought what the Fourth was and
+how them that made it would of wanted it kept. No fingers blowed off nor
+clothes scorched up, no houses burned down, no ear-drums busted
+out--none of them would of been in _their_ programme, and they wan't in
+ours. Some of the things that was in ours we'd got by hearing Insley
+tell what they was doin' other places. Some o' the things he suggested
+to us. Some o' the things we got by just going back and back down the
+years an' _remembering_--not so much what we'd done as the way we use'
+to feel, long ago, when the Fourth was the Fourth and acted like it knew
+it. Some of the things we got by just reaching forward and forward, and
+seeing what the Fourth is going to mean to them a hundred years from
+now--so be we do our part. And some of the things we got through sheer
+make-shift woman intelligence, that put its heads together and used
+everything it had, that had anything to do with the nation, or the town,
+or with really living at all the way that first Fourth of July meant
+about, 'way down inside.
+
+"Before it was light on the morning of the Fourth, I woke up, feeling
+all happy and like I wanted to hurry. I was up and dressed before the
+sun was up, and when I opened my front door, I declare it was just like
+the glory of the Lord was out there waiting for me. The street was
+laying all still and simple, like it was ready and waiting for the
+light. Early as it was, Mis' Holcomb was just shaking her breakfast
+table-cloth on her side stoop, and she waved it to me, big and billowy
+and white, like a banner. And I offs with my apron and waved it back,
+and it couldn't of meant no more to either of us if we had been shaking
+out the folds of flags. It was too early for the country wagons to be
+rattling in yet, and they wan't no other sounds--except a little bit of
+a pop now and then over to where Bennie Uppers and little Nick Toplady
+was up and out, throwing torpedoes onto the bricks; and then the birds
+that was trilling an' shouting like mad, till every tree all up and down
+Daphne Street and all up and down the town and the valley was just one
+living singing. And all over everything, like a kind of a weave to it,
+was that something that makes a Sunday morning and some holiday mornings
+better and sweeter and _goldener_ than any other day. I ain't got much
+of a garden, not having any real time to fuss in it, but I walked out
+into the middle of the little patch of pinks and parsley that I have
+got, and I says 'way deep in me, deeper than thinking: 'It don't make no
+manner of differ'nce how much of a fizzle the day ends up with, this,
+here and now, is the way it had ought to start.'
+
+"Never, not if I live till beyond always, will I forget how us ladies'
+hearts was in our mouths when, along about 'leven o'clock, we heard the
+Friendship Village Stonehenge band coming fifing along, and we knew the
+parade was begun. We was all on the market square--hundreds of us, seems
+though. Red Barns and Indian Mound had turned out from side to side of
+themselves, mingling the same as though ploughshares was
+pruning-hooks--or whatever that quotation time is--both towns looking
+for flaws in the day, like enough, but both shutting up about it,
+biblical. Even the marquee, with its red and white stripes, showing
+through the trees, made me feel good. 'Land, land,' Mis' Toplady says,
+'it looks kind of homey and old-fashioned, after all, don't it? I mean
+the--tent,' she says--she would _not_ say the other word; but then I
+guess it made her kind of mad seeing Mis' Sykes bobbing around in there
+in white duck an' white shoes--her that ain't a grandmother sole because
+of Nature and not at all through any lack of her own years. Everything
+was all seeming light and confident--but I tell you we didn't feel so
+confident as we'd meant to when we heard the band a-coming to the tune
+o' 'Hail, Columbia! Happy Land.' And yet now, when I look back on that
+Independence Day procession, it seems like regular floats is no more
+than toy doings beside of it.
+
+"What do you guess us ladies had thought up for our procession,--with
+Insley back of us, letting us think we thought it up alone? Mebbe you'll
+laugh, because it wan't expensive to do; but oh; I think it was nice.
+We'd took everything in the town that done the town's work, and we'd run
+them all together. We headed off with the fire-engine, 'count of the
+glitter--and we'd loaded it down with flags and flowers, and the hook
+and ladder and hose-carts the same, wheels and sides; and flags in the
+rubber caps of the firemen up top. Then we had the two big sprinkling
+carts, wound with bunting, and five-foot flags flying from the seats.
+Then come all the city teams drawn by the city horses--nice, plump
+horses they was, and rosettes on them, and each man had decorated his
+wagon and was driving it in his best clothes. Then come the steam roller
+that Friendship Village and Red Barns and Indian Mound owns together and
+scraps over some, though that didn't appear in its appearance, puffing
+along, with posies on it. Then there was the city electric light repair
+wagon, with a big paper globe for an umbrella, and the electric men
+riding with their leggings on and their spurs, like they climb the
+poles; and behind them the telephone men was riding--because the town
+owns its own telephone, too--and then the four Centrals, in pretty
+shirtwaists, in a double-seated buggy loaded with flowers--the telephone
+office we'd see to it was closed down, too, to have its Fourth, like a
+human being. And marching behind them was the city waterworks men, best
+bib and tucker apiece. And then we hed out the galvanized garbage wagon
+that us ladies hed bought ourselves a year ago, and that wasn't being
+used this year count of the city pleading too poison poor; and it was
+all scrubbed up and garnished and filled with ferns and drove by its own
+driver and the boy that had use' to go along to empty the cans. And then
+of course they was more things--some of them with day fireworks shooting
+up from them--but not the hearse, though we had all we could do to keep
+Timothy Toplady from having it in, 'count of its common public office.
+
+"Well, and then we'd done an innovation--an' this was all Insley's idea,
+and it was him that made us believe we could do it. Coming next, in
+carriages and on foot, was the mayor and the city council and every last
+man or woman that had anything to do with running the city life. They
+was all there--city treasurer, clerk of the court, register of deeds,
+sheriffs, marshals, night-watchmen, health officer, postmaster, janitor
+of the city hall, clerks, secretaries, stenographers, school board, city
+teachers, and every one of the rest--they was all there, just like they
+had belonged in the p'rade the way them framers of the first Fourth of
+July had meant they should fit in: Conscience and all. But some of them
+servants of the town had made money off'n its good roads, and some off'n
+its saloons, and some off'n getting ordinances repealed, and some off'n
+inspecting buildings and sidewalks that they didn't know nothing about,
+and some was making it even then by paving out into the marsh; and some
+in yet other ways that wasn't either real elbow work nor clean head
+work. What else could they do? We'd ask' them to march because they
+represented the town, and rather'n own they _didn't_ represent the town,
+there they was marching; but if some of them didn't step down Daphne
+Street feeling green and sick and sore and right down schoolboy ashamed
+of themselves, then they ain't got the human thrill in them that somehow
+I _cannot_ believe ever dies clear out of nobody. They was a lump in my
+throat for them that had sold themselves, and they was a lump for them
+that hadn't--but oh, the differ'nce in the lumps.
+
+"'Land, land,' I says to Mis' Toplady, 'if we ain't done another thing,
+we've made 'em remember they're servants to Friendship Village--like
+they often forget.'
+
+"'Ain't we?' she says, solemn. 'Ain't we?'
+
+"And then next behind begun the farm things: the threshin' machines and
+reapers and binders and mowers and like that, all drawn by the farm
+horses and drove by their owners and decorated by them, jolly and gay;
+and, too, all the farm horses for miles around--we was going to give a
+donated surprise prize for the best kep' and fed amongst them. And last,
+except for the other two bands sprinkled along, come the leading
+citizens, and who do you guess _they_ was? Not Silas nor Timothy nor
+Eppleby nor even Doctor June, nor our other leading business men and our
+three or four professionals--no, not them; but the real, true, leading
+citizens of Friendship Village and Indian Mound and Red Barns and other
+towns and the farms between--the _children_, over two hundred of them,
+dressed in white if they had it and in dark if they didn't, with or
+without shoes, in rags or out of them, village-tough descended or with
+pew-renting fathers, all the same and together, and carrying a flag and
+singing to the tops of their voices 'Hail, Columbia,' that the bands
+kept a-playing, some out of plumb as to time, but all fervent and
+joyous. It was us women alone that got up that part. My, I like to think
+about it.
+
+"They swung the length of Daphne Street and twice around the market
+square, and they come to a halt in front of the platform. And Doctor
+June stood up before them all, and he prayed like this:--
+
+"'Lord God, that let us start free an' think we was equal, give us to
+help one another to be free an' to get equal, in deed an' in truth.'
+
+"And who do you s'pose we hed to read the Declaration of Independence?
+Little Spudge Cadoza, that Silas had been a-going to hev walk up and
+down Daphne Street with a board on his back--Insley thought of him, and
+we picked him out a-purpose. And though he didn't read it so thrilling
+as Silas would of, it made me feel the way no reading of it has ever
+made me feel before--oh, because it was kind of like we'd snapped up the
+little kid and set him free all over again, even though he wasn't it but
+one day in the year. And it sort of seemed to me that all inside the
+words he read was trumpets and horns telling how much them words was
+_going_ to mean to him and his kind before he'd had time to die. And
+then the Glee Club struck into 'America,' and the whole crowd joined in
+without being expected, and the three bands that was laying over in the
+shade hopped up and struck in, too--and I bet they could of heard us to
+Indian Mound. Leastways to Red Barns, that we can see from Friendship
+Village when it's clear.
+
+"The grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods stays in my head as one
+picture, all full of veal loaf and 'scalloped potato and fruit salad and
+nut-bread and deviled eggs and bake' beans and pickle' peaches and layer
+cake and drop sponge-cake and hot coffee--the kind of a dinner that
+comes crowding to your thought whenever you think 'Dinner' at your
+hungriest. And after we'd took care of everybody's baskets and set them
+under a tree for a lunch towards six, us ladies went back to the market
+square. And over by the marquee we see the men gathered--all but Insley,
+that had slipped away as quick as we begun telling him how much of it
+was due to him. Miss Beryl Sessions had just arrived, in a automobile,
+covered with veils, and she was introducing the other men to her City
+friends. Us ladies sort of kittered around back of them, not wanting to
+press ourselves forward none, and we went up to the door of the marquee
+where, behind the refreshment table, Mis' Sykes was a-standing in her
+white duck.
+
+"'My,' says Mis' Holcomb to her, 'it's all going off nice so far, ain't
+it?'
+
+"'They ain't a great deal the matter with it,' says Mis' Sykes, snappy.
+
+"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Uppers, grieving, 'the parade an' the
+basket dinner seemed to me both just perfect.'
+
+"'The parade done well enough,' says Mis' Sykes, not looking at her. 'I
+donno much about the dinner.'
+
+"And all of a sudden we recollected that she hadn't been over to the
+grand basket dinner at all.
+
+"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Toplady, blank, 'ain't you et nothin'?'
+
+"'My niece,' says Mis' Sykes, dignified, 'didn't get here till now. Who
+was I to leave in the _tent_? I've et,' says she, cold, 'two dishes of
+ice-cream an' two chocolate nut-cakes.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady just swoops over towards her. 'Why, my land,' she says,
+hearty, 'they's stuff an' to spare packed over there under the trees.
+You go right on over and get your dinner. Poke right into any of our
+baskets--ours is grouped around mine that's tied with a red bandanna to
+the handle. And leave us tend the marquee. What say, ladies?'
+
+"And I don't think she even sensed she used that name.
+
+"When she'd gone, I stood a minute in the marquee door looking off
+acrost the market square, hearing Miss Beryl Sessions and the men
+congratulating each other on the glorious Fourth they was a-having, and
+the City folks praising them both sky high.
+
+"'Real nice idee it was,' says Silas, with his hands under his best coat
+tails. 'Nice, tastey, up-to-date Fourth. And cheap to do.'
+
+"'Yes, we all hung out for a good Fourth this year,' says Timothy,
+complacent.
+
+"'It's a simply lovely idea,' says Miss Beryl Sessions, all sweet and
+chirpy and interested, 'this making the Fourth a county party and
+getting everybody in town, so. But tell me: Whatever made you close your
+shops? I thought the Fourth could always be made to pay for itself over
+and over, if the business houses went about it right.'
+
+"'Oh, well,' says Silas, lame but genial, 'we closed up to-day. We kind
+o' thought we would.'
+
+"But I stood looking off acrost the market square, where the children
+was playing, and quoits was being pitched, and the ball game was going
+to commence, and the calathumpians was capering, and most of Red Barns
+and Indian Mound and Friendship Village was mingling, lion and lamb; and
+I looked on along Daphne Street, where little Spudge Cadoza wasn't
+walking with a Prize Coffee board on his back,--and all of a sudden I
+felt just the way I'd wanted to feel, in spite of all the distance and
+long-ago-ness. And I turned and says to the other women inside the
+marquee:--
+
+"'Seems to me,' I says, 'as if the Fourth of July _had_ paid for itself,
+over and over. Oh, don't it to you?'
+
+
+
+
+VI
+
+
+"The new editor of the _Friendship Village Evening Daily_ give a fine
+write-up of the celebration. He printed it on the night after the
+Fourth, not getting out any paper at all on the day that was the day;
+but on the night after that, the news columns of his paper fell flat and
+dead. In a village the day following a holiday is like the hush after a
+noise. The whole town seems like it was either asleep or on tiptoe. And
+in Friendship Village this hush was worse than the hush of other years.
+Other years they'd usually been accidents to keep track of, and mebbe
+even an amputation or two to report. But this Fourth there was no
+misfortunes whatever, nor nothing to make good reading for the night of
+July 6.
+
+"So the editor thought over his friends and run right down the news
+column, telling what there _wasn't_. Like this:--
+
+
+     "'SUPPER TABLE JOTTINGS
+
+     "'Postmaster Silas Sykes is well.
+
+     "'Timothy Toplady has not had a cold since before Christmas.
+     Prudent Timothy.
+
+     "'Jimmy Sturgis has not broken his leg yet this year as he did
+     last. Keep it up, Jimmy.
+
+     "'Eppleby Holcomb has not been out of town for quite a while.
+
+     "'None of the Friendship ladies has given a party all season.
+
+     "'The First Church is not burnt down nor damaged nor repaired.
+     Insurance $750.
+
+     "'Nothing local is in much of any trouble.
+
+     "'Nobody is dead here to-day except the usual ones.
+
+     "'Nobody that's got a telephone in has any company at the present
+     writing. Where is the old-time hospitality?
+
+     "'Subscriptions payable in advance.
+
+     "'Subscriptions payable in advance.
+
+     "'Subscriptions payable in advance.'
+
+
+"It made quite some fun for us, two or three of us happening in the
+post-office store when the paper come out--Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady
+and me. But we took it some to heart, too, because to live in a town
+where they ain't nothing active happening all the time is a kind of
+running account of everybody that's in the town. And us ladies wan't
+that kind.
+
+"All them locals done to Silas Sykes, though, was to set him fussing
+over nothing ever happening to him. Silas is real particular about his
+life, and I guess he gets to thinking how life ain't so over-particular
+about him.
+
+"'My dum,' he says that night, 'that's just the way with this town. I
+always calculated my life was goin' to be quite some pleasure to me. But
+I don't see as it is. If I thought I was going to get sold in my death
+like I've been in my life, I swan I'd lose my interest in dyin'.'
+
+"Mis' Timothy Toplady was over in behind the counter picking out her
+butter, and she whirled around from sampling the jars, and she says to
+Mis' Sykes and me:--
+
+"'Ladies,' she says, 'le's us propose it to the editor that seems to
+have such a hard job, that us members of Sodality take a hold of his
+paper for a day and get it out for him and put some news in it, and sell
+it to everybody, subscribers and all, that one night, for ten cents.'
+
+"Mis' Silas Sykes looks up and stopped winking and breathing, in a way
+she has when she sights some distant money for Sodality.
+
+"'Land, land,' she says, 'I bet they'd go like hot cakes.'
+
+"But Silas he snorts, scorching.
+
+"'Will you ladies tell me,' he says, 'where you going to _get_ your news
+to put in your paper? The Fourth don't come along every day. Or less you
+commit murder and arson and runaways, there won't be any more in your
+paper than they is in its editor's.'
+
+"That hit a tender town-point, and I couldn't stand it no longer. I
+spoke right up.
+
+"'Oh, I donno, I donno, Silas,' I says. 'They's those in this town
+that's doin' the murderin' for us, neat an' nice, right along,' I told
+him.
+
+"'Mean to say?' snapped Silas.
+
+"'Mean to say,' says I, 'most every grocery store in this town an' most
+every milkman an' the meat market as well is doin' their best to drag
+the health out o' people's systems for 'em. Us ladies is more or less
+well read an' knowledgeable of what is goin' on in the world outside,' I
+says to Silas that ain't, 'an' we know a thing or two about what ought
+to be clean.'
+
+"Since Insley come, we had talked a good deal more about these things
+and what was and what shouldn't be; and especially we had talked it in
+Sodality, on account of our town stores and social ways and such being
+so inviting to disease and death. But we hadn't talked it official,
+'count of Sodality being for Cemetery use, and talking it scattering we
+hadn't been able to make the other men even listen to us.
+
+"'Pack o' women!' says Silas, now, and went off to find black molasses
+for somebody.
+
+"Mis' Toplady sampled her butter, dreamy.
+
+"'Rob Henny's butter here,' she says, 'is made out of cow sheds that I
+can't bear to think about. An' Silas knows it. Honest,' she says, 'I'm
+gettin' so I spleen against the flowers in the fields for fear Rob
+Henny's cows'll get holt of 'em. I should think the _Daily_ could write
+about that.'
+
+"I remember how us three women looked at each other then, like our
+brains was experimenting with our ideas. And when Mis' Toplady got her
+butter, we slipped out and spoke together for a few minutes up past the
+Town Pump. And it was there the plan come to a head and legs and arms.
+And we see that we had a way of picking purses right off of every day,
+so be the editor would leave us go ahead--and of doing other things.
+
+"The very next morning we three went to see the editor and get his
+consent.
+
+"'What's your circulation, same as City papers print to the top of the
+page?' Mis' Toplady asks him, practical.
+
+"'Paid circulation or got-out circulation?' says the editor.
+
+"'Paid,' says Mis' Toplady, in silver-dollar tones.
+
+"'Ah, well, _paid for_ or subscribed for?' asks the editor.
+
+"'Paid for,' says Mis' Toplady, still more financial.
+
+"'Six hundred and eighty paid for,' the editor says, 'an' fifty-two
+that--mean to pay.'
+
+"'My!' says Mis' Toplady, shuddering. 'What business is! Well, us ladies
+of the Sodality want to run your paper for one day and charge all your
+subscribers ten cents extra for that day's paper. Will you?'
+
+"The editor, he laughed quite a little, and then he looked thoughtful.
+He was new and from the City and young and real nervous--he used to pop
+onto his feet whenever a woman so much as come in the room.
+
+"'Who would collect the ten cents?' says he.
+
+"'Sodality,' says Mis' Toplady, firm. 'Ourself, cash an' _in advance_.'
+
+"The editor nodded, still smiling.
+
+"'Jove,' he said, 'this fits in remarkably well with the fishing I've
+been thinking about. I confess I need a day. I suppose you wouldn't want
+to do it this week?'
+
+"Mis' Toplady looked at me with her eyebrows. But I nodded. I always
+rather hurry up than not.
+
+"'So be we had a couple o' hours to get the news to happenin',' says
+she, 'that had ought to do us.'
+
+"The editor looked startled.
+
+"'News!' said he. 'Oh, I say now, you mustn't expect too much. I ought
+to warn you that running a paper in this town is like trying to raise
+cream on a cistern.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady smiled at him motherly.
+
+"'You ain't ever tried pouring the cream into the cistern, I guess,' she
+says.
+
+"So we settled it into a bargain, except that, after we had planned it
+all out with him and just as we was going out the door, Mis' Toplady
+thought to say to him:--
+
+"'You know, Sodality don't know anything about it yet, so you'd best not
+mention it out around till this afternoon when we vote to do it. We'll
+be up at eight o'clock Thursday morning, rain or shine.'
+
+"There wasn't ever any doubt about Sodality when it see Sixty Dollars
+ahead--which we would get if everybody bought a paper, and we was
+determined that everybody should buy. Sodality members scraps among
+themselves personal, but when it comes to raising money we unite yoke to
+yoke, and all differences forgot. It's funny sometimes at the meetings,
+funny and disgraceful, to hear how we object to each other, especially
+when we're tired, and then how we all unite together on something for
+the good of the town. I tell you, it makes me feel sometimes that the
+way ain't so much to try to love each other,--which other folks'
+peculiarities is awful in the way of,--but for us all to pitch in and
+love something altogether, your town or your young folks, or your
+cemetery or keeping something clean or making somethin' look nice--and
+before you know it you're loving the folks you work with, no matter how
+peculiar, or even more so. It's been so nice since we've been working
+for Cemetery. Folks that make each other mad every time they try to talk
+can sell side by side at the same bazaar and count the money mutual.
+There's quite a few disagreements in Sodality, so we have to be real
+careful who sets next to who to church suppers. But when we pitch in to
+work for something, we sew rags and 'scallop oysters in the same pan
+with our enemies. Don't it seem as if that must mean something?
+Something big?
+
+"Sodality voted to publish the paper, all right, and elected the
+officers for the day: Editor, Mis' Postmaster Sykes, 'count of her
+always expecting to take the lead in everything; assistant editor, me,
+'count of being well and able to work like a dog; business manager and
+circulation man, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, 'count of no dime
+ever getting away from her unexpected. And the reporters was to be most
+of the rest of the Sodality: Mis' Timothy Toplady, the three Liberty
+girls, Mis' Mayor Uppers, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, Mis' Threat
+Hubbelthwait, an' Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery. It was
+hard for Abagail to get away from her cook stove and her counter, so we
+fixed it that she was to be let off any other literary work along of her
+furnishing us our sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs that day noon. It was
+quite a little for Abagail to do, but she's always real willing, and we
+didn't ask coffee of her. Mis' Sturgis, her that is the village invalid,
+we arranged should have charge of the Woman's Column, and bring down her
+rocking chair and make her beef broth right there on the office
+wood-stove.
+
+"I guess we was all glad to go down early in the morning that day,
+'count of not meeting the men. One and all and with one voice the
+Friendship men had railed at us hearty.
+
+"'Pack o' women!' says Silas Sykes, over and over.
+
+"'You act like bein' a woman an' a wife was some kind o' nonsense,' says
+Mis' Sykes back at him, majestic. 'Well, I guess bein' yours is.'
+
+"'Land, Amandy,' says Timothy Toplady, 'you women earn money so
+_nervous_. Why don't you do it regular an' manly?'
+
+"Only Eppleby Holcomb had kept his silence. Eppleby sees things that the
+run of men don't see, or, if they did see them, they would be bound to
+stick them in their ledgers where they would never, never belong.
+Eppleby was our friend, and Sodality never had truer.
+
+"So though we went ahead, the men had made us real anxious. And most of
+us slipped down to the office by half past seven so's not to meet too
+many. The editor had had a column in the paper about what we was goin'
+to do--'Loyal to our Local Dead' he headed it, and of course full half
+the town was kicking at the extra ten cents, like full half of any town
+can and will kick when it's asked to pay out for its own good, dead or
+alive. But we was leaving all that to Mis' Holcomb, that knows a thing
+or two about the human in us, and similar.
+
+"Extra-paper morning, when we all come in, Mis' Sykes she was sitting at
+the editor's desk with her big apron on and a green shade to cover up
+her crimping kids, and her list that her and Mis' Toplady and I had made
+out, in front of her.
+
+"'Now then, let's get right to work,' she says brisk. 'We ain't any too
+much time, I can tell you. It ain't like bakin' bread or gettin' the
+vegetables ready. We've all got to use muscles this day we ain't used to
+usin',' she says, 'an' we'd best be spry.'
+
+"So then she begun giving out who was to do what--assignments, the
+editor named it when he told us what to do. And I skipped back an' hung
+over the files, well knowing what was to come.
+
+"Mis' Sykes stood up in her most society way, an'--
+
+"'Anybody want to back out?' says she, gracious.
+
+"'Land!' says everyone in a No-I-don't tone.
+
+"'Very well,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Mis' Toplady, you go out to Rob Henney's
+place, an' you go through his cow sheds from one end to the other an'
+take down notes so's he sees you doin' it. You go into his kitchen an'
+don't you let a can get by you. Open his churn. Rub your finger round
+the inside of his pans. An' if he won't tell you, the neighbours will.
+Explain to him you're goin' to give him a nice, full printed description
+in to-night's _Daily_, just the way things are. If he wants it changed
+any, he can clean all up, an' we'll write up the clean-up like a
+compliment.'
+
+"Just for one second them assembled women was dumb. But it hardly took
+them that instant to sense what was what. And all of a sudden, Mame
+Holcomb, I guess it was, bursted out in a little understanding giggle,
+and after a minute everybody joined in, too. For we'd got the whole
+world of Friendship Village where we wanted it, and every one of them
+women see we had, so be we wasn't scared.
+
+"'Mis' Uppers,' Mis' Sykes was going on, 'you go down to Betts's meat
+market. You poke right through into the back room. An' you tell Joe
+Betts that you're goin' to do a write-up of that room an' the alley back
+of it for the paper to-night, showin' just what's what. If so be he
+wants to turn in an' red it up this mornin', tell him you'll wait till
+noon an' describe it then, _providin'_ he keeps it that way. An' you
+might let him know you're goin' to run over to his slaughterhouse an'
+look around while you're waitin', an' put that in your write-up, too.'
+
+"'Miss Hubbelthwait,' Mis' Sykes went on, 'you go over to the Calaboose.
+They won't anybody be in the office--Dick's saloon is that. Skip right
+through in the back part, an' turn down the blankets on both beds an'
+give a thorough look. If it's true they's no sheets an' pillow-cases on
+the calaboose beds, an' that the blankets is only washed three times a
+year so's to save launderin', we can make a real interestin' column
+about that.'
+
+"'Miss Merriman,' says Mis' Sykes to Mis' Fire Chief, 'I've give you a
+real hard thing because you do things so delicate. Will you take a walk
+along the residence part of town an' go into every house an' ask 'em to
+let you see their back door an' their garbage pail. Tell 'em you're
+goin' to write a couple of columns on how folks manage this. Ask 'em
+their idees on the best way. Give 'em to understand if there's a real
+good way they're thinkin' of tryin' that you'll put that in, providin'
+they begin tryin' right off. An' tell 'em they can get it carted off for
+ten cents a week if enough go in on it. An' be your most delicate, Mis'
+Fire Chief, for we don't want to offend a soul.'
+
+"Libby an' Viney Liberty Mis' Sykes sent round to take a straw vote in
+every business house in town to see how much they'd give towards
+starting a shelf library in the corner of the post-office store, a full
+list to be printed in order with the amount or else 'Not a cent' after
+each name. And the rest of Sodality she give urrants similar or even
+more so.
+
+"'An' all o' you,' says Mis' Sykes, 'pick up what you can on the way.
+And if anybody starts in to object, you tell 'em you have instructions
+to make an interview out of any of the interestin' things they say. And
+you might tell 'em you don't want they should be buried in a nice
+cemetery if they don't want to be.'
+
+"Well, sir, they started off--some scairt, but some real brave, too. And
+the way they went, we see every one of them meant business.
+
+"'But oh,' says Mis' Sturgis, fixing her medicine bottles outside on the
+window-sill, '_supposin'_ they can't do it. _Supposin'_ folks ain't nice
+to 'em. What'll we put in the paper then?'
+
+"Mis' Sykes drew herself up like she does sometimes in society.
+
+"'Well,' she says, 'supposin'. Are we runnin' this paper or ain't we?
+There's nothin' to prevent our writin' editorials about these things, as
+I see. Our husbands can't very well sue us for libel, because they'd hev
+to pay it themselves. Nor they can't put us in prison for debt, because
+who'd get their three meals? I can't see but we're sure of an
+interestin' paper, anyway.'
+
+"Then she looked over at me sort of sad.
+
+"'Go on, Calliope,' says she, 'you know what you've got to do. Do it,'
+she says, 'to the bitter end.'
+
+"I knew, and I started out, and I made straight for Silas Sykes, and the
+post-office store. Silas wan't in the store, it was so early; but he had
+the floor all sprinkled nice, and the vegetables set out, all uncovered,
+close to the sidewalk; and everything real tasty and according to
+grocery-store etiquette. The boy was gone that day. And Silas himself
+was in the back room, sortin' over prunes.
+
+"'Hello, Calliope,' s'he. 'How's literchoor?'
+
+"'Honest as ever,' I says. 'Same with food?'
+
+"'Who says I ain't honest?' says Silas, straightening up, an' holding
+all his fingers stiff 'count of being sticky.
+
+"'Why, I donno who,' says I. 'Had anybody ought to? How's business,
+Silas?'
+
+"'Well,' says he, 'for us that keeps ourselves up with the modern
+business methods, it's pretty good, I guess.'
+
+"'Do you mean pretty good, Silas, or do you mean pretty paying?' I ask'
+him.
+
+"Silas put on his best official manner. 'Look at here,' s'e, 'what can I
+do for you? Did you want to buy somethin' or did you want your mail?'
+
+"'Oh, neither,' I says. 'I want some help from you, Silas, about the
+paper to-day.'
+
+"My, that give Silas a nice minute. He fairly weltered in satisfaction.
+
+"'Huh,' he says, elegant, 'didn't I tell you you was bitin' off more'n
+you could chew? Want some assistance from me, do you, in editin' this
+paper o' yours? Well, I suppose I can help you out a little. What is it
+you want me to do for you?'
+
+"'We thought we'd like to write you up,' I told him.
+
+"Silas just swelled. For a man in public office, Silas Sykes feels about
+as presidential as anybody I ever see. If they was to come out from the
+City and put him on the front page of the morning paper, he's the kind
+that would wonder why they hadn't done it before.
+
+"'Sketch of my life?' s'e, genial. 'Little outline of my boyhood? Main
+points in my career?'
+
+"'Well,' I says, 'no. We thought the present'd be about all we'd hev
+room for. We want to write up your business, Silas,' I says, 'in an
+advertising way.'
+
+"'Oh!' says Silas, snappy. 'You want me to pay to be wrote up, is that
+it?'
+
+"'Well,' I says, 'no; not if you don't want to. Of course everybody'll
+be buried in the Cemetery whether they give anything towards the fund
+for keeping it kep' up or not.'
+
+"'Lord Heavens,' says Silas, 'I've had that Cemetery fund rammed down my
+throat till I'm sick o' the thought o' dyin'.'
+
+"That almost made me mad, seeing we was having the disadvantage of doing
+the work and Silas going to get all the advantages of burial.
+
+"'Feel the same way about some of the Ten Commandments, don't you,
+Silas?' I says, before I knew it.
+
+"Silas just rared.
+
+"'The Ten Commandments!' says he, 'the Ten Commandments! Who can show me
+one I ain't a-keepin' like an old sheep. Didn't I honour my father an'
+mother as long as I had 'em? Did they ever buy anything of me at more
+than cost? Didn't I give 'em new clothes an' send 'em boxes of oranges
+an' keep up their life insurance? Do I ever come down to the store on
+the Sabbath Day? Do I ever distribute the mail then, even if I'm
+expectin' a letter myself? The Sabbath I locked the cat in, didn't I
+send the boy down to let it out, for fear I'd be misjudged if I done it?
+Who do I ever bear false witness against unless I know they've done what
+I say they've done? I can't kill a fly--an' I'm that tender-hearted
+that I make the hired girl take the mice out o' the trap because I can't
+bring myself to do it. So you might go through the whole list an' just
+find me workin' at 'em an' a-keepin' 'em. What do you mean about the Ten
+Commandments?' he ends up, ready to burst.
+
+"'Don't ask me,' I says. 'I ain't that familiar with 'em. I didn't know
+anybody was. Go on about 'em. Take stealing--you hadn't got to that
+one.'
+
+"'_Stealing_,' says Silas, pompous. 'I don't know what it is.'
+
+"And with that I was up on my feet.
+
+"'I thought you didn't,' says I. 'Us ladies of Sodality have all thought
+it over an' over again: That you don't know stealing when you see it.
+No, nor not even when you've done it. Come here, Silas Sykes!' I says.
+
+"I whipped by him into the store, and he followed me, sheer through
+being dazed, and keeping still through being knocked dumb.
+
+"'Look here,' I says, 'here's your counter of bakery stuff--put in to
+take from Abagail, but no matter about that now. Where do you get it?
+From the City, with the label stuck on. What's the bakery like where you
+buy it? It's under a sidewalk and dust dirty, and I happen to know you
+know it. And look at the bread--not a thing over it, flies promenadin'
+on the crust, and you counting out change on an apple-pie the other
+day--I see you do it. Look at your dates, all uncovered and dirt from
+the street sticking to them like the pattern. Look at your fly-paper,
+hugged up against your dried-fruit box that's standing wide open. Look
+at you keeping fish and preserved fruit and canned stuff that you know
+is against the law--going to start keeping the law quick as you get
+these sold out, ain't you, Silas? Look at your stuff out there in front,
+full of street dirt and flies and ready to feed folks. And you keepin'
+the Ten Commandments like an old sheep--and being a church elder, and
+you might better climb porches and bust open safes. I s'pose you wonder
+what I'm sayin' all this to you for?'
+
+"'No, ma'am,' says Silas, like the edge o' something, 'I don't wonder at
+your sayin' _anything_ to anybody.'
+
+"'I've got more to say,' I says, dry. 'I've only give you a sample. An'
+the place I'm goin' to say it is _The Friendship Village Evening Daily_,
+_Extra_, to-night, in a descriptive write-up of you and your store. I
+thought it might interest you to know.'
+
+"'It's libel--it's libel!' says Silas, arms waving.
+
+"'All right,' says I, liberating a fly accidentally caught on a date.
+'Who you going to sue? Your wife, that's the editor? And everybody
+else's wife, that's doing the same thing to every behind-the-times
+dealer in town?'
+
+"Silas hung on to that straw.
+
+"'Be they doin' it to the others, too?' he asks.
+
+"Then I told him.
+
+"'Yes,' I says, 'Silas, only--they ain't goin' to start writing up the
+descriptions till noon. And if you--and they all--want to clean up the
+temples where you do business and make them fit for the Lord to look
+down on and a human being to come into, you've got your chance. And
+seeing your boy is gone to-day, if you'll do it, I'll stay and help you
+with it--and mebbe make room for some of the main points in your career
+as well,' says I, sly.
+
+"Silas looked out the door, his arms folded and his beard almost
+pointing up, he'd made his chin so firm. And just in that minute when I
+was feeling that all the law and the prophets, and the health of
+Friendship Village, and the life of people not born, was hanging around
+that man's neck--or the principle of them, anyway--Silas's eye and mine
+fell on a strange sight. Across the street, from out Joe Betts's meat
+market come Joe Betts, and behind him his boy. And Joe begun pointing,
+and the boy begun taking down quarters of beef hung over the sidewalk.
+Joe pointed consid'able. And then he clim' up on his meat wagon that
+stood by the door, and out of the shop I see Mis' Mayor Uppers come,
+looking ready to drop. And she clim' up to the seat beside him--he
+reaching down real gentlemanly to help her up. And he headed his horse
+around on what I guessed was a bee-line for the slaughterhouse.
+
+"Well, sir, at that, Silas Sykes put his hands on his knees and bent
+over and begun laughing. And he laughed like I ain't seen him since he's
+got old and begun to believe that life ain't cut after his own plan that
+he made. And I laughed a little, too, out of sheer being glad that a
+laugh can settle so many things right in the world. And when he sobered
+down a little, I says gentle:--
+
+"'Silas, I'll throw out the dates and the dusty lettuce. And we'll hev
+it done in no time. I'll be glad to get an early start on the write-up.
+I don't compose very ready,' I told him.
+
+"He was awful funny while we done the work. He was awful still, too.
+Once when I lit on a piece of salt pork that I knew, first look, was
+rusty, 'Them folks down on the flats buys it,' he says. 'They like it
+just as good as new-killed.' 'All right,' s'I, careless, 'I'll make a
+note of that to shine in my article. It needs humour some,' s'I. Then
+Silas swore, soft and under his breath, as an elder should, but quite
+vital. And he took the pork out to the alley barrel, an' I sprinkled
+ashes on it so's he shouldn't slip out and save it afterwards.
+
+"It was 'leven o'clock when we got done, me having swept out behind the
+counters myself, and Silas he mopped his face and stood hauling at his
+collar.
+
+"'I'll get on my white kids now,' s'e, dry. 'I can't go pourin' kerosene
+an' slicin' cheese in this place barehanded any more. Gosh,' he says, 'I
+bet when they see it, they'll want to have church in here this comin'
+Sunday.'
+
+"'No need to be sacrilegious, as I know of, Silas,' s'I, sharp.
+
+"'No need to be livin' at all, as I see,' says Silas, morbid; 'just lay
+low an' other folks'll step in an' do it for you, real capable.'
+
+"I give him the last word. I thought it was his man's due.
+
+"When I got back to the office, Libby Liberty an' Mis' Toplady was there
+before me. They was both setting on high stools up to the file shelf,
+with their feet tucked up, an' the reason was that Viney Liberty was
+mopping the floor. She had a big pail of suds and her skirt pinned up,
+and she was just lathering them boards. Mis' Sykes at the main desk was
+still labouring over her editorials, breathing hard, the boards steaming
+soap all around her.
+
+"'I couldn't stand it,' Viney says. 'How a man can mould public opinion
+in a place where the floor is pot-black gets me. My land, my ash house
+is a dinin' room side of this room, an' the window was a regular gray
+frost with dust. Ain't men the funniest lot of folks?' she says.
+
+"'Funny,' says I, 'but awful amiable if you kind of sing their key-note
+to 'em.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes pulled my skirt.
+
+"'How was he?' she asks in a pale voice.
+
+"'He was crusty,' says I, triumphant, 'but he's beat.'
+
+"She never smiled. 'Calliope Marsh,' says she, cold, 'if you've sassed
+my husband, I'll never forgive you.'
+
+"I tell you, men may be some funny, and often are. But women is odd as
+Dick's hatband and I don't know but odder.
+
+"'How'd you get on?' I says to Mis' Toplady and the Libertys. The
+Libertys they handed out a list on two sheets, both sides with sums
+ranging from ten to fifty cents towards a shelf library for public use;
+but Mis' Toplady, the tears was near streaming down her cheeks.
+
+"'Rob Henney,' she says, mournful, 'gimme to understand he'd see me
+in--some place he hadn't ought to of spoke of to me, nor to no
+one--before I could get in his milk sheds.'
+
+"'What did you say to him?' I ask', sympathetic.
+
+"'I t-told him,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that lookin' for me wouldn't be the
+only reason he'd hev for goin' there. And then he said some more. He
+said he'd be in here this afternoon to stop his subscription off.'
+
+"'So you didn't get a thing?' I says, grieving for her, but Mis'
+Toplady, she bridled through her tears.
+
+"'I got a column!' she flashed out. 'I put in about the sheds, that the
+whole town knows, anyway, an' I put in what he said to me. An' I'm goin'
+to read it to him when he comes in. An' after that he can take his pick
+about havin' it published, or else cleanin' up an' allowin' Sodality to
+inspect him reg'lar.'
+
+"By just before twelve o'clock we was all back in the office, Mis' Fire
+Chief, Mis' Uppers, fresh from the slaughterhouse, and so on, all but
+Mame Holcomb that was out seeing to the circulation. And I tell you we
+set to work in earnest, some of us to the desks, and some of us working
+on their laps, and everybody hurrying hectic. The office was awful
+hot--Mis' Sturgis had built up a little light fire to heat up her beef
+broth, and she was stirring it, her shawl folded about her, in between
+writing receipts. But it made it real confusing, all of us doing our
+best so hard, and wanting to tell each other what had happened, and
+seeing about spelling and all.
+
+"'Land, land,' says Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'you'd ought to _see_ the
+Carters' back door. They wan't nobody to home there, so I just took a
+look, anyway, bein' it was for Sodality, so. They ain't no real garbage
+pail--'
+
+"'Who said, "Give me Liberty or give me Death?"' ask' Mis' Sykes,
+looking up kind o' glassy. 'Was it Daniel Webster or Daniel Boone?'
+
+"'Ladies,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, when we'd settled down on Daniel
+Boone, 'if I ever do a crime, I won't stop short at stealin' somebody's
+cow an' goin' to calaboose. I'll do a whole beef corner, or some real
+United States sin, an' get put in a place that's clean. Why over to the
+calaboose--'
+
+"'Ugh!' says Mis' Uppers, 'don't say "beef" when I'm where I can hear.
+I donno what I'll do without my steak, but do it I will. Ladies, the
+cleanest of us is soundin' brass an' tinklin' cannibals. Why do they
+call 'em _tinklin'_ cannibals?' she wondered to us all.
+
+"'Oh--,' wailed Mis' Sturgis in the rocking-chair, 'some of you ladies
+give me your salad dressing receipt. Mine is real good on salad, but on
+paper it don't sound fit to eat. I don't seem to have no book-style
+about me to-day.'
+
+"'How do you spell _embarrass_?' asked Libby Liberty. 'Is it an _r_ an'
+two _s_'s or two _r_'s and an _s_?'
+
+"'It's two _s_'s at the end, so it must be one _r_,' volunteers Mis'
+Sykes. 'That used to mix me up some, too.'
+
+"Just then up come Abagail Arnold bringing the noon lunch, and she had
+the sandwiches and the eggs not only, but a pot of hot coffee thrown in,
+and a basket of doughnuts, sugared. She set them out on Mis' Sykes's
+desk, and we all laid down our pencils and drew up on our high stools
+and swing chairs, Mis' Sturgis and all, and nothing in the line of food
+had ever looked so welcoming.
+
+"'Oh, the eatableness of nice refreshments!' says Mis' Toplady, sighing.
+
+"'This is when it ain't victuals, its viands,' says Mis' Sykes, showing
+pleased.
+
+"But well do I remember, we wasn't started to eat, and Abagail still
+doing the pouring, when the composing room door opened--I donno _why_
+they called it that, for we done the composing in the office, and they
+only got out the paper in there--and in come the foreman, with an apron
+of bed-ticking. He was Riddy Styles, that we all knew him.
+
+"'Excuse me,' he says, hesitating, 'but us fellows thought we'd ought to
+mention that we can't get no paper out by quittin' time if we don't get
+a-hold of some copy pretty quick.'
+
+"'Copy o' what?' says Mis' Sykes, our editor.
+
+"'Why, copy,' says Riddy. 'Stuff for the paper.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes looked at him, majestic.
+
+"'_Stuff_,' she says. 'You will please to speak,' she says, 'more
+respectfully than that to us ladies, Mr. Styles.'
+
+"'It was meant right,' says Riddy, stubborn. 'It's the word we always
+use.'
+
+"'It ain't the word you use, not with us,' says Mis' Sykes, womanly.
+
+"'Well,' says Riddy, 'we'd ought to get to settin' up _somethin'_ by
+half past twelve, if we start in on the dictionary.'
+
+"Then he went off to his dinner, and the other men with him, and Mis'
+Sykes leaned back limp.
+
+"'I been writin' steady,' she says, 'since half past eight o'clock this
+mornin', an' I've only got one page an' one-half composed.'
+
+"We ask' each other around, and none of us was no more then started, let
+be it was Mis' Toplady, that had got in first.
+
+"'Le's us leave our lunch,' says Mis' Sykes, then. 'Le's us leave it
+un-et. Abagail, you put it back in the basket an' pour the coffee into
+the pot. An' le's us _write_. Wouldn't we all rather hev one of our sick
+headaches,' she says, firm, 'than mebbe make ourselves the Laughing
+Stock? Ladies, I ask you.'
+
+"An' we woulded, one and all. Sick headaches don't last long, but
+laughed-at has regular right down eternal life.
+
+"Ain't it strange how slow the writing muscles and such is, that you
+don't use often? Pitting cherries, splitting squash, peeling potatoes,
+slicing apples, making change at church suppers,--us ladies is lightning
+at 'em all. But getting idees down on paper--I declare if it ain't more
+like waiting around for your bread to raise on a cold morning. Still
+when you're worried, you can press forward more than normal, and among
+us we had quite some material ready for Riddy and the men when they came
+back. But not Mis' Sykes. She wan't getting on at all.
+
+"'If I could only _talk_ it,' she says, grieving, 'or I donno if I could
+even do that. What I want to say is in me, rarin' around my head like
+life, an' yet I can't get it out no more'n money out of a tin bank. I
+shall disgrace Sodality,' she says, wild.
+
+"'Cheer up,' says Libby Liberty, soothing. 'Nobody ever reads the
+editorials, anyway. I ain't read one in years.'
+
+"'You tend to your article,' snaps Mis' Sykes.
+
+"I had got my write-up of Silas all turned in to Riddy, and I was
+looking longing at Abagail's basket, when, banging the door, in come
+somebody breathing like raging, and it was Rob Henney, that I guess we'd
+all forgot about except it was Mis' Toplady that was waiting for him.
+
+"Rob Henney always talks like he was long distance.
+
+"'I come in,' he says, blustering, 'I come in to quit off my
+subscription to this fool paper, that a lot o' fool women--'
+
+"Mis' Sykes looks up at him out from under her hand that her head was
+resting on.
+
+"'Go on out o' here, Mr. Henney,' she says sharp to him, 'an' quit your
+subscription quiet. Can't you see you're disturbing us?' she says.
+
+"With that Mis' Toplady wheeled around on her high stool and looked at
+him, calm as a clock.
+
+"'Rob Henney,' says she, 'you come over here. I'll read you what I've
+wrote about you,' she told him.
+
+"The piece begun like this:--
+
+"'Rob Henney, our esteemed fellow-townsman and milkman, was talked with
+this morning on his cow sheds. The reporter said to same that what was
+wanting would be visiting the stables, churn, cans, pans, and like that,
+being death is milked out of most cows if they are not kept clean and
+inspected regular for signs of consumption. Mr. Henney replied as
+follows:
+
+"'First: That his cows had never been inspected because nothing of that
+kind had ever been necessary.
+
+"'Second: That he was in the milk business for a living, and did the
+town expect him to keep it in milk for its health?
+
+"'Third: That folks had been drinking milk since milk begun, and if the
+Lord saw fit to call them home, why not through milk, or even through
+consumption, as well as through pneumonia and others?
+
+"'Fourth: That he would see the reporter--a lady--in the
+lake-that-burneth-with-fire before his sheds and churn and pans and cans
+should be put in the paper.
+
+"'Below is how the sheds, churn, pans, and cans look to-day....' And I
+tell you, Mis' Toplady, she didn't spare no words. When she meant What,
+she said What, elaborate.
+
+"I didn't know for a minute but we'd hev to mop Rob up off the clean
+floor. But Mis' Toplady she never forgot who she was.
+
+"'Either that goes in the paper to-night,' she says, 'or you'll clean up
+your milk surroundin's--pick your choice. An' Sodality's through with
+you if you don't, besides.'
+
+"'Put it in print! Put it in print, if you dast!' yells Rob,
+wind-milling his arms some.
+
+"'No need to make an earthquake o' yourself,' Mis' Toplady points out to
+him, serene.
+
+"And at that Rob adds a word intending to express a cussing idee, and he
+outs and down the stairs. And Mis' Toplady starts to take her article
+right in to Riddy. But in the door she met Riddy, hurrying into the
+office again. I never see anybody before that looked both red and
+haggard, but Riddy did. He come right to the point:--
+
+"'Some of you ladies has got to quit handing in--news,' he says,
+scrabbling for a word to please Mis' Sykes. 'We're up to our eyes in
+here now. An' there ain't enough room in the paper, either, not without
+you get out eight pages or else run a supplement or else throw away the
+whole patent inside. An' those ways, we ain't got enough type even if we
+had time to burn.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes pushed back her green shade, looking just _chased_.
+
+"'What does he mean?' she says. 'Can't he tend to his type and things
+with us doing all the work?'
+
+"Riddy took this real nettlish.
+
+"'I mean,' s'he, clear but brutal, 'you got to cut your stuff somewheres
+to the tune of a couple o' columns.'
+
+"Well, it's hard to pick out which colour you'll take when you have a
+new dress only once in every so seldom; or which of your hens you'll
+kill when you know your chickens like you know your own mind; but these
+are nothing to the time we had deciding on what to omit out of the paper
+that night. And the decision hurt us even more than the deciding, for
+what we left out was Mis' Sturgis's two women's columns.
+
+"'We _can't_ leave out meat nor milk nor cleanliness nor the library,'
+says Mis' Toplady, reasonable, 'because them are the things we live by.
+An' so with the other write-ups we got planned. But receipts and
+patterns an' moth balls is only kind o' decorations, seems though.
+Besides, we all know about 'em, an' it's time we stopped talkin' about
+'em, anyway.'
+
+"Mis' Sturgis she cried a little on the corner of her shawl.
+
+"'The receipts an' patterns an' moth balls is so w-womanly,' she says.
+
+"Mis' Toplady whirled round at her.
+
+"'If you know anything more womanly than conquerin' dirt an' disease an'
+the-dead-that-needn't-die,' s'she, 'I'll roll up my sleeves an' be into
+it. But it won't be eyelet embroidery nor yet boiled frostin'!'
+
+"After that they wrote in hasty peace, though four o'clock come racing
+across the day like a runaway horse, and us not out of its way. And a
+few minutes past, when Riddy was waiting in the door for Mis' Sykes's
+last page, somebody most knocked him over, and there come Mis' Holcomb,
+our circulation editor, purple and white, like a ghost.
+
+"'Lock the door--lock it!' she says. 'I've bolted the one to the foot of
+the stairs. Lock both outside ones an' lay yourselves low!' s'she.
+
+"Riddy an' I done the locking, me well knowing Mis' Holcomb couldn't
+give a false alarm no more than a map could.
+
+"'What is it?' we says, pressing Mis' Holcomb to speak, that couldn't
+even breathe.
+
+"'Oh, ladies,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'they've rejoined us, or whatever it
+is they do. I mean they're going to rejoin us from gettin' out
+to-night's paper. The sheriff or the coroner or whoever it is they have,
+is comin' with injunctions--_is_ that like handcuffs, do you know? An'
+it's Rob Henney's doin'. Eppleby told me. An' I run down the alley an'
+beat 'em to it. They're most here. Let's us slap into print what's wrote
+an' be ready with the papers the livin' minute we can.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes had shoved her green shade onto the back of her head, and
+her crimping pins was all showing forth.
+
+"'What good'll it do us to get the paper _out_?' says she, in a numb
+voice. 'We can't distribute 'em around to no one with the sheriff to the
+front door with them things to put on us.'
+
+"Then Mis' Holcomb smiled, with her eyes shut, where she sat, breathing
+so hard it showed through.
+
+"'I come in the coal door, at the alley,' s'she. 'They'll never think o'
+that. Besides, the crowd'll be in front an' the carrier boys too, an'
+they'll want to show off out there. An' Eppleby knows--he told me to
+come in that way--an' he'll keep 'em interested out in front. Le's us
+each take the papers, an' out the coal door, an' distribute 'em around,
+ourselves, without the boys, an' collect in the money same time.'
+
+"And that was how we done. For when they come to the door and found it
+locked, they pounded a little to show who was who and who wan't and then
+they waited out there calm enough, thinking to stop us when the papers
+come down would be plenty time. They waited out there, calm and sure,
+while upstairs Bedlam went on, but noiseless. And after us ladies was
+done with our part, we sat huddled up in the office, soothing Mis'
+Sturgis and each other.
+
+"'In one sentence,' Mis' Holcomb says, 'Eppleby says Rob Henney was
+going to _put_ injunctions on us. An' in the next he says he was goin'
+to _serve_ 'em. What did he mean by that, do you s'pose?'
+
+"'I donno what he meant,' says Mis' Toplady, 'but I wouldn't have
+anything to do with _anything_ Rob Henney served.'
+
+"That made us think of Abagail's lunch, laying un-et in the basket. They
+wasn't none of us felt like eating, but Mis' Sturgis says she bet if we
+didn't eat it, Abagail would feel she hadn't had no part in writing the
+paper like us, and so we broke off a little something once around; but
+food didn't have much fun for us, not then. And nothing did up to the
+minute the paper was done, and we was all ready to sly out the alley
+door.
+
+"With Sodality and Riddy Styles and the composing-room men we had above
+twenty carriers. Riddy and the men helped us, one and all, because of
+course the paper was a little theirs, too, and they was interested and
+liked the lark. Land, land, I ain't felt so young or so wicked as I done
+getting out that alley door. There's them I wish could see that there's
+just as much fun keeping secret about something that may be good as in
+being sly about something regular bad.
+
+"When we finally got outside it was suppertime and summer seeming, and
+the hour was all sweet and frank, and the whole village was buried in
+its evening fried mush and potatoes, or else sprinkling their front
+yards. I donno how it was with the others, but I know I went along the
+streets seeing through them little houses like they was glass, and
+seeing the young folks eating their suppers and growing up and getting
+ready to live and to _be_. And in us ladies' arms, in them heavy papers,
+it seemed to me we was carrying new life to them, in little ways--in
+little ways, but ways that was going to be big with meaning. And I felt
+as if something in me kind of snuggled up closer to the way things was
+meant to be.
+
+"Us that went west got clear the whole length of Daphne Street without
+anybody seeing what we was doing, or else believing that we was doing it
+orderly and legitimate. And away out by the Pump pasture, we started in
+distributing, and we come working down town, handing out papers to the
+residence part like mad and taking in dimes like wild. They was so many
+of us, and the _Evening Daily_ office was so located, that by the time
+Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I come around the corner where the men
+and Rob Henney and the rejoiners and the carriers was loafing, waiting,
+smoking, and secure, we didn't have many papers left. And we three was
+the first ones back.
+
+"'Evenin' paper?' says Mis' Toplady, casual. '_Friendship Village
+Evenin' Daily, Extra?_ All the news for a dime?'
+
+"Never have I see a man so truly flabbergasted as Rob Henney, and he did
+look like death.
+
+"'You're rejoined!' he yelled, or whatever it is they say--'you're
+rejoined by law from printin' your papers or from deestributin' the
+same.'
+
+"'Why, Rob Henney,' says Mis' Toplady, 'no call to show fight like that.
+Half the town is readin' its papers by now. They've been out for
+three-quarters of an hour,' she says.
+
+"Then soft and faint and acrost the street, we heard somebody laugh, and
+then kind of spat hands; and we all looked up. And there in the open
+upstairs window of the building opposite, we see leaning out Eppleby
+Holcomb and Timothy Toplady and Silas Sykes. And when we crossed eyes,
+they all made a little cheer like a theatre; and then they come clumping
+down stairs and acrost to where we was.
+
+"'Won out, didn't you, by heck!' says Silas, that can only see that far.
+
+"'Blisterin' Benson,' says Timothy, gleeful. '_I_ say we ain't got no
+cause to regret our wifes' brains.'
+
+"But Eppleby, he never said a word. He just smiled slow and a-looking
+past us. And we knew that from the beginning he had seen our whole plan,
+face to face.
+
+"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and me, seeing how Rob Henney stood
+muttering and beat, and seeing how the day had gone, and seeing what was
+what in the world and in all outside of it, we looked at each other,
+dead tired, and real happy, and then we just dragged along home to our
+kitchens and went to cooking supper. But oh, it wasn't our same old
+kitchens nor it wasn't our same old Friendship Village. We was in places
+newer and better and up higher, where we see how things are, and how
+life would get more particular about us if we'd get particular about
+some more of life.
+
+
+
+
+VII
+
+
+"Well, of course then we had Sixty Dollars or so to spend, and Sodality
+never could rest a minute when it had money to do with if it wasn't
+doing it, any more than it could rest when it had something to do and no
+money to do with. It made a nice, active circle. Wishing for dreams to
+come true, and then, when they do come true, making the true things
+sprout more dreams, is another of them circles. I always think they're
+what keeps us a-going, not only immortal but busy.
+
+"And then with us there's another reason for voting our money prompt. As
+soon as we've made any and the news has got out around, it's happened
+two-three times that somebody has put in an application for a headstone
+for somebody dead that can't afford one. The first time that was done
+the application was made by the wife of a harness maker that had a
+little shop in the back street and had been saving up his money for a
+good tombstone. 'I ain't had much of a position here in life,' he used
+to say. 'I never was pointed out as a leading citizen. But I'm goin' to
+fix it so's when I'm buried and folks come to the Cemetery, nobody'll
+get by my grave without noticin' my tombstone.' And then he took sick
+with inflammatory rheumatism, and if it didn't last him three years and
+et up his whole tombstone fund. He use' to worry about it considerable
+as the rheumatism kept reducing the granite inch after inch, and he
+died, thinking he wasn't going to have nothing but markers to him. So
+his old wife come and told Sodality, crying to think he wasn't going to
+seem no real true inhabitant of Cemetery, any more than he had of the
+village. And we felt so sorry for her we took part of the Thirty Dollars
+we'd made at the rummage sale and bought him a nice cement stone, and
+put the verse on to attract attention that he'd wrote himself:--
+
+
+     "'STOP. LOOK. LISTEN.
+         HERE LAYS ME.
+     MY GRAVE IS JUST AS BIG
+       AS YOURS WILL BE.'
+
+
+"Some was inclined to criticise Jeb for being so ambitious in death, and
+stopping to think how good a showing he could make. But I donno, I
+always sort of understood him. He wanted to be somebody. He'd used to
+try to have a voice in public affairs, but somehow what he proposed
+wasn't ever practical and never could get itself adopted. His judgment
+wasn't much, and time and again he'd voted against the town's good, and
+he see it afterward. He missed being a real citizen of his town, and he
+knew it, and he hankered to be a citizen of his Cemetery. And wherever
+he is now, I bet that healthy hankering is strained and purified and
+helping him ahead.
+
+"But our buying that stone for Jeb's widow's husband's grave let us in
+for perpetual applications for monuments; and so when we had any money
+we always went right to work and voted it for general Cemetery
+improvement, so there wasn't ever any money in the treasury for the
+applications. Anyway, we felt we'd ought to encourage self-made graves
+and not pauperize our corpses.
+
+"So the very next afternoon after we got our paper out, we met at Mis'
+Sykes's; and the day being mild and gold, almost all of Sodality turned
+out, and Mis' Sykes used both her parlours. It was funny; but such times
+there fell on them that sat Front Parlour a sort of
+what-you-might-call-distinction over them that sat Back Parlour. It's
+the same to our parties. Them that are set down to the dining-room table
+always seem a little more company than them that are served to the
+little sewing tables around in the open rooms, and we all feel it,
+though we all pretend not, as well-bred as we know how. I donno but
+there's something to it, too. Mis' Sykes, for instance, she always gets
+put to a dining table. Nobody would ever think of setting her down to a
+small one, no more than they would a Proudfit. But me, I generally get
+tucked down to a sewing table and in a rocking-chair, if there ain't
+enough cane seats to go around. Things often divide themselves true to
+themselves in this life, after all.
+
+"This was the last regular meeting before our Annual. The Annual, at
+Insley's suggestion, was going to be in the schoolhouse, and it was
+going to be an open evening meeting, with the whole town invited in and
+ice-cream served after. Regular meetings Sodality gives just tea;
+special meetings we give hot chocolate or ice-lemonade, or both if the
+weather is unsettled; for entertainments we have cut-up fruit and little
+bakery cakes; but to our Annual we mount up to ice-cream and some of our
+best cake makers' layer cake. And us ladies always dress according:
+afternoon home dresses to regular meetings; second best to specials;
+Sunday silks to entertainments; and straight going-out clothes for the
+Annual. It makes it real nice. Nobody need to come dressed wrong, and
+nobody can go away disappointed at what they've been fed.
+
+"The meeting that day all ought to have gone smooth enough, it being so
+nice that our paper had sold well and all, but I guess the most of us
+was too tired out to have tried to have a meeting so soon. Anyhow, we
+didn't seem to come together slippery and light-running, like we do some
+days; but instead I see the minute we begun to collect that we was all
+inclined to be heavy and, though not cross, yet frictionish.
+
+"For instance: Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss had come in a new red
+waist with black raspberry buttons. And it was too much for Mis' Fire
+Chief Merriman that's been turning her black poplin ever since the Fire
+Chief died.
+
+"'Dear me, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'I never see anybody have more
+dressy clothes. Did you put that on just for us?'
+
+"Mis' Holcomb shut her lips tight.
+
+"'This is for home wear,' she says short, when she opened them.
+
+"'Mean to say you get a cooked supper in that rig?' says Mis' Merriman.
+'Fry meat in it, do you?'
+
+"'We don't eat as hearty as some,' says Mame. 'We don't insist on warm
+suppers. We feel at our house we have to keep our bills down.'
+
+"Mis' Merriman straightened up, real brittle.
+
+"'My gracious,' she says, 'I guess I live as cheap as the best does.'
+
+"'I see you buying _shelled_ nuts, just the same,' says Mis' Holcomb,
+'when shellin' 'em with your fingers cost twenty cents off.'
+
+"'I ain't never had my store-buyin' criticised before,' says Mis'
+Merriman, elbows back.
+
+"'Nor,' says Mis' Holcomb, bitter, 'have I ever before, in my twenty-six
+years of married life, ever been called _dressy_.'
+
+"Then Mis' Toplady, she sort of shouldered into the minute, big and
+placid and nice-feeling.
+
+"'Mame,' she says, 'set over here where you can use the lead-pencil on
+my watch chain, and put down that crochet pattern I wanted, will you?'
+
+"Mame come over by her and took the pencil, Mis' Toplady leaning over
+so's she could use it; but before she put the crochet pattern down, Mame
+made one, experimental, on the stiff bottom of her work-bag, and Libby
+Liberty thought she'd make a little joking.
+
+"'S-sh-h,' says Libby, 'the authoress is takin' down notes.'
+
+"Mis' Holcomb has had two-three poems in the _Friendship Daily_, and
+she's real sensitive over it.
+
+"'I'd be polite if I couldn't be pleasant, Libby,' says Mame, acid.
+
+"'I'm pleasant enough to pleasant folks,' snaps Libby, up in arms in a
+minute. Nothing whatever makes anybody so mad as to have what was meant
+playful took plain.
+
+"'I,' says Mis' Holcomb, majestic, 'would pay some attention to my
+company manners, no matter what I was in the home.'
+
+"'That makes me think,' puts in Mis' Toplady, hasty, 'speaking of
+company so, who's heard anything about the evenin' company up to
+Proudfits'?'
+
+"It was something all our heads was full of, being half the village had
+just been invited in to the big evening affair that was to end up the
+house party, and we'd all of pitched in and talked fast anyhow to take
+our minds off the spat.
+
+"'Elbert's comin' home to go to it an' to stay Sunday an' as much as he
+can spare,' says Mis' Sykes. Elbert is her son and all Silas Sykes ought
+to of been, Elbert is.
+
+"'Letty Ames is home for the party, too,' says Libby Liberty, speaking
+up in defence of their block, that Letty lives in. She's just graduated
+at Indian Mound and has been visiting up the state.
+
+"My niece that had come on for a few days would be gone before the party
+come off, so she didn't seem worth mentioning for real news value at a
+time when everything was centring in an evening company at Proudfit
+House. No doubt about it, Proudfit House does give distinction to
+Friendship Village, kind of like a finishing school would, or a circus
+wintering in us.
+
+"'I heard,' says Mis' Jimmy Sturgis, 'that the hired help set up all
+night long cleanin' the silver. I shouldn't think _that_ would of been
+necessary, with any kind of management behind 'em.'
+
+"'You don't get much management now'-days,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait,
+sighing. 'Things slap along awful haphazard.'
+
+"'I know I ain't the system to myself that I use' to have,' says Abagail
+Arnold. 'Why, the other day I found my soda in one butt'ry an' my bakin'
+powder in the other.'
+
+"'An' I heard,' says Mame Holcomb--that's one thing about Mame, you
+can't keep her mad. She'll flare up and be a tongue of flame one minute,
+and the next she's actin' like a friendly open fire on a family hearth.
+And I always trust that kind--I can't help it--'I heard,' she said,
+'that for the party that night the ice-cream is coming in forms,
+calla-lilies an' dogs an' like that.'
+
+"'I heard,' says Mis' Uppers, 'that Emerel Daniel was invited up to help
+an' she set up nights and got her a new dress for helpin' in, and now
+little Otie's sick and she likely can't go near.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady looks over her glasses.
+
+"'Is Otie sick again?' says she. 'Well, if Emerel don't move out of
+Black Hollow, she'll lose him just like she done Abe. Can't she sell?'
+
+"Black Hollow is the town's pet breeding place for typhoid, that the
+ladies has been at the council to clean up for a year now. And nobody
+will buy there, so Emerel's had to live in her house to save rent.
+
+"'She's made her a nice dress an' she was so excited and pleased,' says
+Mis' Uppers, grieving. 'I do hope it was a dark shade so if bereavement
+follows--'
+
+"'I suppose you'll have a new cloth, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis'
+Hubbelthwait, 'you're so up-to-date.' It's always one trouble with Mis'
+Hubbelthwait: she will flatter the flatterable. But that time it didn't
+work. Mis' Sykes was up on a chair fixing a window-shade that had flew
+up, and I guess she must have pinched her finger, she was so crispy.
+
+"'I thought I _had_ things that was full stylish enough to wear,' she
+says stiff.
+
+"'I didn't mean harm,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, humble.
+
+"Just then we all got up to see out the window, for the Proudfit
+automobile drew up to Mis' Sykes's gate. They was several folks in it,
+like they had been most of the time during the house party, with
+everybody flying hither and yon; and they was letting Mis' Emmons out.
+It was just exactly like her to remember to come right out of the midst
+of a house party to a meeting of Sodality. That woman was pure gold.
+When they was a lot of things to choose about, she always seemed to let
+the pleasant and the light and the easy-to-do slip right through her
+fingers, that would close up by and by on the big real thing that most
+folks would pretend to try to catch _after_ it had slipped through, and
+yet would be awful glad to see disappearing.
+
+"We didn't talk clothes any more after Mis' Emmons come in. Some way her
+clothes was so professional seeming, in colour and cut, that beside of
+her the rest of us never said much about ours; though I will say Mis'
+Emmons always wore her clothes like she was no more thinking about them
+than she would be thinking about morning housework togs.
+
+"'Well-said, how's the little boy, Mis' Emmons?' asks Mis' Toplady,
+hearty. 'I declare I couldn't go to sleep a night or two ago for
+thinkin' about the little soul. Heard any sound out of his folks?'
+
+"'I'm going to tell you about that pretty soon,' Mis' Emmons
+answered--and it made my heart beat a little with wondering if she'd got
+her plans thought out, not only four-square, but tower-high. 'He is
+well--he wanted to come to the meeting. "I like ladies," he said, "when
+they look at me like loving, but not when they touch me much." Mr.
+Insley has him out walking.'
+
+"'Little soul,' says Mis' Toplady, again.
+
+"Out in the back parlour, some of us had been talking about Christopher
+already.
+
+"'I heard,' Mis' Merriman says, that wasn't to the church the night
+Christopher come, 'I heard that he didn't have much of any clothes on.
+An' that nobody could understand what he said. An' that nobody could get
+him to speak a word.'
+
+"'Pshaw,' Mis' Sturgis puts in, 'he was a nice-dressed little boy,
+though wet; an' quite conversational.'
+
+"'Well, I think it's a great problem,' says Mis' Uppers. 'He's too young
+for the poorhouse and too old for the babies' home. Seems like they
+wasn't anything _to_ do with him.'
+
+"There come a lull when Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in a ruffled lawn that
+had shrunk too short for anything but house wear, stood up by the piano
+and called the meeting to order. And when we'd got on down to new
+business, the purpose of the meeting and a hint of the pleasure was
+stated formal by Mis' Sykes herself. 'One thing why I like to preside at
+Sodality,' I heard her tell once, 'is, you do get your say whenever you
+want it, and nobody can interrupt you when you're in the chair.'
+
+"'Ladies,' she says, 'we've seen from the treasurer's report we've got
+some Sixty-odd Dollars on hand. The question is, where shall we vote it
+to. Let the discussion be free.'
+
+"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke first, with a kind of a bright
+manner of having thought it all out over her dish pan and her bread pan.
+There is this about belonging to Sodality: We just live Sodality every
+day, around our work. We don't forget it except to meetings, same as
+some.
+
+"'Well, I just tell you what,' Mame says, 'I think now is our time to
+get a big monument for the middle of Cemetery that'll do some credit to
+the Dead. All our little local headstones is quite tasty and shows our
+interest in them that's gone before; but not one of them is real
+up-to-date. Let's buy a nice monument that'll show from the railroad
+track.'
+
+"I spoke up short off from the back parlour, where I set 'scallopin' a
+bedspread about as big as the carpet.
+
+"'Who to?' I says.
+
+"'Oh, I donno's it makes much differ'nce,' Mis' Holcomb says, warming to
+her theme, 'so's it was some leadin' citizen. We might take a town vote
+on it.'
+
+"Mis' Sturgis set up straight, eyebrows up. I donno how it is, but Mis'
+Sturgis's pompadour always seems so much higher as soon as she gets
+interested.
+
+"'Why, my gracious,' she says, 'we might earn quite a lot o' money that
+way. We might have a regular votin' contest on who that's dead should
+get the monument--so much a vote an' the names of the successful ones
+run every night in the _Daily_--'
+
+"'Well-a, why do it for anybody dead?' says Libby Liberty. 'Why not get
+the monument here and have it on view an' then have folks kind of bid on
+it for their own, real votin' style. In the cities now everybody picks
+out their own monuments ahead of time. That would be doing for the
+Living, the way Mr. Insley said.'
+
+"'Oh, there'd be hard feelin' that way,' spoke up Mis' Uppers, decided.
+'Whoever got it, an' got buried under it, never could feel it was his
+own stone. Everybody that had bought votes for themselves could come out
+walking in the Cemetery Sunday afternoons and could point out the
+monument and tell how much of a money interest they had in it. Oh, no, I
+don't think that'd do at all.'
+
+"'Well, stick to havin' it for the Dead, then,' Libby gives in. 'We've
+got to remember our constitution.'
+
+"Mis' Amanda Toplady was always going down after something in the bottom
+of her pocket, set low in her full black skirt. She done this now, for a
+spool or a lozenger. And she says, meantime: 'Seems like that'd be awful
+irreverent, connectin' up the Dead with votes that way.'
+
+"'_My_ notion,' says Mis' Sykes, with her way of throwin' up one corner
+of her head, 'it ain't one-tenth part as irreverent as forgettin' all
+about 'em.'
+
+"'Of course it ain't,' agreed Mis' Hubbelthwait. 'Real, true irreverence
+is made up of buryin' folks and leavin' 'em go their way. Why, I bet
+you there ain't any one of 'em that wouldn't be cheered up by bein'
+voted for.'
+
+"I couldn't help piping up again from the back parlour. 'What about them
+that don't get no votes?' I asks. 'What about them that is beat in death
+like they may of been in life? What's there to cheer them up? If I was
+them,' says I, 'I'd ha'nt the whole Sodality.'
+
+"'No need to be so sacrilegious in speakin' of the Dead as I know of,
+Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes that was in the chair and could rebuke at
+will.
+
+"That made me kind o' mad, and I answered back, chair or no chair: 'A
+thing is sacrilegious,' says I, 'according to which side of the fence
+you're on. But the fence it don't change none.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady looked over her glasses and out the window and like she
+see far away.
+
+"'Land, land,' she says, 'I'd like to take that Sixty Dollars and hire
+some place to invite the young folks into evenings, that don't have no
+place to go on earth for fun. Friendship Village,' says she, 'is about
+as lively as Cemetery is for the young folks.'
+
+"'Well, but, Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes, reprovin', 'the young folks
+is alive and able to see to themselves. They don't come in Sodality's
+scope. Everything we do has got to be connect' with Cemetery.'
+
+"'I can't help it,' Mis' Toplady answers, 'if it is. I'd like to invite
+'em in for some good safe evenin's somewheres instead of leaving 'em
+trapse the streets. And if I had to have Cemetery in it somehow, I donno
+but I'd make it a lawn party and give it in Cemetery and have done with
+it.'
+
+"We all laughed, but I knew that underneath, Mis' Toplady was kind of
+half-and-half in earnest.
+
+"'The young folks,' says Mis' Sykes, mysterious, 'is going to be took
+care of by the proper means, very, very soon.'
+
+"'I donno,' says Mis' Holcomb, obstinate. 'I think the monument is a
+real nice idea. Grandfather Holcomb, now, him that helped draft the
+town, or whatever it is they do, I bet he'd be real pleased to be voted
+for.'
+
+"But Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, seems she couldn't forget the little way
+Mame had spoke to her before, and she leaned forward and cut her way
+into the talking.
+
+"'Why, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'of course your Grandfather Holcomb can
+be voted on if he wants to and if he thinks he could get it. But dead
+though he is, what he done can't hold a candle to what Grandfather
+Merriman done. That man just about run this town for years on end.'
+
+"'I heard he did,' said Mame, short. 'Those was the days before things
+was called by their true names in politics and in graft and like that.'
+
+"'I'm sure,' says Mis' Merriman, her voice slipping, 'Grandfather
+Merriman was an angel in heaven to his family. And he started the very
+Cemetery by bein' buried in it first himself, and he took a front lot--'
+
+"'Ladies, ladies,' says Mis' Sykes, stern, 'we ain't votin' _yet_. Has
+anybody got anything else to offer? Let the discussion be free.'
+
+"'What do we get a monument for, anyway?' says Mis' Toplady, hemming
+peaceful. 'Why don't we stick the money onto the new iron fence for
+Cemetery, same as we've been trying to do for years?'
+
+"'That's what I was thinking,' says Abagail Arnold, smiling. 'Whenever I
+make one of my layer cakes for Sodality Annual, and frost it white and
+make mounds of frosted nuts on top, I always wish Cemetery had a fence
+around so's I could make a frosting one on the edge of the cake,
+appropriate.'
+
+"'Why, but my land, Abagail,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'can't you see the
+differ'nce between workin' for a dead iron fence and working for the
+real, right down Dead that once was the living? Where's your humanity,
+I'd like to know, and your loyalty to Friendship Village inhabitants
+that was, that you set the old iron fence over against 'em. What's a
+fence beside folks?'
+
+"All this time Mis' Emmons, there in the front parlour, had just sat
+still, stitching away on some little garment or other, but now she
+looked up quick, as if she was going to speak. She even begun to speak
+with a 'Madame President' that covered up several excited beginnings.
+But as she done so, I looked through the folding doors and see her catch
+sight of somebody out in the street. And I looked out the bay-window in
+the back parlour and I see who it was: it was a man, carefully guiding a
+little bit of a man who was walking on the flat board top of the Sykes's
+fence. So, instead of speaking formal, all Mis' Emmons done was to make
+a little motion towards the window, so that her contribution to the
+debating was nothing but--
+
+"'Madame President--look.'
+
+"We all looked, them in the out-of-range corners of the room getting up
+and holding their work in their aprons, and peering past; and us in the
+back parlour tried for glimpses out the side bay-window, past Mis'
+Sykes's big sword fern. And so the most of us see Insley walking with
+Christopher, who was footing it very delicate and grave, picking out his
+places to step as if a real lot depended on it.
+
+"'That's Chris,' says Mis' Emmons, simple, 'that's come to us.' And
+you'd of said she hardly spoke the 'us' real conscious of herself. She
+looked round at us all. 'Let's have him in for a minute,' she says.
+
+"'The little soul! Let's so do,' Mis' Amanda Toplady says, hearty.
+
+"It was Mis' Emmons that went to the door and called them, and I guess
+Insley, when he see her, must of wondered what made her face seem like
+that. He went on up town, and the little chap come trotting up the walk.
+
+"When Chris come in Mis' Sykes's front parlour among all the women,
+there run round that little murmuring sound that a crowd of women uses
+to greet the coming in their midst of any child. And I s'pose it was a
+little more so than ever for Chris, that they hadn't all seen
+yet--'count of so few being out the night he come and 'count of his
+having been up to Proudfit House 'most ever since. Us in the back
+parlour went crowding in the front, and some come down to the hall door
+to be the nearer. Mis' Amanda Toplady, hunting in her deep pocket, this
+time for a lozenger, says fervent above the rest:--
+
+"'The little soul.'
+
+"And he did resemble one, standing there so shy and manly in his new
+little brown clothes.
+
+"Mis' Emmons's eyes was bright, and I thought I see a kind of challenge
+in her way of drawing the child towards her.
+
+"'Chris,' she says, 'tell them what you had in your paper bag when you
+came to the church the other night.'
+
+"Chris remembered: Sugar rolls and cream-puffs and fruit-cake, he
+recites it grand. 'My supper,' he adds, no less grand. 'But that was
+'cause I didn't have my dinner nor my breakfast,' he explains, so's we
+wouldn't think he'd had too much at once.
+
+"'What was the matter with your foot?' Mis' Emmons goes on.
+
+"Christopher had a little smile that just about won you--a sort of
+abashed little smile, that begun over by one side of his mouth, and when
+he was going to smile that way he always started in by turning away his
+head. He done this now; but we could all hear what he said. It was:--
+
+"'My biggest toe went right through a hole, an' it choked me awful.'
+
+"About a child's foot hurting, or a little sore heel, there is something
+that makes mothers out of everybody, for a minute or two. The women all
+twittered into a little ripple of understanding. Probably to every woman
+there come the picture of the little cold, wet foot and the choked toe.
+I know I could see it, and I can see it yet.
+
+"'Lambin',' says Mis' Toplady, in more than two syllables, 'come here
+for a peppermint.'
+
+"Chris went right over to her. 'I been thirsty for a drink of water
+since all day,' he says confidential. 'Have you got one?'
+
+"Mis' Toplady went with the child, and then Mis' Emmons took something
+from her bag and held it up. It was Christopher's father's letter that
+he'd brought with him that night.
+
+"She read the letter out loud, in everybody's perfectly breathless
+silence that was broken only by Christopher laughing out in the kitchen.
+'My friends,' Mis' Emmons says when she'd got through, 'doesn't it seem
+to you as if our work had come to us? And that if it isn't Chris
+himself, at least it ought to be people, live people--and not an iron
+fence or even a monument that will show from the railroad track?'
+
+"And with that, standing in the doorway with my arms full of bedspread,
+I piped right up, just like I'd been longing to pipe up ever since that
+night at Mis' Emmons's when I'd talked with Insley:--
+
+"'Yes, sir,' I says emphatic, 'it does. Without meaning to be
+sacrilegious in the least,' I says toward Mis' Sykes, 'I believe that
+the Dead is a lot better prepared to take care of themselves than a good
+many of the Living is.'
+
+"There was a kind of a little pause at this, all but Mis' Sykes. Mis'
+Sykes don't pause easy. She spoke right back, sort of elevating one
+temple:--
+
+"'The object of this meeting as the chair understands it,' says she, 'is
+to discuss money spending, _not_ idees.'
+
+"But I didn't pay no more attention than as if I'd been a speaker in
+public life. And Mis' Toplady and Christopher, coming back to the room
+just then, I spoke to him and took a-hold of his little shoulder.
+
+"'Chris,' I says, 'tell 'em what you're going to be when you grow up.'
+
+"The little boy stood up with his back against the door-casing, and he
+spoke back between peppermints:--
+
+"'I'm going to drive the loads of hay,' he declares himself.
+
+"'A little bit ago,' I says to 'em, 'he was going to be a cream-puff
+man, and keep a church and manufacture black velvet for people's
+coffins. Think of all them futures--not to spend time on other
+possibilities. Don't it seem like we'd ought to keep him around here
+somewheres and help him decide? Don't it seem like what he's going to be
+is resting with us?'
+
+"But now Mis' Sykes spoke out in her most presidential tone.
+
+"'It would be perfectly impossible,' she says, 'for Sodality to spend
+its money on the child or on anybody else that's living. Our
+constitution says we shall work for Cemetery.'
+
+"'Well,' says I, rebellish, 'then let's rip up our old constitution and
+buy ourselves a new pattern.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes was getting to verge on mad.
+
+"'But Sodality ain't an orphan asylum, Calliope,' says she, 'nor none of
+us is that.'
+
+"'Ain't we--ain't we, Mis' Sykes?' I says. 'Sometimes I donno what we're
+for if we ain't that.'
+
+"And then I just clear forgot myself, in one of them times that don't
+let you get to sleep that night for thinking about, and that when you
+wake up is right there by the bed waiting for you, and that makes you
+feel sore when you think of afterwards--sore, but glad, too.
+
+"'That's it,' I says, 'that's it. I've been thinking about that a good
+deal lately. I s'pose it's because I ain't any children of my own to be
+so busy for that I can't think about their real good. Seems to me there
+ain't a child living no matter how saucy or soiled or similar, but could
+look us each one in the face and say, "What you doing for me and the
+rest of us?" And what could we say to them? We could say: "I'm buying
+some of you ginghams that won't shrink nor fade. Some of you I'm cooking
+food for, and some of you I'm letting go without it. And some of you I'm
+buying school books and playthings and some of you I'm leaving without
+'em. I'm making up some of your beds and teaching you your manners and
+I'm loving you--some of you. And the rest of you I'm leaving walk in
+town after dark with a hole in your stocking." _Where's the
+line--where's the line?_ How do we know which is the ones to do for? I
+tell you I'm the orphan asylum to the whole lot of 'em. And so are you.
+And I move the Cemetery Improvement Sodality do something for this
+little boy. We'd adopt him if he was dead--an' keep his grave as nice
+and neat as wax. Let's us adopt him instead of his grave!'
+
+"My bedspread had slipped down onto the floor, but I never knew when nor
+did I see it go. All I see was that some of them agreed with me--Mis'
+Emmons and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Hubbelthwait and Libby and even Mame
+that had proposed the monument. But some of the others was waiting as
+usual to see how Mis' Sykes was going to believe, and Mis' Sykes she was
+just standing there by the piano, her cheeks getting pinker and pinker
+up high on her face.
+
+"'Calliope,' she said, making a gesture. 'Ladies! this is every bit of
+it out of order. This ain't the subject that we come together to
+discuss.'
+
+"'It kind of seems to me,' says I, 'that it's a subject we was born to
+discuss.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady sort of rolled over in her chair and looked across her
+glasses to Mis' Sykes.
+
+"'Madame President,' says she, 'as I understand it this fits in all
+right. What we're proposing is to spend Sodality's money on this little
+boy just the same as though he was dead. I move we do so.'
+
+"Two-three of 'em seconded it, but scairt and scattering.
+
+"'Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Ladies! This is a good deal too
+headlong. A committee'd ought--'
+
+"'Question--question,' demands Mis' Emmons, serene, and she met my eye
+and smiled some, in that little _we_-understand look that can pierce
+through a roomful of people like the wind.
+
+"'Mis' Emmons,' says Mis' Sykes, wildish. 'Ladies! Sodality has been
+organized over twenty years, doing the same thing. You can't change so
+offhand--' You can't help admiring Mis' Sykes, for she simply don't know
+when she's beat. But this time she had a point with her, too. 'If we
+want to vote to amend the constitution,' she said, 'you've got to lay
+down your wishes on the table for one week.'
+
+"'I daresay you have,' says Mis' Emmons, looking grave. 'Well, I move
+that we amend the constitution of this society, and I move that we do it
+next week at the open annual meeting of the Sodality.'
+
+"'Second the motion,' says I, with my feet on my white bedspread.
+
+"And somehow the phrase caught Christopher's ear, like a tune might to
+march by.
+
+"'Second a motion--second a motion!' he chants to himself, standing by
+Mis' Toplady's knee.
+
+
+
+
+VIII
+
+
+"I had promised Insley to run in the Cadozas' after the meeting, and see
+the little boy; and Mis' Emmons having to go home before she started
+back to the Proudfits', Christopher walked along with me. When we got
+out to the end of Daphne Street, Insley overtook us on his way out to
+the Cadozas', too.
+
+"His shoes were some muddy, and I guessed that he had been where of late
+he'd spent as much time as he could spare, both when he was in the
+village and when he was over to Indian Mound. Without digging down into
+his eyes, the same as some do to folks that's in trouble, I had sensed
+that there had come down on him everybody's hour of cutting something
+out of life, which is as elemental a thing to do as dying is, and I
+donno but it's the same kind as dying is besides. And he had been taking
+his hour in the elemental way, wanting to be alone and to kind of get
+near to the earth. I mean tramping the hills, ploughing along the narrow
+paths close to the barb' wire fences, plunging into the little groves.
+The little groves have such an' I-know look of understanding all about
+any difficulty till you walk inside of them, when all to once they stop
+seeming to know about your special trouble and begin another kind of
+slow soothing, same as summing things up will soothe you, now and then.
+
+"Chris chattered to him, lovable.
+
+"'I had some peppermenges,' he says, 'and I like hot ice-cream, too.
+Don't you? Can you make that?' he inquires, slipping his hand in
+Insley's.
+
+"Of course this made a pang--when you're hurt, 'most everything makes a
+pang. And this must of brought back that one evening with Robin that he
+would have to remember, and all the little stupid jokes they'd had that
+night must of rose up and hit at him, with the awful power of the little
+things that don't matter one bit and yet that matter everything.
+
+"'What can _you_ make, Chris?' Insley says to him. 'Can you make candy?
+And pull it--like this?'
+
+"'Once a lady stirred me some an' cut it up in squares,' Chris
+explained, 'but I never did make any. My mama couldn't make candy, I
+guess, but she could make all other things--pancakes an' mittens an'
+nice stove fires my mama could make. The bag we got the salt in--she
+made me two handkerchiefs out of that bag,' he ended proudly.
+
+"'Did she--did she?' Insley tempted him on.
+
+"'Yes,' Chris went on, hopping beside him, 'but now I've got to hurry
+an' be a man, 'cause litty boys ain't very good things. Can you make
+po'try?' he wound up.
+
+"'Why, Chris--can you?' Insley asked.
+
+"'Well, when I was comin' along with my daddy that night I made one,'
+the child says. And when Insley questions him a little he got this much
+more out of him. 'It started, "Look at the trees so green an' fair,"' he
+says, 'but I forget the rest.'
+
+"'Do you want to be a poet when you grow up?' Insley ask' him.
+
+"'Yes, I do,' the child says ready. 'I think I'll be that first an' then
+I'll be the President, too. But what I'd rather be is the sprinkler-cart
+man, wouldn't you?'
+
+"'Conceivably,' Insley says, and by the look on his face I bet his hand
+tightened up on the child's hand.
+
+"'At Sodality,' I says, 'he just told them he was going to drive loads
+of hay. He's made several selections.'
+
+"He looked at me over the child's head, and I guess we was both
+thinking the same thing: Trust nature to work this out alone?
+'Conceivably,' again. But all of a sudden I know we both burned to help
+to do it. And as Insley talked to the child, I think some touch of his
+enterprise come back and breathed on him. In them few last days I
+shouldn't wonder if his work hadn't stopped soaring to the meaning of
+spirit and sunk down again to be just body drudgery. He couldn't ever
+help having his old possessing love of men, and his man's strong
+resolution to keep a-going, but I shouldn't wonder if the wings of the
+thing he meant to do had got folded up. And Christopher, here, was sort
+of releasing them out again.
+
+"'How's the little Cadoza boy?' I ask' him pretty soon.
+
+"'He's getting on,' he says. 'Dr. Barrows was down yesterday--he wants
+him for a fortnight or so at the hospital in town, where he can have
+good care and food. His mother doesn't want him to go. I hoped you'd
+talk with her.'
+
+"Before we got to the Cadoza house Insley looked over to me, enigmatish.
+'Want to see something?' he says, and he handed me a letter. I read it,
+and some of it I knew what it meant and some of it I didn't. It was
+from Alex Proudfit, asking him up to Proudfit House to the house party.
+
+" ... Ain't it astonishing how awful festive the word 'house party'
+sounds. 'Party' sounds festive, though not much more so than 'company'
+or 'gathering' that we use more common. 'Ball,' of course, is real
+glittering, and paints the inside of your head into pictures,
+instantaneous. But a house party--maybe it's because I never was to one;
+maybe it's because I never heard of one till late in life; maybe it's
+because nobody ever had one before in Friendship Village--but that word
+give me all the sensation that 'her golden coach' and 'his silver
+armour' and 'good fairy' used to have for me when I was a little girl.
+'House party!' Anything shiny might happen to one of them. It's like
+you'd took something vanishin', like a party, and just seized onto it
+and made it stay longer than Time and the World ever intended. It's like
+making a business of the short-lived.
+
+"Well, some of Alex's letter went about like this:--
+
+"'Join us for the whole time, do,' it says, and it went on about there
+being rather an interesting group,--'a jolly individualist,' I recollect
+he says, 'for your special benefit. He'll convert you where I couldn't,
+because he's kept his love for men and I haven't. And of course I've
+some women--pretty, bless them, and thank the Lord not one of them
+troubling whether she loves mankind or not, so long as men love her. And
+there you have Nature uncovered at her task! I shall expect you for
+every moment that you can spare....' I remember the wording because it
+struck me it was all so like Alex that I could pretty near talk to it
+and have it answer back.
+
+"'Tell me,' Insley says, when I handed the letter back to him, 'you
+know--him. Alex Proudfit. Does he put all that on? Is it his mask? Does
+he feel differently and do differently when folks don't know?'
+
+"'Well,' I says, slow, 'I donno. He gives the Cadozas their rent, but
+when Mis' Cadoza went to thank him, once, he sent down word for her to
+go and see his agent.'
+
+"He nodded, and I'd never heard him speak bitter before. 'That's it,' he
+says, 'that's it. That's the way we bungle things....'
+
+"We'd got almost to the Cadozas' when we heard an automobile coming
+behind us, and as we stood aside to let it go by, Robin's face flashed
+past us at the window. Mis' Emmons was with her, that Robin had come
+down after. Right off the car stopped and Robin jumped out and come
+hurrying back towards us. I'll never forget the minute. We met right in
+front of the old tumble-down Cadoza house with the lilacs so high in the
+front yard that the place looked pretty near nice, like the rest of the
+world. It was a splendid afternoon, one that had got it's gold persuaded
+to burst through a gray morning, like colour from a bunch of silver
+buds; and now the air was all full of lovely things, light and little
+wind and late sun and I donno but things we didn't know about. And
+everyone of them seemed in Robin's face as she came towards us, and
+more, too, that we couldn't name or place.
+
+"I think the mere exquisite girlishness of her come home to Insley as
+even her strength and her womanliness, that night he talked with her,
+had not moved him. I donno but in the big field of his man's dream, he
+had pretty near forgot how obvious her charm was. I'm pretty sure that
+in those days when he was tramping the hills alone, the thing that he
+was fighting with was that he was going to lose her companioning in the
+life they both dreamed. But now her hurrying so and her little faint
+agitation made her appeal a new thing, fifty times as lovely, fifty
+times as feminine, and sort of filling in the picture of herself with
+all the different kinds of women she was in one.
+
+"So now, as he stood there with her, looking down in her face, touching
+her friendly hand, I think that was the first real, overhauling minute
+when he was just swept by the understanding that his loss was so many
+times what he'd thought it was going to be. For it was her that he
+wanted, it was her that he would miss for herself and not for any dear
+plans of work-fellowship alone. She understood his dream, but there was
+other things she understood about, too. A man can love a woman for a
+whole collection of little dear things--and he can lose her and grieve;
+he can love her for her big way of looking at things, and he can lose
+her and grieve; he can love her because she is his work-fellow, and he
+can lose her and grieve. But if, on top of one of these, he loves her
+because she is she, the woman that knows about life and is capable of
+sharing all of life with him and of being tender about it, why then if
+he loses her, his grieving is going to be something that there ain't
+rightly no name for. And I think it was that minute there in the road
+that it first come to Insley that Robin was Robin, that of all the many
+women that she was, first and most she was the woman that was capable
+of sharing with him all sides of living.
+
+"'I wanted ...' she says to him, uncertain. 'Oh, I wish very much that
+you would accept the invitation to some of the house party. I wanted to
+tell you.'
+
+"'I can't do that,' he answers, short and almost gruff. 'Really I can't
+do that.'
+
+"But it seemed there was even a sort of nice childishness about her that
+you wouldn't have guessed. I always think it's a wonderful moment when a
+woman knows a man well enough to show some of her childishness to him.
+But a woman that shows right off, close on the heels of an introduction,
+how childish she can be, it always sort o' makes me mad--like she'd told
+her first name without being asked about it.
+
+"'Please,' Robin says, 'I'm asking it because I wish it very much. I
+want those people up there to know you. I want--'
+
+"He shook his head, looking at her, eyes, mouth, and fresh cheeks, like
+he wished he was able to look at her face _all at once_.
+
+"'At least, at least,' she says to him rapid, then, 'you must come to
+the party at the end. You know I want to keep you for my friend--I want
+to make you our friend. That night Aunt Eleanor is going to announce my
+engagement, and I want my friends to be there.'
+
+"That surprised me as much as it did him. Nobody in the village knew
+about the engagement yet except us two that knew it from that night at
+Mis' Emmons's. I wondered what on earth Insley was going to say and I
+remember how I hoped, pretty near fierce, that he wasn't going to smile
+and bow and wish her happiness and do the thing the world would have
+wanted of him. It may make things run smoother to do that way, but
+smoothness isn't the only thing the love of folks for folks knows about.
+I do like a man that now and then speaks out with the breath in his
+lungs and not just with the breath of his nostrils. And that's what
+Insley done--that's what he done, only I'm bound to say that I do think
+he spoke out before he knew he was going to.
+
+"'That would be precisely why I couldn't come,' he said. 'Thank you, you
+know--but please don't ask me.'
+
+"As for Robin, at this her eyes widened, and beautiful colour swept her
+face. And she didn't at once turn away from him, but I see how she stood
+looking at him with a kind of a sharp intentness, less of wonder than of
+stopping short.
+
+"Christopher had run to the automobile and now he come a-hopping back.
+
+"'Robin!' he called. 'Aunt Eleanor says you haf to be in a dress by
+dinner, and it's _now_.'
+
+"'Do come for dinner, Mr. Insley,' Mis' Emmons calls, as Robin and
+Christopher went to join him. 'We've got up a tableau or two for
+afterward. Come and help me be a tableau.'
+
+"He smiled and shook his head and answered her. And that reminded me
+that I'd got to hurry like wild, as usual. It was most six o'clock
+then,--it always _is_ either most six o'clock or most noon when I get
+nearest to being interested,--and that night great things was going to
+be going on. Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and the School Board and I was
+going to have a tableau of our own.
+
+"But for all that I couldn't help standing still a minute and looking
+after the automobile. It seemed as bad as some kind of a planet,
+carrying Robin off for forever and ever. And I wasn't so clear that I
+fancied its orbit.
+
+"'I've got a whole string of minds not to go to that party myself,' I
+says, meditative.
+
+"But Insley never answered. He just come on around the Cadozas' house.
+
+
+
+
+IX
+
+
+"I never speak much about my relations, because I haven't got many. If I
+did have, I suppose I should be telling about how peculiar they take
+their tea and coffee, and what they died of, and showing samples of
+their clothes and acting like my own immediate family made up life, just
+like most folks does. But I haven't got much of any relatives, nor no
+ancestors to brag about. 'Nothing for kin but the world,' I always say.
+
+"But back in the middle of June I had got a letter from a cousin, like a
+bow from the blue. And the morning I got it, and with it yet unopened in
+my hand, Silas Sykes come out from behind the post-office window and
+tapped me on the arm.
+
+"'Calliope,' he says, 'we've about made up our minds--the School Board
+an' some o' the leadin' citizens has--to appoint a Women's Evenin'
+Vigilance Committee, secret. An' we want you an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis'
+Sykes should be it.'
+
+"'Vigilance,' I says, thoughtful. 'I recollect missin' on the meanin'
+of that word in school. I recollect I called it "viligance" an' said it
+meant a 'bus. I donno if I rightly know what it means now, Silas.'
+
+"Silas cleared his throat an' whispered hoarse, in a way he's got:
+'Women don't have no call, much for the word,' he says. 'It means when
+you sic your notice onto some one thing. We want a committee of you
+women should do it.'
+
+"'Notice _what_?' I says, some mystified. 'What the men had ought to be
+up to an' ain't?'
+
+"But customers come streaming into the post-office store then, and some
+folks for their mail, and Silas set a time a couple o' days later in the
+afternoon for Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and me to come down to the
+store and talk it over.
+
+"'An' you be here,' says Silas, beatin' it off with his finger. 'It's
+somethin' we got to do to protect our own public decency.'
+
+"'_Public_ decency,' I says over, thoughtful, and went out fingerin' my
+letter that was in a strange handwriting and that I was dying to read.
+
+"It was a couple of days later that I what-you-might-say finished that
+letter, and between times I had it on the clock-shelf and give every
+spare minute to making it out. Minerva Beach the letter was from--my
+cousin Minnie Beach's girl. Minnie had died awhile before, and Minerva,
+her daughter, was on her way West to look for a position, and should she
+spend a few days with me? That was what I made out, though I donno how I
+done it, for her writing was so big and so up-and-down that every letter
+looked like it had on corsets and high heels. I never see such a mess!
+It was like picking out a crochet pattern to try to read it.
+
+"I recollect that I was just finishing composing my letter telling her
+to come along, and hurrying so's to take it to mail as I went down to
+the Vigilance Committee meeting, when the new photographer in town come
+to my door, with his horse and buggy tied to the gate. J. Horace Myers
+was his name, and he said he was a friend of the Topladys, and he was
+staying with them while he made choice art photographs of the whole
+section; and he wanted to take a picture of my house. He was a dapper
+little man, but awful tired-seeming, so I told him to take the picture
+and welcome, and I put the stone dog on the front porch and looped the
+parlour curtains over again and started off for the meeting.
+
+"'I'll be up to show you the proofs in a few days,' he says as I was
+leaving. He was fixing the black cloth over his head, kind of listless
+and patient.
+
+"'Land!' I says, before I knew it, 'don't you get awful sick of takin'
+pictures of humbly houses you don't care nothin' about?'
+
+"He peeked out from under the black cloth sort of grateful. 'I do,' he
+says, simple,--'sick enough to bust the camera.'
+
+"'Well, I should think you would,' I says hearty; and I went down Daphne
+Street with the afternoon kind of feeling tarnished. I was wondering how
+on earth folks go on at all that dislikes their work like that. There
+was Abe Luck, just fixing the Sykes's eaves-trough--what was there to
+_like_ about fixing eaves-troughs and about the whole hardware business?
+Jimmy Sturgis coming driving the 'bus, Eppleby Holcomb over there
+registering deeds, Mis' Sykes's girl Em'ly washing windows,--what was
+there about any of it to _like_ doing? I looked at Mis' Sykes's Em'ly
+real pitying, polishing panes outside, when Abe Luck come climbing down
+the ladder from the roof; and all of a sudden I see Abe stick his head
+through the rungs, and quick as a flash kiss Mis' Sykes's Em'ly.
+
+"'My land!' I started to think, 'Mis' Sykes had ought to discharge--'
+and then I just stopped short off, sudden. Her hating windows, and him
+hating eaves-troughs, and what else did either of them have? Nothing. I
+could sense their lives like I could sense my own--level and even and
+_darn_. And all at once I had all I could do to keep from being glad
+that Abe Luck had kissed Em'ly. And I walked like lightning to keep back
+the feeling.
+
+"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady was to the post-office store before me. It
+was a slack time of day, and Silas set down on a mail-bag and begun
+outlining the situation that he meant about.
+
+"'The School Board,' says Silas, important, 'has got some women's work
+they want done. It's a thing,' s'he, 'that women can do the best--I mean
+it's the girls an' boys, hangin' round evenin's--you know we've all
+talked about it. But somebody's got to get after 'em in earnest, an' see
+they don't disgrace us with their carryin' on in the streets, evenin's.'
+
+"'Why don't the men do it?' I ask' him, wonderin', 'or is it 'count of
+offending some?'
+
+"'No such thing!' says Silas, touchy. 'Where's your delicate feelin's,
+Calliope? Women can do these things better than men. This is somethin'
+delicate, that had ought to be seen to quiet. It ain't a matter for the
+authorities. It's women's work,' says he. 'It's women that's the
+mothers--it ain't the men,' says Silas, convincing.
+
+"But still I looked at him, real meditative. 'What started you men off
+on that tack at this time?' I ask' him, blunt--because young folks had
+been flooding the streets evenings since I could remember, and no
+Friendship Village man had ever acted like this about it.
+
+"'Well,' says Silas, 'don't you women tell it out around. But the thing
+that's got us desperate is the schoolhouse. The entry to it--they've
+used it shameful. Peanut shucks, down-trod popcorn, paper bags, fruit
+peelin's--every mornin' the stone to the top o' the steps, under the
+archway, is full of 'em. An' last week the Board went up there early
+mornin' to do a little tinkerin', an' there set three beer bottles, all
+empty. So we've figgered on puttin' some iron gates up to the
+schoolhouse entry an' appointin' you women a Vigilance Committee to help
+us out.'
+
+"We felt real indignant about the schoolhouse. It stands up a little
+slope, and you can see it from 'most anywheres daytimes, and we all felt
+kind of an interest--though of course the School Board seemed to own it
+special.
+
+"Mis' Toplady looked warm and worried. 'But what is it you want we
+should do, Silas?' she ask', some irritable. 'I've got my hands so full
+o' my own family it don't seem as if I could vigilance for nobody.'
+
+"'S-h-h, Mis' Toplady. _I_ think it's a great trust,' says Mis' Silas
+Sykes.
+
+"'It is a great trust,' says Silas, warm, 'to get these young folks to
+stop gallivantin' an' set home where they belong.'
+
+"'How you going to get them to set home, Silas?' I ask', some puzzled.
+
+"'Well,' says Silas, 'that's where they ought to be, ain't it?'
+
+"'Why,' I says thoughtful, 'I donno's they had.'
+
+"'_What?_' says Silas, with horns on the word. 'What say, Calliope?'
+
+"'How much settin' home evenings did you do when you was young, Silas?'
+I says.
+
+"'I'd 'a' been a long sight better off if I'd 'a' done more of it,' says
+Silas.
+
+"'However that is, you _didn't_ set home,' I says back at him. 'Neither
+will young folks set there now, I don't believe.'
+
+"'Well,' says Silas, '_anyhow_, they've got to get off'n the streets.
+We've made up our minds to that. They can't set on steps nor in
+stairways down town, nor in entries, nor to the schoolhouse. We've got
+to look out for public decency.'
+
+"'_Public_ decency,' says I, again. 'They can do what they like, so's
+public decency ain't injured, I s'pose, Silas?'
+
+"'No such thing!' shouts Silas. 'Calliope, take shame! Ain't we doin'
+our best to start 'em right?'
+
+"'That's what I donno,' I answers him, troubled. 'Driving folks around
+don't never seem to me to be a real good start towards nowheres.'
+
+"Mis' Amanda Toplady hitched forward in her chair and spoke for the
+first time--ponderous and decided, but real sweet, too. 'What I think is
+this,' she says. 'They won't set home, as Calliope says. And when we've
+vigilanced 'em off the streets, where are we goin' to vigilance 'em
+_to_?'
+
+"'That ain't our lookout,' says Silas.
+
+"'Ain't it?' says Mis' Toplady. '_Ain't it?_' She set thinking for a
+minute and then her face smoothed. 'Anyhow,' she says, comfortable, 'us
+ladies'll vigilance awhile. It ain't clear in my mind yet what to do.
+But we'll do it, I guess.'
+
+"We made up that we three should come down town one night that week and
+look around and see what we see. We all knew--every woman in Friendship
+Village knew--how evenings, the streets was full of young folks, loud
+talking and loud laughing and carrying on. We'd all said to each other,
+helpless, that we _wisht_ something could be done, but that was as far
+as anybody'd got. So we made it up that we three should be down town in
+a night or two, so's to get our ideas started, and Silas was to have
+Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb, that's on the School Board, down to
+the store so we could all talk it over together afterwards. But still I
+guess we all felt sort of vague as to what we was to drive _at_.
+
+"'It seems like Silas wanted us to unwind a ball o' string from the
+middle out,' says Mis' Toplady, uneasy, when we'd left the store.
+
+"A few days after that Minerva come. I went down to the depot to meet
+her, and I would of reco'nized her anywheres, she looked so much like
+her handwriting. She was dressed sort of tawdry swell. She had on a good
+deal. But out from under her big hat with its cheap plume that was goin'
+to shed itself all over the house, I see her face was little and young
+and some pretty and excited. Excited about life and new things and
+moving around. I liked her right off. 'Land!' thinks I, 'you'll try me
+to death. But, you poor, nice little thing, you can if you want to.'
+
+"I took her home to supper. She talked along natural enough, and seemed
+to like everything she et, and then she wiped the dishes for me, and
+looked at herself in the clock looking-glass all the while she was doing
+it. Then, when I'd put out the milk bottles, we locked up the back part
+of the house and went and set in the parlour.
+
+"I'd always thought pretty well of my parlour. It hasn't anything but a
+plush four-piece set and an ingrain and Nottinghams, but it's the
+_parlour_, and I'd liked it. But when we'd been setting there a little
+while, and I'd asked her about everybody, and showed her their pictures
+in the album, all of a sudden it seemed as if they wasn't anything to
+_do_ in the parlour. Setting there and talking was nice, but I missed
+something. And I thought of this first when Minerva got up and walked
+kind of aimless to the window.
+
+"'How big is Friendship Village?' she ask'.
+
+"I told her, real proud.
+
+"'They can't be a great deal goin' on here, is they?' she says.
+
+"'Land, yes!' I says. 'We're so busy we're nearly dead. Ladies' Aid,
+Ladies' Missionary, Cemetery Improvement Sodality, the rummage sale
+coming on, the bazaar, and I donno what all.'
+
+"'Oh,' she says, vague. 'Well--is they many young people?'
+
+"And when I'd told her, 'Quite a few,' she didn't say anything more--but
+just stood looking down the street. And pretty soon I says, 'Land! the
+parlour's kind o' stuffy to-night. Let's go out in the yard.' And when
+we'd walked around out there a minute, smelling in my pinks, I thought,
+'Land! it's kind o' dreary doin' this,' an' I says to her all of a
+sudden, 'Let's go in the house and make some candy.'
+
+"'Oh, _let's_,' she says, like a little girl.
+
+"We went back in and lit the kitchen fire, and made butter-scotch--she
+done it, being real handy at it. She livened up and flew around and
+joked some, and the kitchen looked nice and messy and _used_, and we had
+a real good time. And right in the midst of it there come a rap at the
+side door and there stood the dapper, tired-looking little photograph
+man, J. Horace Myers, seeming as discouraged as he could.
+
+"We spread out the proofs of the pictures of my house and spent some
+time deciding. And while we was deciding, he showed us some more
+pictures that he'd made of the town, and talked a little about them. He
+was a real pleasant, soft-spoken man, and he knew how to laugh and when
+to do it. He see the funny in things--he see that the post-office looked
+like a rabbit with its ears up; he see that the engine-house looked like
+it was lifting its eyebrows; and he see the pretty in things, too--he
+showed us a view or two he'd took around Friendship Village just for the
+fun of it. One was Daphne Street, by the turn, and he says: 'It looks
+like a deep tunnel, don't it? An' like you wanted to go down it?' He was
+a wonderful nice, neutral little man, and I enjoyed looking at his
+pictures.
+
+"But Minerva--I couldn't help watching her. She wasn't so interested in
+the pictures, and she wasn't so quick at seeing the funny in things, nor
+the pretty, either; but even the candy making hadn't livened her up the
+way that little talking done. She acted real easy and told some little
+jokes; and when the candy was cool, she passed him some; and I thought
+it was all right to do. And he sort of spruced up and took notice and
+quit being so down-in-the-mouth. And I thought, 'Land! ain't it funny
+how just being together makes human beings, be they agent or be they
+cousin, more themselves than they was before!'
+
+"Her liking company made me all the more sorry to leave Minerva alone
+that next evening, that was the night Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I
+was due to a tableau of our own in the post-office store. It was the
+night when the Vigilance Committee was to have its first real meeting
+with the School Board. But I lit the lamp for Minerva in the parlour,
+and give her the day's paper, and she had her sewing, and when Mis'
+Toplady and Mis' Sykes come for me, I went off and left her setting by
+the table. My parlour had been swept that day, and it was real tidy and
+quiet and lamp-lit; and yet when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and I
+stepped out into the night, all smelling of pinks and a new moon
+happening, and us going on that mission we wasn't none of us sure what
+it was, the dark and the excitement sort of picked me up and I felt like
+I never felt in my parlour in my life--all kind of young and free and
+springy.
+
+"'Let's us walk right down through town first,' says Mis' Toplady.
+'That's where the young folks gets to, seems though.'
+
+"'Well-a, I don't see the necessity of that,' says Mis' Sykes. 'We've
+all three done that again and again. We know how it is down there
+evenings.'
+
+"'But,' says Mis' Toplady, in her nice, stubborn way, 'let's us, anyway.
+I know, when I walk through town nights, I'm 'most always hurrying to
+get my yeast before the store shuts, an' I never half look around.
+To-night let's _look_.'
+
+"Well, we looked. Along by the library windows in some low stone ledges.
+In front of a store or two they was some more. Around the corner was a
+place where they was some new tombstones piled up, waiting for their
+folks. And half a block down was the canal bridge. And ledges and bridge
+and tombstones and streets was alive with girls and boys--little young
+things, the girls with their heads tied in bright veils and pretty
+ribbons on them, and their laughs just shrilling and thrilling with the
+sheer fun of _hanging around_ on a spring night.
+
+"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, '_what_ is their mothers thinkin' of?'
+
+"But something else was coming home to me.
+
+"'I dunno,' I says, kind of scairt at the way I felt, 'if I had the
+invite, this spring night, all pinks and new moons, I donno but I'd go
+and hang over a tombstone with 'em!'
+
+"'Calliope!' says Mis' Sykes, sharp. But Mis' Toplady, she kind of
+chuckled. And the crowd jostled us--more young folks, talking and
+laughing and calling each other by nicknames, and we didn't say no more
+till we got up in the next block.
+
+"There's a vacant store there up towards the wagon shop, and a house or
+two, and that's where the open stairways was that Silas meant about.
+Everything had been shut up at six o'clock, and there, sure as the
+world, 'most every set of steps and every stairway had its couple,
+sitting and laughing and talking, like the place was differ'nt sofas in
+a big drawing-room, or rocks on a seashore, or like that.
+
+"'Mercy!' says Mis' Sykes. 'Such goin'-ons! Such bringin'-ups!'
+
+"Just then I recollect I heard a girl laugh out, pretty and pleased, and
+I thought I recognized Mis' Sykes's Em'ly's voice, and I thought I knew
+Abe Luck's answering--but I never said a word to Mis' Sykes, because I
+betted she wouldn't get a step farther than discharging Em'ly, and I was
+after more steps than that. And besides, same minute, I got the scent of
+the Bouncing Bet growing by the wagon shop; and right out of thin air,
+and acrost more years than I like to talk about, come the quick little
+feeling that made me know the fun, the sheer _fun_, that Em'ly thought
+she was having and that she had the right to.
+
+"'Oh, well, whoever it is, maybe they're engaged,' says Mis' Toplady,
+soothin'.
+
+"'Oh, but the bad taste!' says Mis' Sykes, shuddering. Mis' Sykes is a
+good cook and a good enough mother, and a fair-to-middling housekeeper,
+but she looks hard on the fringes and the borders of this life, and to
+her 'good taste' is both of them.
+
+"They wasn't nobody on the wagon shop steps, for a wonder, and we set
+down there for a minute to talk it over. And while Mis' Toplady and Mis'
+Sykes was having it out between them, I set there a-thinking. And all of
+a sudden the night sort of stretched out and up, and I almost felt us
+little humans crawling around on the bottom of it. And one little bunch
+of us was Friendship Village, and in Friendship Village some of us was
+young. I kind of saw the whole throng of them--the _young_ humans that
+would some day be the village. There they was, bottled up in school all
+day, or else boxed in a store or a factory or somebody's kitchen, and
+when night come, and summer come, and the moon come--land, land! they
+_wanted_ something, all of them, and they didn't know what they wanted.
+
+"And what had they got? There was the streets stretching out in every
+direction, each house with its parlour--four-piece plush set, mebbe, and
+ingrain and Nottinghams, and mebbe not even that, and mebbe the rest of
+the family flooding the room, anyway. And what was the parlour, even
+with somebody to set and talk to them--what was the parlour, compared to
+the _magic_ they was craving and couldn't name? The feeling young and
+free and springy, and the wanting somehow to express it? Something to
+do, somewheres to go, something to see, somebody to be with and laugh
+with--no wonder they swept out into the dark in numbers, no wonder they
+took the night as they could find it. They didn't have no hotel piazza
+of their own, no boat-rides, no seashore, no fine parties, no
+automobiles--no nothing but the big, exciting dark that belongs to us
+all together. No wonder they took it for their own.
+
+"Why, Friendship Village was no more than a great big ball-room with
+these young folks leaving the main floor and setting in the alcoves, to
+unseen music. If the alcoves had been all palms and expense and
+dressed-up chaperons on the edges, everything would of seemed right. As
+it was, it was all a danger that made my heart ache for them, and for us
+all. And yet it come from their same longing for fun, for joy--and
+where was they to get it?
+
+"'Oh, ladies!' I says, out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, 'if
+only we had some place to invite 'em to!'
+
+"'They wouldn't come if we had,' says Mis' Sykes, final.
+
+"'Not come!' I says. 'With candy making and pictures and music and mebbe
+dancin'? Not come!'
+
+"'Dancin'!' says Mis' Toplady, low. 'Oh, Calliope, I donno as I'd go
+that far.'
+
+"'We've went farther than that long ago,' I says, reckless. 'We've went
+so far that the dangers of dancin' would be safe beside the dangers of
+what is.'
+
+"'But we ain't responsible for that,' says Mis' Sykes.
+
+"'Ain't we--_ain't we?_' I says, like Mis' Toplady had. 'Mis' Sykes, how
+much does Silas rent the post-office hall for, a night?'
+
+"'Ten dollars, if he makes something; and five dollars at cost,' she
+says.
+
+"'That's it,' I says, groaning. 'We never could afford that, even to ask
+them in once a week. Oh, we'd ought to have some place open every night
+for them, and us ladies take turns doing the refreshments; but they
+ain't no place in town that belongs to young folks--'
+
+"And all of a sudden I stopped, like an idee had took me from all four
+sides of my head at once.
+
+"'Why, ladies,' I says, 'look at the schoolhouse, doing nothing every
+night out of the year and _built_ for the young folks!'
+
+"'Oh, well,' says Mis' Sykes, superior, 'you know the Board'd never
+allow 'em to use the schoolhouse _that_ way. The Board wouldn't think of
+it!'
+
+"'_Whose_ Board?' says I, stern. 'Ain't they our Board? Yours and mine
+and Friendship Village's? Come on--come on and put it to 'em,' I says,
+kind o' wild.
+
+"I was climbing down the steps while I spoke. And we all went down, me
+talking on, and Mis' Toplady catching fire on the minute, an' Mis' Sykes
+holding out like she does unless so be she's thought of an idea herself.
+But oh, Mis' Toplady, she's differ'nt.
+
+"'Goodness alive!' she said, 'why ain't some of us thought o' that
+before? Ain't it the funniest thing, the way folks can have a way out
+right under their noses, an' not sense it?'
+
+"I had never had a new-born notion come into my head so ready-made. I
+could hardly talk it fast enough, and Mis' Toplady same way, and we
+hurried back to the post-office store, Mis' Sykes not convinced but
+keeping still because us two talked it so hard.
+
+"Silas and Timothy and Eppleby Holcomb was setting in the back part of
+the post-office store waiting for us, and Mis' Toplady and I hurried
+right up to them.
+
+"'You tell, Calliope,' says Mis' Toplady. 'It's your idee.'
+
+"But first we both told, even Mis' Sykes joining in, shocked, about the
+doorway carryin' ons and all the rest. 'Land, land!' Mis' Toplady says,
+'I never had a little girl. I lost my little girl baby when she was
+eleven months. But I ain't never felt so like _shieldin'_ her from
+somethin' as I feel to-night.'
+
+"'It's awful, awful!' says Timothy Toplady, decided. 'We've just got to
+get some law goin', that's all.'
+
+"Silas agreed, scowling judicial. 'We been talkin' curfew,' he says. 'I
+donno but we'll hev to get the curfew on 'em.'
+
+"'Curfew!' says I. 'So you're thinking of curfewin' 'em off the streets.
+Will you tell me, Silas Sykes, where you're going to curfew 'em _to_?'
+
+"'Yes,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that's what I meant about vigilancin' 'em
+off somewheres. _Where to?_ What say, Silas?'
+
+"'That ain't our concern, woman!' shouts Silas, exasperated by us
+harping on the one string. 'Them young folks has all got one or more
+parents. Leave 'em use 'em.'
+
+"'Yes, indeed,' says Mis' Sykes, nodding once, with her eyes shut brief.
+'An' young people had ought to be encouraged to do evening studyin'.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady jerked her head sideways. 'Evenin' fiddlestick!' she
+snaps, direct. 'If you've got a young bone left in your body, Mis'
+Sykes,' says she, 'you know you're talkin' nonsense.'
+
+"'Ain't you no idees about how well-bred young ladies should conduct
+themselves?' says Mis' Sykes, in her most society way.
+
+"'I donno so much about well-bred young ladies,' says Mis' Toplady,
+frank. 'I was thinkin' about just girls. Human girls. An' boys the
+same.'
+
+"'Me, too,' I says, fervent.
+
+"'What you goin' to _do_?' says Silas, spreading out his hands stiff and
+bowing his knees. 'What's your idee? You've got to have a workin' idee
+for this thing, same as the curfew is.'
+
+"'Oh, Silas,' I says then, 'that's what we've got--that's what we've
+got. Them poor young things wants a good time--same as you and all of
+us did, and same as we do yet. Why not give 'em a place to meet and be
+together, normal and nice, and some of us there to make it pleasant for
+'em?'
+
+"'Heh!' says Silas. 'You talk like a dook. Where you goin' to _get_ a
+place for 'em? Hire the opery-house, air ye?'
+
+"'No, sir,' I says to him. 'Give 'em the place that's theirs. Give 'em
+the schoolhouse, open evenings, an' all lit up an' music an' things
+doin'.'
+
+"'My Lord heavens!' says Silas, that's an elder in the church and ain't
+no more control of his tongue than a hen. 'Air you crazy, Calliope
+Marsh? Plump, stark, starin' ravin'--why, woman alive, who's goin' to
+donate the light an' the coal? _You?_'
+
+"'I thought mebbe the building and the School Board, too, was _for_ the
+good o' the young folks,' I says to him, sharp.
+
+"'So it is,' says Silas, 'it's for their _good_. It ain't for their
+foolishness. Can't you see daylight, Calliope?'
+
+"'Is arithmetic good an' morals _not_, Silas Sykes?' I says.
+
+"Then Timothy Toplady let loose: 'A school-buildin', Calliope',
+s'he,--'why, it's a dignified place. They must respect it, same as they
+would a church. Could you learn youngsters the Constitution of the
+United States in a room where they'd just been cookin' up cough drops
+an' hearin' dance tunes?'
+
+"'Well,' says I, calm, 'if you can't, I'd leave the Constitution of the
+United States _go_. If it's that delicate,' I says back at him, 'gimme
+the cough drops.'
+
+"'You're talkin' treason,' says Silas, hoarse.
+
+"Timothy groans. '_Dancin!_' he says. 'Amanda,' he says, 'I hope you
+ain't sunk so low as Calliope?'
+
+"Mis' Toplady wavered a little. She's kind of down on dancing herself.
+'Well,' she says, 'anyhow, I'd fling some place open and invite 'em in
+for _somethin'_.'
+
+"'_I_ ain't for this, Silas,' says Mis' Sykes, righteous. '_I_ believe
+the law is the law, and we'd best use it. Nothin' we can do is as good
+as enforcin' the dignity of the law.'
+
+"'Oh, _rot_!' says Eppleby Holcomb, abrupt. Eppleby hadn't been saying a
+word. But he looked up from the wood-box where he was setting, and he
+wrinkled up his eyes at the corners the way he does--it wasn't a real
+elegant word he picked, but I loved Eppleby for that 'rot.' 'Asking your
+pardon, Mis' Sykes,' he says, 'I ain't got so much confidence in
+enforcin' the law as I've got in edgin' round an' edgin' round
+accordin' to your cloth--an' your pattern. An' your pattern.'
+
+"'Lord heavens!' says Silas, looking glassy, 'if this was Roosia, you
+an' Calliope'd both be hoofin' it hot-foot for Siberia.'
+
+"Well, it was like arguing with two trees. They wasn't no use talking to
+either Silas or Timothy. I forget who said what last, but the meeting
+broke up, after a little, some strained, and we hadn't decided on
+anything. Us ladies had vigilanced one night to about as much purpose as
+mosquitoes humming. And I said good night to them and went on up street,
+wondering why God lets a beautiful, burning plan come waving its wings
+in your head and your heart if he don't intend you to make a way for
+yourself to use it.
+
+"Then, by the big evergreens a block or so from my house, I heard
+somebody laugh--a little, low, nice, soft, sort of foolish laugh, a
+woman's laugh, and a man's voice joined in with it, pleasant and sort of
+singing. I was right onto them before they see me.
+
+"'I thought it was a lonesome town,' says somebody, 'but I guess it
+ain't.'
+
+"And there, beside of me, sitting on the rail fence under the
+evergreens, was Minerva Beach, my own cousin, and the little, tired
+photograph-taking man. I had just bare time to catch my breath and to
+sense where the minute really belonged--that's always a good thing to
+do, ain't it?--and then I says, cool as you please:
+
+"'Hello, Minerva! My! ain't the night grand? I don't wonder you couldn't
+stay in the house. How do, Mr. Myers? I was just remembering my
+lemon-pie that won't be good if it sets till to-morrow. Come on in and
+let's have it, and make a little lemonade.'
+
+"Ordinarily, I think it's next door to immoral to eat lemon-pie in the
+evening; but I had to think quick, and it was the only thing like a
+party that I had in the butt'ry. Anyhow, I was planning bigger morals
+than ordinary, too.
+
+"Well, sir, I'd been sure before, but that made me certain sure. There
+had been my parlour and my porch, and them two young people was welcome
+to them both; but they wanted to go somewheres, natural as a bird
+wanting to fly or a lamb to caper. And there I'd been living in
+Friendship Village for sixty years or so, and I'd reco'nized the laws of
+housekeeping and debt paying and grave digging and digestion, and I'd
+never once thought of this, that's as big as them all.
+
+"Ain't it nice the way God has balanced towns! He never puts in a Silas
+Sykes that he don't drop in an Eppleby Holcomb somewheres to undo what
+the Silases does. It wasn't much after six o'clock the next morning, and
+I was out after kindling, when they come a shadow in the shed door, and
+there was Eppleby. He had a big key in his hand.
+
+"'I'm a-goin' to the City, Calliope,' says he. 'Silas an' Timothy an' I
+are a-goin' up to the City on the Dick Dasher' (that's our daily
+accommodation train, named for the engineer). 'Silas and Timothy is set
+on buying the iron gates for the schoolhouse entry, an' I'm goin' along.
+He put the key in my hand, meditative. 'We won't be back till the ten
+o'clock Through,' he says, 'an' I didn't know but you might want to get
+in the schoolhouse for somethin' to-night--you an' Mis' Toplady.'
+
+"I must of stood staring at him, but he never changed expression.
+
+"'The key had ought to be left with some one, you know,' he says. 'I'm
+leavin' it with you. You go ahead. I'll go snooks on the blame. Looks
+like it was goin' to be another nice day, don't it?' he says, casual,
+and went off down the path.
+
+"For a minute I just stood there, staring down at the key in my hand.
+And then, 'Eppleby,' I sings after him, 'oh, Eppleby,' I says, 'I feel
+just like I was going to _crow_!'
+
+"I don't s'pose I hesitated above a minute. That is, my head may have
+hesitated some, like your head will, but my heart went right on ahead. I
+left my breakfast dishes standing--a thing I do for the very few--and I
+went straight for Mis' Toplady. And she whips off her big apron and left
+_her_ dishes standing, an' off we went to the half a dozen that we knew
+we could depend on--Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that's going to
+be married again and has got real human towards other folks, like she
+wasn't in her mourning grief--we told 'em the whole thing. And we one
+and all got together and we see that here was something that could be
+done, right there and then, so be we was willing to make the effort, big
+enough and unafraid.
+
+"When I remember back, that day is all of a whirl to me. We got the
+notice in the daily paper bold as a lion, that there would be a party to
+the schoolhouse that night, free to everybody. We posted the notice
+everywheres, and sent it out around by word of mouth. And when we'd gone
+too far to go back, we walked in on Mis' Sykes--all but Abagail, that
+had pitched in to making the cakes--and we told her what we'd done, so
+she shouldn't have any of the blame.
+
+"She took it calm, not because calm is Christian, I bet, but because
+calm is grand lady.
+
+"'It's what I always said,' says she, 'would be the way, if the women
+run things.'
+
+"'Women don't run things,' says Mis' Toplady, placid, 'an' I hope to the
+land they never will. But I believe the time'll come when men an'
+women'll run 'em together, like the Lord meant, an' when women can see
+that they're mothers to all men an' not just to their little two-by-four
+families.'
+
+"'My duty to men is in my own home,' says Mis' Sykes, regal.
+
+"'So is mine,' says Mis' Toplady, 'for a beginning. But it don't stop in
+my wood box nor my clothes-basket nor yet in my mixin'-bowl.'
+
+"We went off and left her--it's almost impossible to federate Mis' Sykes
+into anything. And we went up to the building and made our preparations.
+And then we laid low for the evening, to see what it would bring.
+
+"I was putting on my hat that night in front of the hall-tree
+looking-glass when J. Horace Myers come up on the front porch to call
+for Minerva. He was all dressed up, and she come downstairs in a little
+white dimity she had, trimmed with lace that didn't cost much of
+anything, and looking like a picture. They sat down on the porch for a
+little, and I heard them talking while I was hunting one o' my gloves.
+
+"'Ain't it the dandiest night!' says J. Horace Myers.
+
+"'Ain't it!' says Minerva. 'I should say. My! I'm glad I come to this
+town!'
+
+"'I'm awful glad you did, too,' says J. Horace. 'I thought first it was
+awful lonesome here, but I guess--'
+
+"'They're goin' to have music to-night,' says Minerva, irrelevant.
+
+"'Cricky!' says the little photograph man.
+
+"Minerva had her arm around a porch post and she sort of swung back and
+forth careless, and--'My!' she said, 'I just do love to go. Have you
+ever travelled anywheres?'
+
+"'Texas an' through there,' he says. 'I'm goin' again some day, when--'
+
+"'I'm goin' West now,' says Minerva. 'I just can't stand it long in one
+place, unless,' she added, 'it's _awful_ nice.'
+
+"I'd found my glove, but I recollect I stood still, staring out the
+door. I see it like I never see it before--_They was living_. Them two
+young things out there on my porch, and all the young folks of
+Friendship Village, they was just living--trying to find a future and a
+life of their own. They didn't know it. They thought what they wanted
+was a good time, like the pioneers thought they wanted adventure. But
+here they were, young pioneers of new villages, flocking together
+wherever they could, seeking each other out, just living. And us that
+knew, us that had had life, too, or else had missed it, we was just
+letting them live, haphazard. And us that had ought to of been mothers
+to the town young, no less than to our own young, had been leaving them
+live alone, on the streets and stairways and school entries of
+Friendship Village.
+
+"I know I fair run along the street to the schoolhouse. It seemed as if
+I couldn't get there quick enough to begin the new way.
+
+"The schoolhouse was lit up from cellar to garret and it looked sort of
+different and surprised at itself, and like it was sticking its head up.
+Maybe it sounds funny, but it sort of seemed to me the old brick
+building looked _conscious_, and like it had just opened its eyes and
+turned its face to something. Inside, the music was tuning up, the desks
+that was only part screwed down had been moved back; in one of the
+recitation-rooms we'd got the gas plates for the candy making, and
+Abagail was in there stirring up lemonade in a big crock, and the other
+ladies, with white aprons on, was bustling round seeing to cutting the
+cakes.
+
+"It wasn't a good seven-thirty before they begun coming in, the girls
+nipping in pretty dresses, the boys awkward and grinning, school-girls,
+shop-girls, Mis' Sykes's Em'ly an' Abe Luck and everybody--they come
+from all directions that night, I guess, just to see what it was like.
+
+"And when they got set down, I realized for the first time that the law
+and some of the prophets of time to come hung on what kind of a time
+they had that first night.
+
+"While I was thinking that, the music struck into a tune, hurry-up time,
+and before anybody could think it, there they were on their feet, one
+couple after another. And when the lilty sound of the dance and the
+sliding of feet got to going, like magic and as if they had dropped out
+of the walls, in come them that had been waiting around outside to see
+what we was really going to do. They come in, and they joined in and in
+five minutes the floor was full of them. And after being boxed in the
+house all day, or bottled in shops or polishing windows or mending
+eaves-troughs or taking photographs of humbly houses or doing I donno
+what-all that they didn't like, here they were, come after their good
+time and having it--_and having it_.
+
+"Mis' Toplady was peeking through a crack in the recitation-room door.
+
+"'_Dancin'!_' she says, with a little groan. 'I donno what my
+conscience'll say to me about this when it gets me alone.'
+
+"'Well,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, seeing to the frosting
+on the ends of her fingers, 'I feel like they'd been pipin' to me for
+years an' I'd never let 'em dance. An' now they're dancin' up here safe
+an' light an' with us. An' I'm glad of it, to my marrow.'
+
+"'I know,' says Mis' Toplady, wiping her eyes. 'I donno but _my_ marrow
+might get use' to it.'
+
+"Long about ten o'clock, when we'd passed the refreshments and everybody
+had carried their own plates back and was taking the candy out of the
+tins, I nudged Mis' Toplady and we slipped out into the schoolhouse
+entry and set down on the steps. We'd just heard the Through whistle,
+and we knew the School Board Iron Gate Committee was on it, and that
+they must of seen the schoolhouse lit from 'way acrost the marsh.
+Besides, I was counting on Eppleby to march them straight up there.
+
+"And so he done. Almost before I knew it they stepped out onto us,
+setting there in the starlight. I stood up and faced them, not from
+being brave, but from intending to jump _first_.
+
+"'Silas and Timothy,' I says, 'what's done is done, but the consequences
+ain't. The Women's Evening Vigilance Committee that you appointed
+yourself has tried this thing, and now it's for us all to judge if it
+works.'
+
+"'Heh!' says Silas, showing his teeth. 'Hed a little party, did you?
+Thought you'd get up a little party an' charge it to the Board, did you?
+Be su'prised, won't you, when you women get a bill for rent an' light
+for this night's performance?'
+
+"'Real surprised,' I says, dry.
+
+"'Amanda,' pipes up Timothy, 'air you a fool party to this fool doin's?'
+
+"'Oh, shucks!' says Mis' Toplady, tired. 'I been doin' too real things
+to row, Timothy.'
+
+"'Nev' mind,' says Silas, pacific. 'When the new iron gates gets here
+for this here entry, we won't have no more such doin's as this. They're
+ordered,' says Silas, like a bombshell, 'to keep out the hoodlums.'
+
+"Then Eppleby, that had been peeking through the schoolhouse window,
+whirled around.
+
+"'Yes,' says he. 'Let's put up the gates to keep out the hoodlums. But
+what you going to do for the girls and boys of Friendship Village that
+ain't hoodlums? What you goin' to do for them? I want to tell you that I
+knew all about what was goin' on here to-night, and I give over the
+schoolhouse key myself. And now you look down there.'
+
+"It was Friendship Village he pointed to, laying all around the
+schoolhouse slope, little lights shining for homes. And Eppleby went on
+before Silas and Timothy could get the breath to reply:--
+
+"'The town's nothin' but _roots_, is it?' Eppleby says. 'Roots, sendin'
+up green shoots to the top o' this hill to be trained up here into some
+kind of shape to meet life. What you doin' to 'em? Buildin' 'em a great,
+expensive schoolhouse that they use a few hours a day, part o' the year,
+an' the rest of the time it might as well be a hole in the ground for
+all the good it does anybody. An' here's the young folks, that you built
+it _for_ chasin' the streets to let off the mere flesh-an'-blood energy
+the Lord has give to 'em. Put up your iron gates if you want to, but
+don't put 'em up till the evenin's over an' till there's been some sort
+o' doin's here like this to give 'em what's their right. Put up your
+iron gates, but shame on the schoolhouse that puts 'em up an' stops
+there! Open the buildin' in the name of public decency, but in the name
+of public decency, don't shut it up!'
+
+"Timothy was starting to wave his arms when Mis' Toplady stood up,
+quiet, on the bottom step.
+
+"'Timothy,' she says, 'thirty-five years ago this winter you an' I was
+keepin' company. Do you remember how we done it? Do you remember singin'
+school? Do you remember spellin' school? Did our straw ridin' an' sleigh
+ridin' to the Caledonia district schoolhouse for our fun ever hurt the
+schoolhouse, or do you s'pose we ever learnt any the less in it? Well, I
+remember; an' we both remember; an' answer me this: Do you s'pose them
+young things in there is any differ'nt than we was? An' what's the sin
+an' the crime of what they're doin' now? Look at 'em!'
+
+"She pushed open the door. But just while we was looking, the music
+struck up the 'Home Sweet Home' waltz, and they all melted into dancing,
+the ladies in white aprons standing by the recitation-room doors looking
+on.
+
+"'_Dancin'!_' says Timothy, shuddering--but looking, too.
+
+"'Yes,' says Amanda, brave as you please, 'ain't it pretty? Lots
+prettier than chasin' up an' down Daphne Street. What say, Timothy?'
+
+"Eppleby give Silas a little nudge. 'Le's give it a trial,' he says.
+'This is the Vigilance Committee's idee. Le's give it a trial.'
+
+"Silas stood bitin' the tail of his beard. 'Go on to destruction if you
+want to!' he says. 'I wash my hands of you!'
+
+"'So do I,' says Timothy, echoish, 'wash mine.'
+
+"Eppleby took them both by the shoulders. 'Well, then, go on inside a
+minute,' he says to 'em. 'Don't let's leave 'em all think we got stole a
+march on by the women!'
+
+"And though it was that argument that made them both let Eppleby push
+them inside, still, when the door shut behind them, I knew there wasn't
+anything more to worry over. But me--I waited out there in the entry
+till the waltz was through. And it was kind of like the village down
+there to the foot of the hill was listening, quiet, to great councils.
+
+
+
+
+X
+
+
+"Up to Proudfit House the conservatory wasn't set aside from everyday
+living for just a place to be walked through and looked at and left
+behind for something better. It was a glass regular room, full of green,
+but not so full that it left you out of account. Willow chairs and a
+family of books and open windows into the other rooms made the
+conservatory all of a piece with the house, and at one end the tile was
+let go up in a big You-and-me looking fireplace, like a sort of shrine
+for fire, I use' to think, in the middle of a temple to flowers, and
+like both belonged to the household.
+
+"On the day of the evening company at Proudfit House Robin was sitting
+with a book in this room. I'd gone up that day to do what I could to
+help out, and to see to Christopher some. Him I'd put to taking his nap
+quite awhile before, and I was fussing with the plants like I love to
+do--it seems as if while I pick off dead leaves and give the roots a
+drink I was kind of doing their thinking for them. When I heard Alex
+Proudfit coming acrost the library, I started to go, but Robin says to
+me, 'Don't go, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'stay here and do what you're
+doing--if you don't mind.'
+
+"'Land,' thinks I, turning back to the ferns, 'never tell me that young
+ladies are getting more up-to-date in love than they use' to be. My day,
+she would of liked that they should be alone, so be she could manage it
+without seeming to.'
+
+"I donno but I'm foolish, but it always seems to me that a minute like
+that had ought to catch fire and leap up, like a time by itself. In all
+the relationships of men and women, it seems like no little commonplace
+time is so vital as the minute when the man comes into a room where a
+woman is a-waiting for him. There is about it something of time to be
+when he'll come, not to gloat over his day's kill, or to forget his
+day's care, but to talk with her about their day of hardy work. Habitual
+arriving in a room again and again for ever can never quite take off,
+seems though, the edge of that coming back to where she is.... But
+somehow, that day, Alex Proudfit must have stepped through the door
+before the minute had quite caught fire, and Robin merely smiled up at
+him, calm and idle, from her low chair as he come to a chair beside her.
+
+"'Tea, Robin Redbreast,' says he, 'is going to be here in a minute, with
+magnificent macaroons. But I think that you and I will have it by
+ourselves. Everybody is either asleep or pretending. I'm glad,' he tells
+her, 'you're the sort that can do things in the evening without resting
+up for from nine to ten hours preceding.'
+
+"'I'm resting now,' Robin said; 'this is quite heavenly--this green
+room.'
+
+"He looked at her, eager. 'Do you like it?' he asked. 'I mean the
+room--the house?'
+
+"'Enormously,' she told him. 'How could I help it?'
+
+"'I wanted you to like it,' he says. 'We shall not be here much, you
+know, but we shall be here sometimes, and I'm glad if you feel the
+feeling of home, even with all these people about. It's all going very
+decently for to-night, thanks to Mrs. Emmons. Not a soul that we really
+wanted has failed us.'
+
+"'Except Mr. Insley,' Robin says.
+
+"'Except Insley,' Alex concedes, 'and I own I can't make him out. Not
+because he didn't come here. But because he seems so enthusiastic about
+throwing his life away. Very likely,' he goes on, placid, 'he didn't
+come simply because he wanted to come. Those people get some sort of
+mediæval renunciation mania, I believe. Robin,' he went on, 'where do
+you think you would like to live? Not to settle down, you know, but for
+the Eternal Place To Come Back To?'
+
+"'To come back to?' Robin repeated.
+
+"'The twentieth century home is merely that, you know,' Alex explained.
+'We're just beginning to solve the home problem. We've tried to make
+home mean one place, and then we were either always wanting to get away
+for a while, or else we stayed dreadfully put, which was worse. But I
+think now we begin to see the truth: Home is nowhere. Rather, it is
+everywhere. The thing to do is to live for two months, three months, in
+a place, and to get back to each place at not too long intervals. Home
+is where you like to be for the first two weeks. When that wears off,
+it's home no more. Then home is some other place where you think you'd
+like to be. We are becoming nomadic again--only this time we own the
+world instead of being at its feet for a bare living. You and I, Robin
+Redbreast, are going to be citizens of the whole world.'
+
+"Robin looked over at him, reflective. And it seemed to me as if the
+whole race of women that have always liked one place to get in and be in
+and stay in spoke from her to Alex.
+
+"'But I've always had a little garden,' she says.
+
+"'A little what?' Alex asks, blank.
+
+"'Why, a garden,' she explains, 'to plant from year to year so that I
+know where things are going to come up.'
+
+"She was laughing, but I knew she meant what she said, too.
+
+"'My word,' Alex says, 'why, every place we take shall have a garden and
+somebody to grub about in it. Won't those and the conservatories do
+you?'
+
+"'I like to get out and stick my hands in the spring-smelly ground,' she
+explains, 'and to remember where my bulbs are.'
+
+"'But I've no objection to bulbs,' Alex says. 'None in the world. We'll
+plant the bulbs and take a run round the world and come back to see them
+bloom. No?'
+
+"'And not watch them come up?' Robin says, so serious that they both
+laughed.
+
+"'We want more than a garden can give,' Alex says then, indulgent. 'We
+want what the whole world can give.'
+
+"She nodded. 'And what we can give back?' she says.
+
+"He leaned toward her, touched along her hair.
+
+"'My dear,' he said, 'we've got two of us to make the most of we can in
+this life: that's you and I. The world has got to teach us a number of
+things. Don't, in heaven's name, let's be trying to teach the wise old
+world.'
+
+"He leaned toward her and, elbow on his knee, he set looking at her. But
+she was looking a little by him, into the green of the room, and I guess
+past that, into the green of all outdoors. I got up and slipped out,
+without their noticing me, and I went through the house with one fact
+bulging out of the air and occupying my brain. And it was that sitting
+there beside him, with him owning her future like he owned his own,
+Robin's world was as different from Alex's as the world is from the
+Proudfits' conservatory.
+
+"I went up to Chris, in the pretty, pinky room next to Robin's and found
+him sitting up in bed and pulling the ties out of the down comforter, as
+hard as he could. I just stood still and looked at him, thinking how
+eating and drinking and creating and destroying seems to be the native
+instincts of everybody born. Destroying, as I look at it, was the weapon
+God give us so that we could eat and drink and create the world in
+peace, but we got some mixed up during getting born and we got to
+believing that destruction was a part of the process.
+
+"'Chris,' I says, 'what you pulling out?'
+
+"'I donno those names of those,' he says. 'I call 'em little pulls.'
+
+"'What are they for?' I ask' him.
+
+"'I donno what those are for,' he says, 'but they come out _slickery_.'
+
+"Ain't it funny? And ain't it for all the world the way Nature works,
+destroying what comes out _slickery_ and leaving that alone that resists
+her? I was so struck by it I didn't scold him none.
+
+"After a while I took him down for tea. On the way he picked up a sleepy
+puppy, and in the conservatory door we met the footman with the little
+tea wagon and the nice, drowsy quiet of the house went all to pieces
+with Chris in it:--
+
+"'Supper, supper--here comes supper on a wagon, runnin' on litty wheels
+goin' wound an a-w-o-u-n-d--' says he, some louder than saying and
+almost to shouting. He sat down on the floor and looked up expectant:
+'Five lumps,' he orders, not having belonged to the house party for
+nothing.
+
+"'Tell us about your day, Chris,' Robin asks. 'What did you do?'
+
+"'It isn't _by_, is it?' Chris says, anxious. 'To-day didn't stop yet,
+did it?'
+
+"'Not yet,' she reassures him. 'Now is still now.'
+
+"'I want to-day to keep being now,' Chris said, 'because when it stops,
+then the bed is right there. It don't be anywhere near to-night, is it?'
+he says.
+
+"'Not very near,' Robin told him. 'Well, then, what are you doing
+to-day?' she asks.
+
+"'I'm to the house's party,' he explained. 'The house is having its
+party. An' I'm to it.'
+
+"'Do you like this house, dear?' Robin asked.
+
+"'It's nice,' he affirmed. 'In the night it--it talks wiv its lights. I
+saw it. With my daddy. When I was off on a big road.' Chris looked at
+her intent, from way in his eyes. 'I was thinkin' if my daddy would
+come,' he says, patient.
+
+"Robin stoops over to him, quick, and he let her. He'd took a most
+tremendous fancy to her, the little fellow had, and didn't want her long
+out of his sight. 'Is that Robin?' he always said, when he heard anybody
+coming from any direction. She give him a macaroon, now, for each hand,
+and he run away with the puppy. And then she turned to Alex, her face
+bright with whatever she was thinking about.
+
+"'Alex,' she says, 'he's a dear little fellow--a dear little fellow. And
+all alone. I've wanted so much to ask you: Can't we have him for ours?'
+
+"Alex looks at her, all bewildered up in a minute. 'How ours?' he asks.
+'Do you mean have him educated? That, of course, if you really want it.'
+
+"'No, no,' she says. '_Ours._ To keep with us, bring up, make. Let's let
+him be really ours.'
+
+"He just leaned back in the big chair, smiling at her, meditative.
+
+"'My dear Robin,' he says, 'it's a terrible responsibility to meddle
+that way with somebody's life.'
+
+"She looked at him, not understanding.
+
+"'It's such an almighty assumption,' he went on, 'this jumping blithely
+into the office of destiny--keeping, bringing-up, making, as you
+say--meddling with, I call it--anybody's life.'
+
+"'Isn't it really meddling to let him be in a bad way when we can put
+him in a better one?' she asked, puzzled.
+
+"'I love you, Robin,' says he, light, 'but not for your logic. No, my
+dear girl. Assuredly we will not take this child for ours. What leads
+you to suppose that Nature really wants him to live, anyway?'
+
+"I looked at him over my tea-cup, and for my life I couldn't make out
+whether he was speaking mocking or speaking plain.
+
+"'If Chris is to be inebriate, criminal, vicious, even irresponsible,
+as his father must be,' Alex says, 'Nature wants nothing of the sort.
+She wants to be rid of him as quickly as possible. How do you know what
+you are saving?'
+
+"'How do you know,' Robin says, 'what you are letting go?'
+
+"'I can take the risk if Nature can,' he contends.
+
+"She sat up in her chair, her eyes bright as the daylight, and I thought
+her eagerness and earnestness was on her like a garment.
+
+"'You have nobody to refer the risk to,' Robin says, 'Nature has us. And
+for one, I take it. So far as Chris is concerned, Alex, if no one claims
+him, I want him never to be out of touch with me.'
+
+"But when a woman begins to wear that garment, the man that's in love
+with her--unless he is the special kind--he begins thinking how much
+sweeter and softer and _womaner_ she is when she's just plain gentle.
+And he always gets uneasy and wants her to be the gentle way he
+remembers her being--that is, unless he's special, unless he's special.
+Like Alex got uneasy now.
+
+"'My heavens, dear,' he says--and I judged Alex had got to be one of
+them men that lays a lace 'dear' over a haircloth tone of voice, and so
+solemnly believes they're keeping their temper--'My heavens, dear, don't
+misunderstand me. Experiment as much as you like. Material is cheap and
+abundant. If you don't feel the responsibility, have him educated
+wherever you want to. But don't expect me to play father to him. The
+personal contact is going it a little too strong.'
+
+"'That is exactly what he most needs,' says Robin.
+
+"'Come, dear,' says Alex, 'that's elemental--in an age when everybody
+can do things better than one can do them oneself.'
+
+"She didn't say nothing, and just set there, with her tea. Alex was
+watching her, and I knew just about as sure what he was thinking as
+though I had been his own thought, oozing out of his mind. He was
+watching her with satisfaction, patterned off with a kind of quiet
+amusement and jabbed into by a kind of worryin' wonder. How exactly, he
+was thinking, she was the type everlasting of Wife. She was girlish, and
+in little things she was all I'll-do-as-you-say, and she was even shy;
+he believed that he was marrying a girl whose experience of the world
+was commendably slight, whose ideas about it was kind of
+vague--commendably again; and whose ways was easy-handled, like skein
+silk. By her little firmnesses, he see that she had it in her to be
+firm, but what he meant was that she should adopt his ideas and turn
+firm about them. He had it all planned out that he was going to
+embroider her brain with his notions of what was what. But all of a
+sudden, now and then, there she was confronting him as she had just done
+then with a serious, settled look of Woman--the Woman everlasting,
+wanting a garden, wanting to work, wanting a child....
+
+"In the doorway back of Alex, Bayless come in, carrying a tray, but it
+didn't have no card.
+
+"'It's somebody to speak with you a minute, Mr. Proudfit,' says Bayless.
+'It's Mr. Insley.'
+
+"'Have him come here,' Alex says. 'I hope,' he says, when the man was
+gone, 'that the poor fellow has changed his mind about our little
+festivities.'
+
+"Robin sort of tipped up her forehead. 'Why _poor_?' she asks.
+
+"'Poor,' says Alex, absent, 'because he lives in a pocket of the world,
+instead of wearing the world like a garment--when it would fit him.'
+
+"I was just setting my tea-cup down when she answered, and I recollect I
+almost jumped:
+
+"'He knows something better to do with the world than to wear it at
+all,' was what she said.
+
+"I looked over at her. And maybe it was because she was sort of
+indignant, and maybe it was because she thought she had dared quite a
+good deal, but all of a sudden something sort of seemed to me to set
+fire to the minute, and it leaped up like a time by itself as we heard
+Insley's step crossing the library and coming towards us....
+
+"When he come out where we were, I see right off how pale he looked.
+Almost with his greeting, he turned to Alex with what he had come for,
+and he put it blunt.
+
+"'I was leaving the Cadozas' cottage on the Plank Road half an hour
+ago,' he said. 'A little way along I saw a man, who had been walking
+ahead of me, stagger and sprawl in the mud. He wasn't conscious when I
+got to him. He was little--I picked him up quite easily and got him back
+into the Cadozas' cottage. He still wasn't conscious when the doctor
+came. He gave him things. We got him in bed there. And then he spoke. He
+asked us to hunt up a little boy somewhere in Friendship Village, who
+belonged to him. And he said the boy's name was Chris.'
+
+"It seemed like it was to Alex Proudfit's interested lifting of eyebrows
+rather than to Robin's exclamation of pity that Insley answered.
+
+"'I'm sorry it was necessary to trouble you,' he says, 'but Chris ought
+to go at once. I'll take him down now.'
+
+"'That man,' Robin says, 'the father--is he ill? Is he hurt? How badly
+is he off?'
+
+"'He's very badly off,' says Insley, 'done for, I'm afraid. It was in a
+street brawl in the City--it's his side, and he's lost a good deal of
+blood. He walked all the way back here. A few hours, the doctor thought
+it would be, at most.'
+
+"Robin stood up and spoke like what she was saying was a
+take-for-granted thing.
+
+"'Oh,' she says, 'poor, poor little Chris. Alex, I must go down there
+with him.'
+
+"Alex looks over at her, incredulous, and spoke so: 'You?' says he.
+'Impossible.'
+
+"I was just getting ready to say that of course I'd go with him, if that
+was anything, when from somewheres that he'd gone with the puppy, Chris
+spied Insley, and come running to him.
+
+"'Oh, you are to the house's party, too!' Chris cried, and threw himself
+all over him.
+
+"Robin knelt down beside the child, and the way she was with him made me
+think of that first night when she see him at the church, and when her
+way with him made him turn to her and talk with her and love her ever
+since.
+
+"'Listen, dear,' she said. 'Mr. Insley came here to tell you something.
+Something about daddy--your daddy. Mr. Insley knows where he is, and
+he's going to take you to him. But he's very, very sick, dear
+heart--will you remember that when you see him? Remember Robin told you
+that?'
+
+"There come on his little face a look of being afraid that give it a
+sudden, terrible grown-up-ness.
+
+"'Sick like my mama was?' he asked in a whisper. 'And will he _go out_,
+like my mama?'
+
+"Robin put her arm about him, and he turned to her, clung to her.
+
+"'You come, too, Robin,' he said. 'You come, too!'
+
+"She got up, meeting Alex's eyes with her straight look.
+
+"'I must go, Alex,' she said. 'He wants me--needs me. Why, how could I
+do anything else?'
+
+"Alex smiles down at her, with his way that always seemed to me so much
+less that of living every minute than of watching it live itself about
+him.
+
+"'May I venture to remind you,' he says--like a little thin edge of
+something, paper, maybe, that's smooth as silk, but that'll cut neat and
+deep if you let it--'May I venture to remind you that your aunt is
+announcing our engagement to-night? I think that will have escaped your
+mind.'
+
+"'Yes,' Robin says, simple, 'it had. Everything had escaped my mind
+except this poor little thing here. Alex--it's early. He'll sleep after
+a little. But I must go down with him. What did you come in?' she asked
+Insley, quiet.
+
+"I told her I'd go down, and she nodded that I was to go, but Chris
+clung to her hand and it was her that he wanted, poor little soul, and
+only her. Insley had come up in the doctor's rig. She and I would join
+him with the child, she told him, at the side entrance and almost at
+once. There was voices in the house by then, and some of the young folks
+was coming downstairs and up from the tennis-court for tea. She went
+into the house with Chris. And I wondered if she thought of the thing I
+thought of and that made me glad and glad that there are such men in the
+world: Not once, not once, out of some felt-he-must courtesy, had Insley
+begged her not to go with him. He knew that she was needed down there
+with Chris and him and me--he knew, and he wouldn't say she wasn't.
+Land, land I love a man that don't talk with the outside of his head and
+let what he means lay cramped somewheres underneath, but that reaches
+down and gets up what he means, and holds it out, for you to take or to
+leave.
+
+"Mis' Emmons was overseeing the decorations in the dining room. The
+whole evening party she had got right over onto her shoulders the way
+she does everything, and down to counting the plates she was seeing to
+it all. We found her and told her, and her pity went to the poor fellow
+down there at the Cadozas' almost before it went to Chris.
+
+"'Go, of course,' she said. 'I suppose Alex minds, but leave him to me.
+I've got to be here--but it's not I Chris wants in any case. It's you.
+Get back as soon as you can, Robin.'
+
+"I must say Alex done that last minute right, the way he done
+everything, light and glossy. When Robin come down, I was up in the
+little seat behind the doctor's cart, and Alex stood beside and helped
+her. A servant, he said, would come on after us in the automobile with a
+hamper, and would wait at the Cadozas' gate until she was ready to come
+back. Somehow, it hadn't entered anybody's head, least of all, I guess,
+Alex's own, that he should come, too. He see us off with his manners on
+him like a thick, thick veil, and he even managed to give to himself a
+real dignity so that Robin said her good-by with a kind of wistfulness,
+as if she wanted to be reassured. And I liked her the better for that.
+For, after all, she _was_ going--there was no getting back of that. And
+when a woman is doing the right thing against somebody's will, I'm not
+the one to mind if she hangs little bells on herself instead of going
+off with no tinkle to leave herself be reminded of, pleasant.
+
+"We swung out onto the open road, with Chris sitting still between the
+two of them, and me on the little seat behind. The sunset was flowing
+over the village and glittering in unfamiliar fires on the windows. The
+time was as still as still, in that hour 'long towards night when the
+day seems to have found its harbour it has been looking for and to have
+slipped into it, with shut sails--so still that Robin spoke of it with
+surprise. I forget just what she said. She was one of them women that
+can say a thing so harmonious with a certain minute that you never wish
+she'd kept still. I believe if she spoke to me when I was hearing music
+or feeling lifted up all by myself, I wouldn't mind it. What she'd say
+would be sure to fit what was being. They ain't many folks in anybody's
+life like that. I believe she could talk to me any time, sole unless
+it's when I first wake up in the morning; then any talking always seems
+like somebody stumbling in, busy, among my sleeping brains.
+
+"For a minute Insley didn't say anything. I was almost sure he was
+thinking how unbelievable it was that he should be there, alone with
+her, where an hour ago not even one of his forbidden dreams could have
+found him.
+
+"'Beautifully still,' he answered, 'as if all the things had stopped
+being, except some great thing.'
+
+"'I wonder,' she says, absent, 'what great thing.' And all the time she
+seemed sort of relaxed, and resting in the sense--though never in the
+consciousness--that the need to talk and to be talked to, to suggest and
+to question, had found some sort of quiet, levelling process with which
+she was moving along, assentin'.
+
+"Insley stooped down, better to shield her dress from the mud there was.
+I see him look down at her uncovered hands laying on the robe, and then,
+with a kind of surprise, up at her face; and I knew how surprising her
+being near him seemed.
+
+"'That would be one thing for you,' he answered, 'and another for me.'
+
+"'No,' she says, 'I think it's the same thing for us both.'
+
+"He didn't let himself look at her, but his voice--well, I tell you,
+his voice looked.
+
+"'What do you mean?' he says--just said it a little and like he didn't
+dare trust it to say itself any more.
+
+"'Why, being able to help in this, surely,' she says.
+
+"I could no more of helped watching the two of them than if they had
+been angels and me nothing but me. I tried once or twice to look off
+across the fields that was smiling at each other, same as faces, each
+side of the road; but my eyes come back like they was folks and wanted
+to; and I set there looking at her brown hair, shining in the sun,
+without any hat on it, and at his still face that was yet so many kinds
+of alive. He had one of the faces that looked like it had been cut out
+just the way it was _a-purpose_. There wasn't any unintentional
+assembling of features there, part make-shift and part rank growth of
+his race. No, sir. His face had come to life by being meant to be just
+the way it was, and it couldn't have been better.... It lit up wonderful
+when he answered.
+
+"'Yes,' he said, 'a job is a kind of creation. It's next best to getting
+up a sunrise. Look here,' he remembered, late in the day, 'you'll have
+no dinner. You can't eat with them in that place. And you ought to have
+rest before to-night.'
+
+"Ain't it funny how your voice gets away from you sometimes and goes
+dilly-nipping around, pretty near saying things on its own account? I
+use' to think that mebbe my voice didn't belong to the me I know about,
+but was some of the real me, inside, speaking out with my mouth for a
+trumpet. I donno but I think so yet. For sometimes your voice is a
+person and it says things all alone by itself. So his voice done then.
+The tender concern of it was pretty near a second set of words. It was
+the first time he had struck for her the great and simple note, the note
+of the caring of the man for the physical comfort of the woman. And
+while she was pretending not to need it, he turned away and looked off
+toward the village, and I was certain sure he was terrified at what
+might have been in his voice.
+
+"'I like to think of it down there,' he said, pretty near at random,
+'waiting to be clothed in a new meaning.'
+
+"'The village?' she asked.
+
+"'Everywhere,' he answered. 'Some of the meanings we dress things up in
+are so--dowdy. We wouldn't think of wearing them ourselves.'
+
+"She understood him so well that she didn't have to bother to smile.
+And I hoped she was setting down a comparison in her head: Between
+clothing the world in a new meaning, and wearing it for a garment.
+
+"Chris looked up in Insley's face.
+
+"'I'm new,' he contributes, 'I'm new on the outside of me. I've got on
+this new brown middie.'
+
+"'I've been admiring it the whole way,' says Insley, hearty--and that
+time his eyes and Robin's met, over the little boy's head, as we stopped
+at the cottage gate.
+
+
+
+
+XI
+
+
+"The lonesome little parlour at Mis' Cadoza's was so far past knowing
+how to act with folks in it, that it never changed expression when we
+threw open the shutters. Rooms that are used to folks always sort of
+look up when the shutters are opened; some rooms smile back at you; some
+say something that you just lose, through not turning round from the
+window quite quick enough. But Mis' Cadoza's parlour was such a poor
+folkless thing that it didn't make us any reply at all nor let on to
+notice the light. It just set there, kind of numb, merely enduring
+itself.
+
+"'You poor thing,' I thought, 'nobody come in time, did they?'
+
+"Insley picked out a cane-seat rocker that had once known how to behave
+in company, and drew it to the window. Ain't it nice, no matter what
+kind of a dumb room you've got into, you can open its window and fit the
+sky onto the sill, and feel right at home....
+
+"Robin sat there with Chris in her arms, waiting for any stir in the
+front bedroom. I went in the bedroom, while Dr. Heron told me about the
+medicine, and it seemed to me the bare floor and bare walls and
+dark-coloured bedcovers was got together to suit the haggardy unshaven
+face on the pillow. Christopher's father never moved. I set in the
+doorway, so as to watch him, and Insley went with the doctor to the
+village to bring back some things that was needed. And I felt like we
+was all the first settlers of somewheres.
+
+"Chris was laying so still in Robin's arms that several times she looked
+down to see if he was awake. But every time his eyes was wide and dark
+with that mysterious child look that seems so much like thought. It kind
+of hurt me to see him doing nothing--that's one of the parts about
+sickness and dying and some kinds of trouble that always twists
+something up in my throat: The folks that was so eager and able and
+flying round the house just being struck still and not able to go on
+with everyday doings. I know when Lyddy Ember, the dressmaker, died and
+I looked at her laying there, it seemed to me so surprising that she
+couldn't hem and fell and cut out with her thumb crooked like she
+done--and that she didn't know a dart from a gore; her hands looked so
+much like she knew how yet. It's like being inactive made death or grief
+double. And it's like working or playing around was a kind of life....
+The whole house seemed inactive and silence-struck, even to the kitchen
+where Mis' Cadoza and the little lame boy was.
+
+"Robin set staring into the lilacs that never seemed to bloom, and I
+wondered what she was thinking and mebbe facing. But when she spoke, it
+was about the Cadoza kitchen.
+
+"'Miss Marsh,' she says, 'what kind of people must they be that can stay
+alive in a kitchen like that?'
+
+"'Pioneers,' I says. 'They's a lot of 'em pioneerin' away and not
+knowing it's time to stop.'
+
+"'But the dirt--' she says.
+
+"'What do you expect?' I says. 'They're emergin' out of dirt. But they
+_are_ emergin'.'
+
+"'Don't it seem hopeless?' says she.
+
+"'Oh, I donno,' I says; 'dirt gets to be apples--so be you plant 'em.'
+
+"But the Cadoza kitchen _was_ fearful. When we come through it, Mis'
+Cadoza was getting supper, and she'd woke up nameless smells of greasy
+things. There the bare table was piled with the inevitable mix-up of
+unwashed dishes that go along with the Mis' Cadozas of this world, so
+that you wonder how they ever got so much crockery together. There the
+floor wasn't swept, clothes was drying on a line over the stove, Spudge
+was eating his supper on the window-sill, and in his bed in the corner
+lay little Eph, so white and frail and queer-coloured that you felt you
+was looking on something bound not to last till much after you'd stopped
+looking. And there was Mis' Cadoza. When we had come through the
+kitchen, little Eph had said something glad at seeing Insley and hung
+hold of his hand and told him how he meant to model a clay Patsy,
+because it was Patsy, the dog, that had gone out in the dark and first
+brought Insley in to see him.
+
+"'An' when I'm big,' the child says, 'I'm going to make a clay _you_,
+Mr. Insley.'
+
+"Mis' Cadoza had turned round and bared up her crooked teeth.
+
+"'Don't you be impident!' she had said, raspish, throwing her hand out
+angular.
+
+"Mis' Cadoza was like somebody that hadn't got outside into the daylight
+of _Yet_. She was ignorant, blind to life, with some little bit of a
+corner of her brain working while the rest lay stock-still in her skull;
+unclean of person, the mother to no end of nameless horrors of
+habit--and her blood and the blood of some creature like her had been
+poured into that poor little boy, sickly, bloodless, not ready for the
+struggle.
+
+"'_Is_ there any use trying to do anything with anybody like that?'
+says Robin.
+
+"'_Is_ there?' says I, but I looked right straight at Christopher. If
+there wasn't no use trying to do anything with little Eph, with his
+mother out there in the kitchen, then what was the use of trying to do
+anything with Chris, with his father here in the front bedroom? Sick
+will, tainted blood, ruined body--to what were we all saving Chris?
+Maybe to misery and final defeat and some awful going out.
+
+"'I don't know,' she says, restless. 'Maybe Alex is right....'
+
+"She looked out towards the lilac bushes again, and I knew how all of a
+sudden they probably dissolved away to be the fine green in the
+conservatory at Proudfit House, and how she was seeing herself back in
+the bright room, with its summer of leaves, and before the tea wagon,
+making tea for Alex lounging in his low chair, begging her not, in
+heaven's name, to try to teach the wise old world....
+
+" ... I knew well enough how she felt. Every woman in the world knows.
+In that minute, or I missed my guess, she was finding herself clinging
+passionate and rebellious to the mere ordered quiet of the life Alex
+would make for her; to the mere outworn routine, the leisure of long
+days in pretty rooms, of guests and house parties and all the little
+happy flummery of hospitality, the doing-nothingness, or the nice tasks,
+of travelling; the joy of sinking down quiet into the easy ways to do
+and be. Something of the sheer, clear, mere self-indulgence of the
+last-notch conservative was sweeping over her, the quiet, the order, the
+plain _safety_ of the unchanging, of going along and going along and
+leaving things pretty much as they are, expecting them to work
+themselves out ... the lure of all keeping-stillness. And I knew she was
+wondering, like women do when they're tired or blue or get a big job to
+do or see a house like the Cadozas', why, after all, she shouldn't, in
+Alex's way, make herself as dainty in morals and intellect as she could
+and if she wanted to 'meddle,' to do so at arm's length, with some of
+the material that is cheap and abundant--like Chris....
+
+"'Maybe there isn't any use trying to do anything with Chris, either,' I
+says brutal. 'Mebbe Nature's way _is_ best. Mebbe she knows best when to
+let them die off.'
+
+"Robin's arms kind of shut up on the little kiddie. He looked up.
+
+"'Did you squeeze me on purpose?' he whispered.
+
+"She nodded at him.
+
+"'What for?' he asks.
+
+"'Just loving,' she answered.
+
+"After that, we sat still for a long time. Insley came back with the
+medicine, and told me what to do if the sick man came to. Then he filled
+and lit the bracket lamp that seemed to make more shadows than light,
+and then he stopped beside Robin--as gentle as a woman over a plant--and
+asked her if she wanted anything. He come through the room several
+times, and once him and her smiled, for a still greeting, almost as
+children do. After a while he come with a little basket of food that he
+had had Abagail put up to the bakery, and we tried to eat a little
+something, all of us. And all the while the man on the bed lay like he
+was locked up in some new, thick kind of silence.
+
+"When eight o'clock had gone, we heard what I had been expecting to
+hear--the first wheels and footsteps on the Plank Road directed towards
+Proudfit House. And Insley come in, and went over to Robin, and found
+Chris asleep in her arms, and he took him from her and laid him on the
+sagging Brussels couch.
+
+"'You must go now,' he says to Robin, with his kind of still authority
+that wan't ordering nor schoolmastery, nor you-do-as-I-say, but was
+just something that made you want to mind him. 'I'll wake Chris and take
+him in at the least change--but you must go back at once.'
+
+"And of course I was going to stay. Some of my minds was perfectly
+willing not to be at the party in any case, and anyhow the rest of them
+wanted to stay with Chris.
+
+"Insley picked up some little belongings of hers, seeming to know them
+without being told, and because the time was so queer, and mebbe because
+death was in the next room, and mebbe for another reason or two, I could
+guess how, all the while he was answering her friendly questions about
+the little Cadoza boy--all that while the Personal, the _Personal_, like
+a living thing, hovered just beyond his words. And at last it just
+naturally came in and possessed what he was saying.
+
+"'I can't thank you enough for coming down here,' he says. 'It's meant
+everything to Chris--and to me.'
+
+"She glanced up at him with her pretty near boyish frankness, that had
+in it that night some new element of confidence and charm and just being
+dear.
+
+"'Don't thank me,' she says, 'it was mine to do, too. And besides, I
+haven't done anything. And I'm running away!'
+
+"He looked off up the road towards where, on its hill, Proudfit House
+was a-setting, a-glowing in all its windows, a-waiting for her to come,
+and to have her engagement to another man announced in it, and then to
+belong up there for ever and ever. He started to say something--I donno
+whether he knew what or whether he didn't; but anyhow he changed his
+mind and just opened the door for her, the parlour door that I bet was
+as surprised to be used as if it had cackled.
+
+"The Proudfit motor had stood waiting at the gate all this while, and as
+they got out to it, Dr. Heron drove up, and with him was Mis'
+Hubbelthwait come to enquire. So Robin waited outside to see what Dr.
+Heron should say when he had seen Chris's father again, and I went to
+the door to speak to Mis' Hubbelthwait.
+
+"'Liquor's what ails him fast enough,' Mis' Hubbelthwait whispers--Mis'
+Hubbelthwait would of whispered in the middle of a forty-acre field if
+somebody had said either birth or death to her. 'Liquor's what ails him.
+I know 'em. I remember the nice, well-behaved gentleman that come to the
+hotel and only lived one night after. "Mr. Elder," I says to him,
+severe, "you needn't to tell me your stomach ain't one livin' pickle,
+for I know it is!" An' he proved it by dyin' that very night. If he
+didn't prove it, I don't know what he did prove. "Alcoholism," Dr. Heron
+called it, but I know it was liquor killed him. No use dressin' up
+words. An' I miss my guess if this here poor soul ain't the self-same
+river to cross.'
+
+"She would have come in, but there's no call for the whole town to nurse
+a sick-bed, I always think--and so she sort of hung around a minute,
+sympathetic and mum, and then slimpsed off with very little starch to
+her motions, like when you walk for sick folks. I looked out to where
+Robin and Insley was waiting by the big Proudfit planet that was going
+to take her on an orbit of its own; and all of a sudden, with them in
+front of me and with what was behind me, the awful _good-byness_ of
+things sort of shut down on me, and I wanted to do something or tell
+somebody something, I didn't know what, before it was too late; and I
+run right down to them two.
+
+"'Oh,' I says, scrabblin' some for my words, 'I want to tell you
+something, both of you. If it means anything to either of you to know
+that there's a little more to me, for having met both of you--then I
+want you to know it. And it's true. You both--oh, I donno,' I says,
+'what it is--but you both kind of act like life was a person, and like
+it wasn't just your dinner to be et.... And I kind of know the person,
+too....'
+
+"I knew what I meant, but meant things and said things don't often match
+close. And yet I donno but they understood me. Anyway, they both took
+hold of a hand of mine, and said some little broke-off thing that I
+didn't rightly get. But I guess that we all knew that we all knew. And
+in a minute I went back in the house, feeling like I'd got the best of
+some time when I might of wished, like we all do, that I'd let somebody
+know something while then was then.
+
+"When I got inside the door, I see right off by Dr. Heron's face that
+there'd been some change. And sure enough there was. Chris's father had
+opened his eyes and had spoke. And I done what I knew Robin would have
+wanted; I wheeled round and went to the door and told her so.
+
+"'He's come to,' I says, 'and he's just asked for Chris.'
+
+"Sharp off, Robin turned to say something to the man waiting in the
+automobile. Insley tried to stop her, but she put him by. They come back
+into the cottage together, and the Proudfit automobile started steaming
+back to Proudfit House without her.
+
+"Once again Robin roused Chris, as she had roused him on the night when
+he slept on the church porch; she just slipped her hands round his
+throat and lifted his face, and this time she kissed him.
+
+"'Come with Robin,' she said.
+
+"Chris opened his eyes and for a minute his little senses come
+struggling through his sleep, and then with them come dread. He looked
+up in Robin's face, piteous.
+
+"'Did my daddy _go out_?' he asks, shrill, 'like my mama did?'
+
+"'No, no, dear,' Robin said. 'He wants you to say good-by to him first,
+you know. Be still and brave, for Robin.'
+
+"There wasn't no way to spare him, because the poor little figure on the
+bed was saying his name, restless, to restless movements. I was in there
+by him, fixing him a little something to take.
+
+"'Where's Chris?' the sick man begged. 'Look on the church steps--'
+
+"They took Chris in the room, and Insley lifted him up to Robin's knee
+on the chair beside the bed.
+
+"'Hello--my nice daddy,' Chris says, in his little high voice, and
+smiles adorable. 'I--I--I was waitin' for you all this while.'
+
+"His father put out his hand, awful awkward, and took the child's arm
+about the elbow. I'll never forget the way the man's face looked. It
+didn't looked _used_, somehow--it looked all sort of bare and barren,
+and like it hadn't been occupied. I remember once seeing a brand-new
+house that had burned down before anybody had ever lived in it, and some
+of it stuck up in the street, nice new doors, nice hardwood stairway,
+new brick chimney, and everything else all blackened and spoiled and
+done for, before ever it had been lived in. That was what Chris's
+father's face made me think of. The outline was young, and the eyes was
+young--young and burning--but there was the man's face, all spoiled and
+done for, without ever having been used for a face at all.
+
+"'Hello, sonny,' he says, weak. 'Got a good home?'
+
+"'He's in a good home, with good people, Mr. Bartlett,' Insley told him.
+
+"'For keeps?' Chris's father asks, his eyes burning at Insley's over the
+boy's head.
+
+"'We shall look after him somehow, among us,' Robin says. 'Don't worry
+about him, Mr. Bartlett. He's all right.'
+
+"The father's look turned toward her and it sort of lingered there a
+minute. And then it lit up a little--he didn't smile or change
+expression, but his look lit up some.
+
+"'You're the kind of a one I meant,' he says. 'I wanted he should have a
+good home. I--I done pretty good for you, didn't I, Chris?' he says.
+
+"Chris leaned way over and pulled at his sleeve. 'You--you--you come in
+our house, too,' he says.
+
+"'No, sonny, no,' says the man. 'I guess mebbe I'm--goin' somewheres
+else. But I done well by you, didn't I? Your ma and I always meant you
+should hev a good home. I'm glad--if you've got it. It's nicer than
+bein' with me--ain't it? Ain't it?'
+
+"Chris, on Robin's knee, was leaning forward on the bed, his hand
+patting and pulling at his father's hand.
+
+"'If you was here, then it is,' the child says.
+
+"At that his father smiled--and that was the first real, real look that
+had come into his face. And he looked around slow to the rest of us.
+
+"'I wasn't never the kind to hev a kid,' he says. 'The drink had me--had
+me hard. I knew I'd got to find somebody to show him--about growin' up.
+I'm glad you're goin' to.'
+
+"He shut his eyes and Chris threw himself forward and patted his face.
+
+"'Daddy!' he cried, 'I wanted to tell you--I had that hot ice-cream
+an'--an'--an' tea on a litty wagon....'
+
+"Robin drew him back, hushed him, looked up questioning to Insley. And
+while we all set there, not knowing whether to leave or to stay, the man
+opened his eyes, wide and dark.
+
+"'I wish't it had been different,' he said. 'Oh--_God_....'
+
+"Chris leans right over, eager, towards him.
+
+"'Didn't he say anything back?' he says.
+
+"'I guess so,' the man says, thick. 'I guess if you're a good boy, he
+did.' Then he turned his head and looked straight at Robin. 'Don't you
+forget about his throat, will you?' he says.
+'It--gets--sore--awful--easy....'
+
+"He stopped talking, with a funny upsetting sound in his voice. It
+struck me then, like it has since, how frightful it was that neither him
+nor Chris thought of kissing each other--like neither one had brought
+the other up to know how. And yet Chris kissed all of us when we asked
+him--just like something away back in him knew how, without being
+brought up to know.
+
+"He knew how to cry, though, without no bringing up, like folks do. As
+Robin come with him out of the room, Chris hid his face in her skirts,
+crying miserable. She set down by the window with him in her arms, and
+Insley went and stood side of them, not saying anything. I see them so,
+while Dr. Heron and I was busy for a minute in the bedroom. Then we come
+out and shut the door--ain't it strange, how one minute it takes so many
+people around the bed, and next minute, there's the one that was the one
+left in there all alone, able to take care of itself.
+
+"Dr. Heron went away, and Robin still set there, holding Chris. All of a
+sudden he put up his face.
+
+"'Robin,' he says, 'did--did my daddy leave me a letter?'
+
+"'A letter?' she repeated.
+
+"'To tell me what to do,' says the child. 'Like before. On the church
+steps.'
+
+"'No--why, no, Chris,' she answers him. 'He didn't have to do that, you
+know.'
+
+"His eyes was holding hers, like he wanted so much to understand.
+
+"'Then how'll I know?' he asks, simple.
+
+"It seemed to me it was like a glass, magnifying living, had suddenly
+been laid on life. Here he was, in the world, with no 'letter' to tell
+him what to do.
+
+"All she done was just to lay her cheek right close to his cheek.
+
+"'Robin is going to tell you what to do,' she says, 'till you are big
+enough to know.'
+
+"Insley stood there looking at her, and his face was like something had
+just uncovered it. And the minute seemed real and simple and almost
+old--as if it had begun to be long, long before. It was kind of as if
+Robin's will was the will of all women, away back for ever and ever in
+time, to pour into the world their power of life and of spirit, through
+a child.
+
+
+"Insley went out in the kitchen to see Mis' Cadoza about some
+arrangements--if 'Arrangements' means funerals, it always seems like the
+word was spelt different and stiffer--and we was setting there in that
+sudden, awful idleness that comes on after, when there was the noise of
+an automobile on the Plank Road, and it stopped to the cottage and Alex
+Proudfit come springing up to the front door. He pushed it open and come
+in the room, and he seemed to put the minute in capitals, with his voice
+and his looks and his clothes. I never see clothes so black and so white
+and so just-so as Alex Proudfit's could be, and that night they was more
+just-so than usual. That night, his hands, with their thick, strange
+ring, and his dark, kind of _even_ face was like some fancy picture of a
+knight and a lover. But his face never seemed to me to be made very much
+a-purpose and just for him. It was rather like a good sample of a good
+brand, and like a good sample of any other good brand would have done
+him just as well. His face didn't fit him inevitable, like a cork to a
+bottle. It was laid on more arbitrary, like a window on a landscape, and
+you could have seen the landscape through any other window just as well,
+or better.
+
+"'Robin!' he said, 'why did you let the car come back without you? We've
+been frantic with anxiety.'
+
+"She told him in a word or two what had happened, and he received it
+with his impressions just about half-and-half: one-half relief that the
+matter was well over and one-half anxiety for her to hurry up. Everyone
+was at the house, everyone was wondering. Mrs. Emmons was anxious....
+'My poor Robin, you've overtaxed your strength,' he ends. 'You'll look
+worn and not yourself to-night. It's too bad of it. Come, for heaven's
+sake, let's be out of this. Come, Calliope....'
+
+He asked her if she had anything to bring, and he gathered up what she
+told him was hers. I got ready, too, so's to go up to Proudfit House to
+put Chris to bed and set by him awhile. And just as I was going out to
+let Insley know we was leaving, the door to the other room opened and
+there stood Mis' Cadoza. I see she'd twisted her hair over fresh and
+she'd put on a collar. I remember now the way I felt when she spoke.
+
+"'I've got the coffee pot on and some batter stirred up,' says she, kind
+of shame-faced. 'I thought mebbe some hot pan-cakes and somethin' hot to
+drink'd go good--with Mr. Insley an' all of you.'
+
+"Alex started to say something--heaven knows what--but Robin went right
+straight up to Mis' Cadoza--and afterwards I thought back to how Robin
+didn't make the mistake of being too grateful.
+
+"'How I'd like them!' she says, matter-of-fact. 'But I've got a lot of
+people waiting for me, and I oughtn't to keep them....'
+
+"Insley spoke up from where he was over on the edge of little Eph's bed,
+and I noticed Mis' Cadoza had tried to neaten up the kitchen some, and
+she'd set the table with oil-cloth and some clean dishes.
+
+"'I was afraid you'd all stay,' he says, 'and I do want all the
+pan-cakes. Hurry on--you're keeping back our supper.'
+
+"He nodded to Alex, smiled with us, and come and saw us out the door.
+Mis' Cadoza come too, and Robin and I shook hands with her for
+goodnight. And as Mis' Cadoza stood there in her own door, seeing us
+off, and going to be hostess out in her own kitchen, I wondered to
+myself if it was having a collar on, or what it was, that give her a
+kind of pretty near dignity.
+
+"I got in the front seat of the car. Chris was back in the tonneau
+between Robin and Alex, and as we started he tried to tell Alex what had
+happened.
+
+"'My--my--my daddy----' he says.
+
+"'Poor little cuss,' says Alex. 'But how extremely well for the child,
+Robin, that the beggar died. Heavens, how I hate your going in these
+ghastly places. My poor Robin, what an experience for _to-night_! For
+our to-night....'
+
+"She made a sudden move, abrupt as a bird springing free of something
+that's holding it. She spoke low, but I heard every word of it.
+
+"'Alex,' she said, 'we've made a mistake, you and I. But it isn't too
+late to mend it now.'
+
+
+
+
+XII
+
+
+"'I hope, Calliope,' said Postmaster Silas Sykes to me, 'that you ain't
+in favour of women suffrage.'
+
+"'No, Silas,' says I, 'I ain't.'
+
+"And I felt all over me a kind of a nice wild joy at saying a thing that
+I knew a male creature would approve of.
+
+"Silas was delivering the groceries himself that day, and accepting of a
+glass of milk in my kitchen doorway. And on my kitchen stoop Letty
+Ames--that had come home in time for the Proudfit party--was a-sitting,
+a-stitching away on a violet muslin breakfast-cap. It was the next day
+after the party and my regular wash-day and I was glad to be back in my
+own house, washing quiet, with Emerel Daniel to help me.
+
+"'At school,' says Letty, 'everybody was for it.'
+
+"'I know it,' says Silas, gloomy. 'The schools is goin' to the dogs,
+hot-foot. Women suffrage, tinkerin' pupils' teeth, cremation--I don't
+know what-all their holdin' out for. In my day they stuck to 'rithmetic
+and toed the crack.'
+
+"'That isn't up to date, Mr. Sykes,' says Letty, to get Silas riled.
+
+"It done it. He waved his left arm, angular.
+
+"'Bein' up to date is bein' up to the devil,' he begun, raspish, when I
+cut in, hasty and peaceful.
+
+"'By the way, Silas,' I says, 'speaking of dates, it ain't more'n a
+_year_ past the time you aldermen was going to clear out Black Hollow,
+is it? Ain't you going to get it done _this_ spring?'
+
+"'Oh, dum it, no,' Silas says. 'They're all after us now to get to
+pavin' that new street.'
+
+"'That street off there in the marsh. I know they are,' I says innocent.
+'Your cousin's makin' the blocks, ain't he, Silas?'
+
+"Just then, in from the shed where she was doing my washing come Emerel
+Daniel--a poor little thing that looked like nothing but breath with the
+skin drawn over it--and she was crying.
+
+"'Oh, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'I guess you'll have to leave me go home. I
+left little Otie so sick--I hadn't ought to of left him--only I did want
+the fifty cents....'
+
+"'Otie!' I says. 'I thought Otie was getting better.'
+
+"'I've kept sayin' so because I was ashamed to let folks know,' Emerel
+says, 'an' me leavin' him to work. But I had to have the money--'
+
+"'Land,' I says, 'of course you did. Go on home. Silas'll take you in
+the delivery wagon, won't you, Silas? You're going right that way, ain't
+you?'
+
+"'I wasn't,' says Silas, 'but I can go round that way to oblige.' That's
+just exactly how Silas is.
+
+"'Emerel,' I says, 'when you go by the Hollow, you tell Silas what you
+was tellin' me--about the smells from there into your house. Silas,' I
+says, 'that hole could be filled up with sand-bar sand dirt cheap, now
+while the river's low, and you know it.'
+
+"'Woman--' Silas begins excitable.
+
+"'Of course you can't,' I saved him the trouble, 'not while the council
+is running pavement halfway acrost the swamp to graft off'n the Wooden
+Block folks. That's all, Silas. I know you, head and heart,' I says,
+some direct.
+
+"'You don't understand city dealin's no more'n--Who-a!' Silas yells,
+pretending his delivery horse needed him, and lit down the walk, Emerel
+following. Silas reminds me of the place in the atmosphere where a
+citizen ought to be, and ain't.
+
+"Emerel had left the clothes in the bluing water, so I stood and talked
+with Letty a minute, stitching away on her muslin breakfast-cap.
+
+"'I'd be for women voting just because Silas isn't,' she says, feminine.
+
+"'In them words,' says I to her, 'is some of why women shouldn't do it.
+The most of 'em reason,' I says, 'like rabbits!'
+
+"Letty sort of straightened up and looked at me, gentle. She just
+graduated from the Indian Mound School and, in spite of yourself, you
+notice what she says. 'You're mistaken, Miss Marsh,' says she, 'I
+believe in women voting because we're folks and mothers, and we can't
+bring up our children with men taking things away from 'em that we know
+they'd ought to have. I want to bring up my children by my votes as well
+as by my prayers,' says she.
+
+"'_Your_ children!' says I.
+
+"I donno if you've ever noticed that look come in a girl's face when she
+speaks of her children that are going to be sometime? Up to that minute
+I'd 'a' thought Letty's words was brazen. But when I see how she looked
+when she said it, I sort of turned my eyes away, kind of half reverent.
+We didn't speak so when I was a girl. The most we ever heard mentioned
+like that was when our mothers showed us our first baby dress and told
+us that was for _our_ baby--and then we always looked away, squeamish.
+
+"'That's kind of nice,' I says, slow, 'your owning up, out loud that
+way, that maybe you might possibly have--have one, sometime.'
+
+"'My mother has talked to me about it since I began to
+know--everything,' Letty said.
+
+"That struck awful near home.
+
+"'I always wisht,' I says, 'I'd talked with my mother--like that. I
+always wisht I'd had her tell me about the night I was born. I think
+everybody ought to know about that. But I remember when she begun to
+speak about it, I always kind of shied off. I should think it would of
+hurt her. But then,' I says, 'I never had any of my own. So it don't
+matter.'
+
+"'Oh, yes, you have, Miss Marsh,' says Letty.
+
+"I looked at her, blank.
+
+"'Every child that's born belongs to you,' says Letty to me, solemn.
+
+"'Go on,' says I, to draw her out. 'I wouldn't own most of the little
+jackanapesses.'
+
+"'But you _do_,' says Letty, 'and so do I! So does every woman, mother
+or not.'
+
+"She set the little violet muslin cap on her head to try it, and swept
+up and made me a little bow. Pretty as a picture she looked, and ready
+for loving.... I always wonder if things ain't sometimes arranged to
+happen in patterns, same as crystals. For why else should it be that at
+that instant minute young Elbert Sykes, Silas's son, that was home for
+the party and a little longer, come up to my door with a note from his
+mother--and see Letty in the violet cap, bowing like a rose?
+
+"While they was a-talking easy, like young folks knows how to do
+nowdays, I read the note; and it was about what had started Silas to
+talking suffrage. Mis' Sykes had opened her house to a suffrage meeting
+that evening, and Mis' Martin Lacy from the City was a-going to talk,
+and would I go over?
+
+"'Land, yes,' I says to Elbert. 'Tell her I'll come, just for something
+to do. I wonder if I can bring Letty, too?'
+
+"'Mother'd be proud, I know,' says Elbert, looking at her like words,
+and them words a-praising. They had used to play together when they was
+little, but school had come in and kind of made them over.
+
+"'_So_,' says he to Letty, bantering, 'you're in favour of women voting,
+are you?'
+
+"She broke off her thread and looked up at him.
+
+"'Of course I am,' she says, giving a cunning little kitten nod that run
+all down her shoulders.
+
+"'So you think,' says Elbert, 'that you're just as strong as I am--to
+carry things along? Mind you, I don't say as clever. You're easily that.
+But put it at just _strong_.'
+
+"She done the little nod again, nicer than the first time.
+
+"'You talk like folks voted with their muscles,' says she. 'Well, I
+guess some men do, judging by the results.'
+
+"He laughed, but he went on.
+
+"'And you think,' he says, 'that you would be just as wonderful in
+public life as you would be in your home--your very own home?'
+
+"Letty put the last stitch in her muslin cap and she set it on her
+head--all cloudy and rose-budded, and land, land, she was lovely when
+she looked up.
+
+"'Surely,' she says from under the ruffle, with a little one-cornered
+smile.
+
+"He laughed right into her eyes. 'I don't believe you think so,' he
+says, triumphant. And all of a sudden there come a-sticking up its head
+in his face the regular man look--I can't rightly name it, but every
+woman in the world knows it when she sees it--a kind of an _I'm the one
+of us two but don't let's stop pretending it's you_ look.
+
+"When she see it, what do you suppose Letty done? First she looked
+down. Then she blushed. Then she shrugged up one shoulder and laughed,
+sort of little and low and soft. _And she kept still._ She was about as
+much like the dignified woman that had just been talking to me about
+women's duty as a bow of blue ribbon is like my work apron. And as plain
+as the blue on the sky, I see that _she liked the minute when she let
+Elbert beat her--liked it_, with a sort of a glow and a quiver.
+
+"He laughed again, and, 'You stay just the the way you are,' he says,
+and he contrived to make them common words sort of flow all over her
+like petting.
+
+"That evening, when we marched into the Sykes's house to the meeting, he
+spoke to her like that again. The men was invited to the meeting, too,
+but Mis' Sykes let it be known that they needn't to come till the coffee
+and sandwiches, thus escaping the speech. Mis' Sykes ain't in favour of
+suffrage, but she does love a new thing in town, and Mis' Martin Lacy
+was so well dressed and so soft-spoken that Mis' Sykes would of left her
+preach foot-binding in her parlour if she'd wanted to. Mis' Sykes is
+like that. Letty was about the youngest there, and she was about the
+prettiest I 'most ever saw; and when he'd got them all seated, young
+Elbert Sykes, that was the only man there, just naturally gravitated
+over and set down by her, like the Lord meant. I love to see them little
+things happen, and I never smile at them, same as some. Because it's
+like I got a peek in behind the curtain and see the eternal purpose
+working away, quiet and still.
+
+"Well, Mis' Lacy, she talked, and she put things real sane and plain,
+barring I didn't believe any of what she said. And pretty soon I stopped
+trying to listen and I begun thinking about Emerel Daniel. I'd been down
+to see her just before supper, and I hadn't had her out of my head much
+of the time since. Emerel's cottage wasn't half a block from Black
+Hollow, the great low place beyond the river road that the town used as
+a dump. It was full of things without names, and take it on a day with
+the wind just right, Emerel had to keep her window shut on that side of
+her house. Water was standing in the hollow all the whole time. Flies
+and mosquitoes come from it by the flock and the herd. And when I'd held
+my nose and scud past it that afternoon to get to Emerel's, I'd almost
+run into Dr. Heron, just coming out from seeing Otie, and I burst right
+out with my thoughts all over him, and asked him if Black Hollow wasn't
+what was the matter with Otie and if it wasn't all that was the matter
+with him.
+
+"'Unquestionably,' says Dr. Heron. 'I told Mrs. Daniel six months ago
+that she must move.'
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'not having any of her other country homes open this
+year, Emerel had to stay where she was. And Otie with her. But what did
+you say to the council about filling in the hole?'
+
+"'The council,' says Dr. Heron, 'is paving the county swamp. There's a
+good crop of wooden blocks this year.'
+
+"'True enough,' says I, grim, 'and Otie is a-paying for it.'
+
+"That was exactly how the matter stood. And all the while Mis' Lacy was
+a-talking her women suffrage, I set there grieving for Emerel, and
+wondering how it was that Silas Sykes and Timothy Toplady and Jimmy
+Sturgis and even Eppleby Holcomb, that belonged to the common council,
+_could_ set by and see Otie die, and more or less of the rest of us in
+the same kind of danger.
+
+"Next I knew, Mis' Lacy, that was all silky movements and a sweet voice,
+had got through her own talk and was asking us ladies to express
+ourselves. Everybody felt kind of delicate at first, and then Libby
+Liberty starts up and spoke her mind:--
+
+"'_I_ believe all you've been a-saying,' she says, 'and I hev for
+twenty years. I never kill a hen without I realize how good the women
+can do a human being's work if they're put to it.'
+
+"'I always think of that, too,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, quick, 'about
+the hotel....' She kind of stopped, but we all knew what she meant.
+Threat is seldom if ever sober, especially on election day; but he
+votes, and she only runs the hotel and keeps them both out of the
+poorhouse.
+
+"'Well, look at me,' says Abagail Arnold, 'doin' work to oven and to
+counter, an' can't get my nose near nothin' public but my taxes.'
+
+"'Of course,' says Mis' Uppers, rocking, 'I've almost _been_ the mayor
+of Friendship Village, bein' his wife, so. An' I must say he never done
+a thing I didn't think I could do. Or less it was the junketin' trips.
+I'd 'a' been down with one o' my sick headaches on every one o' them.'
+
+"'Men _know_ more,' admitted Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'but I donno as
+they can _do_ any more than us. When the Fire Chief was alive an'
+holdin' office an' entertaining politicians, I use' often to think o'
+that, when I had their hot dinner to get.'
+
+"'I s'pose men do know more than we do,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, reflective. 'I know Eppleby is lightnin'
+at figures, an' he can tell about time-tables, an' he sees sense to fine
+print parts o' the newspapers that looks like so many doctors'
+prescriptions to me. An' yet honestly, when it comes to some questions
+of sense, I've known Eppleby not to have any.'
+
+"'Jimmy, either,' says Mis' Sturgis, confidential. 'I donno. I've
+thought about that a good deal. It seems as if, if we got the chance, us
+women might not vote brilliant at first, but we would vote with our
+sense. The sense that can pick out a pattern and split a receipt, an'
+dress the children out o' the house money. I bet there's a lot o' that
+kind o' sense among women that don't get used up, by a long shot.'
+
+"Mis' Timothy Toplady drew her shawl up her back, like she does.
+
+"'Well-a,' she says, 'Timothy's an awful good husband, but when I see
+some of the things he buys for the house, an' the way he gets took in on
+real estate, I often wonder if he's such a good citizen as he lets on.'
+
+"I kep' a-wondering why Letty didn't say something, and by and by I
+nudged her.
+
+"'Go on, speak up,' I intimated.
+
+"And, same time, I heard Elbert Sykes, on the other side, say something
+to her, low. 'I could tell them,' he says to her, 'that to look like
+you do is better than being elected!'
+
+"And Letty--what do you s'spose?--she just glanced up at him, and made a
+little kind of a commenting wrinkle with her nose, and looked down and
+kept her silence. Just like he'd set there with a little fine chain to
+her wrist.
+
+"We talked some more and asked some questions and heard Mis' Lacy read
+some, and then it was time for the men. They come in together--six or
+eight of them, and most of them, as it happened, members of the common
+council. And when Mis' Sykes had set them down on the edge of the room,
+and before anybody had thought of any remark to pass, Mis' Lacy she
+spoke up and ask' the men to join in the discussion, and called on Mis'
+Sykes, that hadn't said nothing yet, to start the ball a-rolling.
+
+"'_Well_,' says Mis' Sykes, with her little society pucker, 'I must say
+the home and bring-up my children seems far, far more womanly to me than
+the tobacco smoke and whiskey of public life.'
+
+"She glanced over to the men, kind of with a way of arching her neck and
+they all gave her a sort of a little ripple, approving. And with this
+Mis' Toplady kind of tossed her head up.
+
+"'Oh, well, I don't want the responsibility,' she says. 'Land, if I was
+a votin' woman, I should feel as if I'd got bread in the pan and cake in
+the oven and clothes in the bluin' water all the whole time.'
+
+"'He, he, he!' says Timothy, her lawful lord. And Silas and Jimmy
+Sturgis and the rest joined in, tuneful.
+
+"Then Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, she vied in, and done a small,
+careless laugh.
+
+"'Oh, well, me, too,' she says, 'I declare, as I get older an' wake up
+some mornin's I feel like life was one big breakfast to get an' me the
+hired girl. If I had to vote besides, I donno what I _would_ do.'
+
+"'An',' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'I always feel as if a politician was a
+disgrace to be, same as an actor, _unless_ you got to be a big one. An'
+can us women ever be big ones even if we want? Which I'm sure I don't
+want,' she says, sidling a look towards the men's row.
+
+"'Oh, not only that,' says Abagail Arnold, 'but you'd feel so kind of
+sheepish votin' for the President, away off there in Washington. I
+always feel terrible sheepish even prayin' for him, let alone
+votin'--an' like it _couldn't_ make no real difference.'
+
+"'Oh, an' _ladies_!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, 'really it's bad enough to
+have been the wife of a mayor. If I had to vote an' was in danger of
+coming down with a nomination for somethin' myself, I couldn't get to
+sleep nights.'
+
+"'Mercy,' said Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'a mayor is nothin' but a baby
+in public life compared to a fire chief. A mayor gets his night's rest.
+Could a woman ever chase to fires at three o'clock in the mornin'? An'
+if she votes, what's to prevent her bein' elected to some such job by
+main strength?'
+
+"'Or like enough get put on a jury settin' on a murderer, an' hev to
+look at dug-up bones an' orgins,' says Mis' Sturgis--her that's an
+invalid and gloomy by complexion.
+
+"And one and all, as they spoke, they looked sidewise to the men for
+their approval. And they got it.
+
+"'That's the ticket!' says Timothy Toplady, slapping his knee. 'I tell
+you, gentlemen, we've got a nice set of women folks here in this town.
+They don't prostitute their brains to no fool notions.'
+
+"There was a little hush, owing to that word that Timothy had used kind
+of uncalled for, and then a little quick buzz of talk to try to cover
+it. And in the buzz I heard Elbert saying to Letty:
+
+"'You _know_ you think of yourself in a home afterward--and not around
+at polls and things, Letty.'
+
+"'You don't have to board at the polls because you vote there, you
+know,' Letty said; but she says it with a way, with a way. She said it
+like a pretty woman talking to a man that's looking in her eyes and
+thinking how pretty she is, and she knows he's thinking so. And you
+can't never get much real arguing done that way.
+
+"It always kind of scares me to see myself showed up--and now it was
+like I had ripped a veil off the whole sex, and off me, too. I see us
+face to face. Why was it that before them men had come in, the women had
+all talked kind of doubtful and suffrage-leaning, and then had veered
+like the wind the minute the men had come on the scene? Mis' Toplady had
+defied Timothy time after time, both public and private; Mis'
+Hubbelthwait bosses her husband not only drunk but sober; Mis' Sturgis
+don't do a thing Jimmy wants without she happens to want it too--and so
+on. Yet at the mention of this one thing, these women that had been
+talking intelligent and wondering open-minded had all stopped being the
+way they was and had begun to say things sole to please the men. Even
+Libby Liberty had kept still--her that has a regular tongue in her head.
+And Letty, that believed in it all, and had talked to me so womanly
+that morning, she was listening and blushing for Elbert and holding her
+peace. And then I remembered, like a piece of guilt, sensing that nice,
+wild feeling I myself had felt that morning a-denying woman suffrage in
+the presence of Postmaster Silas Sykes. What in creation ailed us all?
+
+"_What in creation...._ Them words sort of steadied me. It looked to me
+like it was creation itself that ailed us yet. Creation is a thing that
+it takes most folks a good while to recover from....
+
+" ... I remembered seeing Silas's delivery boy go whistling along the
+street one night, and pass a cat. The cat wasn't doing nothing active.
+It was merely idle. But the boy brought up a big shingle he was carrying
+and swished it through the air and says 'Z-t-t-t-t,' to the cat's heels,
+to see the cat take to them--which it done--like the cat immemorial has
+done for immemorial boys, delivery and other. And once, at dusk, a big,
+strange man with a gun on his shoulder passed me on Daphne Street, and
+when he done so, he says to me 'Z-t-t-t,' under his breath, just like
+the boy to the cat, and just like the untamed man immemorial has said
+when he got the chance. It seemed to me like men was created with, so
+to say, a shingle and a gun, for the hunting, and just as there is joy
+in their hunting, so there is a palpitatin' delight in being hunted and
+flattered by being caught and bound, hand and foot and mind.
+
+"'We like it--why, I tell you, we like it,' I says to myself, 'and us
+here in Mis' Sykes's parlour are burning with the old original,
+left-over fire, breathed at creation into women's breasts!'
+
+"And it seemed like I kind of touched hands with all the women that used
+to be. And I looked over to that row of grinning, tired men, not so very
+much dressed up, and I thought:--
+
+"'Why, you're the men of this world and we're the women, and there ain't
+no more thrilling fact in this universe. And why don't we all reco'nize
+it and shut up?'
+
+"That was what I was thinking over in my mind while Mis' Martin Lacy
+said good night to us and rushed off to catch her train for the City,
+hoping she had made us see some light. That was what I was still going
+over when Mis' Sykes called me to help with the refreshments. And then,
+just as I started out to the kitchen, the outside door that was part
+open was pushed in and somebody come in the room. It was Emerel Daniel,
+in calico and no hat. And as soon as we see her face, everybody stopped
+talking and stared. She was white as the table-cloth and shaking.
+
+"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'won't one of you come down to the house?
+Otie's worse--I donno what it is. I donno what to do to take care of
+him.'
+
+"She broke down, poor, nervous little thing, and sort of swallowed her
+whole throat. And Mis' Toplady and we all rushed right over to her.
+
+"'Why, Emerel,' Mis' Toplady says, 'I thought Otie was getting ever so
+much better. Is it the real typhoid, do you s'pose?' she ask' her.
+
+"Emerel looked over to me. 'Isn't it?' she says. And then I spoke right
+up with all there is to me.
+
+"'Yes, sir,' I says, 'it is the real typhoid. And if you want to know
+what's giving it to him, ladies and gentlemen, ask the common council
+that's setting over there by the wall. Dr. Heron says that Black Hollow,
+that's a sink for the whole town, give it to him, and that nothing else
+did--piled full of diseases right in back of Emerel's house. And if you
+want to know who's responsible for his dying if he dies,' I says right
+out, 'look over in the same direction to the men that wouldn't vote to
+fill in the Black Hollow with sand because they needed the money so bad
+for paving up half the county swamp.'
+
+"It was most as still in the room as when Timothy had said 'prostitute.'
+All but me. I went right on--nothing could of kept me still then.
+
+"'Us ladies,' I says, 'has tried for two years to get the Council to
+fill in that hole. We've said and said what would happen to some of us,
+what with our pumps so near the place, and what with flies from it
+visiting our dinner-table dishes, sociable and continual. What did you
+say to us? You said women hadn't no idee of town finances. Mebbe we
+ain't--mebbe we ain't. But we have got some idea of town humanity, if I
+do say it, that share in it. And this poor little boy has gone to work
+and proved it.'
+
+"With that, Emerel, who had been holding in--her that's afraid even to
+ask for starch if you forget to give it to her--she broke right down and
+leaned her head on her arm on the clock shelf:--
+
+"'Oh,' she says, 'all the years I been giving him his victuals and his
+bath and sewing his clothes up, I never meant it to come to this--for no
+reason. If Otie dies, I guess he needn't of--that's the worst. He
+needn't of.'
+
+"Mis' Toplady put her arm right around Emerel and kind of poored her
+shoulder in that big, mother way she's got--and it was her that went
+with her, like it's always Mis' Toplady that does everything. And us
+ladies turned around and all begun to talk at once.
+
+"'Let's plan out right here about taking things in to Emerel,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I've got some fresh bread out of the oven.
+I'll carry her a couple of loaves, and another couple next baking or
+two.'
+
+"'I'll take her in a hen,' says Libby Liberty, 'so be she'll kill it
+herself.'
+
+"Somebody else said a ham, and somebody some butter, and Libby threw in
+some fresh eggs, if she got any. Mis' Hubbelthwait didn't have much to
+do with, but she said she would take turns setting up with Otie. Mis'
+Sykes give a quarter--she don't like to bake for folks, but she's real
+generous with money. And Silas pipes in:--
+
+"'Emerel can have credit to the store till Otie begins to get better,'
+he said. 'I ain't been lettin' her have it. She's looked so peaked I
+been afraid she wan't a-goin' to be able to work, an' I didn't want she
+should be all stacked up with debts.'
+
+"But me, I set there a-thinking. And all of a sudden I says out what I
+thought: 'Ladies,' I says, 'and all of you: What to Emerel is hens and
+hams and credit? They ain't,' I says, 'nothing but patches and poultices
+on what's the trouble up to her house.'
+
+"Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying much, spoke up:--
+
+"'I know,' he says, 'I know. You mean what good do they do to the boy.'
+
+"'I mean just that,' I says. 'What good is all that to Otie that's lying
+over by Black Hollow? And how does it keep the rest of the town safe?'
+
+"'Well,' says Silas, eager, 'let's us get out the zinc wagon you ladies
+bought, and let's us go to collectin' the garbage again so that won't
+all be dumped in Black Hollow. And leave the ladies keep on payin' for
+it. It's real ladies' work, I think, bein' as it's no more'n a general
+scrapin' up of ladies' kitchens.'
+
+"Then Letty Ames, that hadn't been saying anything, spoke up, to nobody
+in particular:--
+
+"'Otie's a dear little soul,' she said, 'a dear little soul!'
+
+"'Ain't he?' says Marne Holcomb. 'Eppleby 'most always has a nut or
+somethin' in his pocket to give him as he goes by. He takes it like a
+little squirrel an' like a little gentleman.'
+
+"'He's awful nice when he comes in the shop,' said Abagail. 'He looks at
+the penny-apiece kind and then buys the two-for-a-cent, so's to give
+his mother one.'
+
+"'He knows how to behave in a store,' Silas admitted. 'I 'most always
+give him a coffee-berry, just to see him thank me.'
+
+"'He come into the hotel one day,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'an' stood by
+me when I was bakin'. I give him a little wad of dough to roll.'
+
+"'I let him drive the 'bus one day, settin' on my knee,' says Jimmy
+Sturgis. 'He was a nice, careful, complete little cuss.'
+
+"Eppleby Holcomb nodded with his eyes shut.
+
+"'We don't like folks to swing on our front gate,' he says. 'He done it,
+but he marched right in and told us he'd done it. I give him a
+doughnut--an' he's kep' right on swingin' an' ownin' up an' eatin'
+doughnuts.'
+
+"'Even when he chased my chickens,' says Libby Liberty, 'he chased 'em
+like a little gentleman--_towards_ the coop an' not down the road. I
+always noticed that about him.'
+
+"'Yes,' says Letty, again, 'he's a dear little soul. _What makes us let
+him die?_'
+
+"She said it so calm that it caught even my breath--and my breath, in
+these things, ain't easy caught. But I got it right back again, and I
+says:--
+
+"'Yes, sir. He was on the way to being somebody that Friendship Village
+could have had for the right kind of an inmate. And now he'll be nothing
+but a grave, that's no good to anybody. And Sodality,' I couldn't help
+adding, 'will likely pitch right in and take care of his grave,
+tasteful.'
+
+"And when I said that, it come over me how Emerel had dressed him and
+bathed him and made his clothes, and done washings, tireless, to get the
+fifty cents--besides bringing him into the world, tedious. And now it
+was all going for nothing, all for nothing--when we could of helped it.
+And I plumped out with what I'd said that morning to Silas:--
+
+"'Why don't you fill up Black Hollow with sand-bar sand out of the
+river, now it's so low? Then, even if it's too late for Otie, mebbe we
+can keep ourselves from murderin' anybody else.'
+
+"Them half a dozen men of the common council set still a minute, looking
+down at Mis' Sykes's parlour ingrain. And I looked over at them, and my
+heart come up in my throat and both of them ached like the toothache.
+Because all of a sudden it seemed to me it wasn't just Timothy and
+Eppleby and Silas and some more of the council setting there by the
+wall--but it was like, in them few men, tired and not so very well
+dressed, was setting the lawmakers of the whole world; and there in
+front of them, wasn't only Mis' Holcomb and Libby and Letty and me, but
+Emerel Daniel, too, and all the women there is--saying to them: 'My
+land, we've dressed 'em an' bathed 'em an' sewed for 'em an' brought 'em
+into the world, tedious. Let 'em live--fix things so's they can live an'
+so's it needn't all go for nothin'.' And I sort of bubbled up and
+spilled over, as if everything we was all of us _for_ had come up in my
+throat.
+
+"'Oh, folks,' I says, 'just look what us in this room could have done
+for Otie--so be we'd begun in time.'
+
+"Right like a dash of cold water into my face, Mis' Sykes spoke up, cold
+as some kind of death:--
+
+"'Well, ladies,' she says, 'I guess we've got our eyes open now. _I_ say
+that's what we'd ought to hev been doin' instead o' talkin' women
+votin',' she says, triumphant.
+
+"Then somebody spoke again, in a soft, new, not-used-to-it little voice,
+and in her chair over beside Elbert, Letty Ames leaned forward, and her
+eyes was like the sunny places in water.
+
+"'Don't you see,' she says, 'don't you see, Mis' Sykes, that's what Mis'
+Lacy meant?'
+
+"'How so?' says Mis' Sykes, short.
+
+"I'll never forget how sweet and shy and unexpected and young Letty
+looked, but she answered, as brave as brave:--
+
+"'Otie Daniel is sick,' she said, 'and all us women can do is to carry
+him broth and bread and nurse him. It's only the men that can bring
+about the things to make him well. And they haven't done it. It's been
+the women who have been urging it--and not getting it done. Wasn't it
+our work to do, too?'
+
+"I see Elbert looking at her--like he just couldn't bear to have her
+speak so, like some men can't. And I guess he spoke out in answer before
+he meant to:--
+
+"'But let them do it womanly, Letty,' he said, 'like your mother did and
+my mother did.'
+
+"Letty turned and looked Elbert Sykes straight in the face:--
+
+"'_Womanly!_' she says. 'What is there womanly about my bathing and
+feeding a child inside four clean walls, if dirt and bad food and
+neglect are outside for him? Will you tell me if there is anything more
+womanly than my right to help make the world as decent for my children
+as I would make my own home?'
+
+"I looked at Letty, and looked; and I see with a thrill I can't tell you
+about how Letty seemed. For she seemed the way she had that morning on
+my kitchen stoop, when she spoke of her children and when I felt like
+I'd ought to turn away--the way I'd used to when my mother showed me my
+baby dress and told me who it would be for. Only now--only now, somehow,
+I didn't want to turn away. Somehow I wanted to keep right on looking at
+Letty, like Elbert was looking. And I see what he see. How Letty was
+what she'd said that morning that she was--and that I was--and that we
+all was: A mother, then and there, whether she ever had any children or
+not. And she was next door to owning up to it right there before them
+all and before Elbert. We didn't speak so when I was a girl. We didn't
+own up, out loud, that we ever thought anything about what we was for.
+But now, when I heard Letty do it....
+
+" ... Now, when I heard Letty do it, all to once, I looked into a window
+of the world. And instead of touching hands like I had with the women
+that use' to be, I looked off and off down all the time there's going to
+be, and for a minute I touched, tip-fingers, the hands of the other
+women that's coming towards me; and out of places inside of me that I
+didn't know before had eyes, I see them, mothers to the whole world,
+_inside their four walls and out_. And they wasn't coming with poultices
+and bread and broth in their hands, to patch up what had been left
+undone; nor with the keys to schoolhouses that they'd got open by
+scheming; nor with newspapers full of health that they'd had to run down
+back alleys to sell; nor national holidays that they'd got a-hold of
+through sheer accident; nor yet with nice new headstones for cemetery
+improvements on the dead and gone--no, sir, their hands wasn't occupied
+with any of these ways of serving that they'd schemed for and stole. But
+their hands--was in men's hands, closer and nearer than they'd ever been
+before. And their eyes was lit up with a look that was a new look, and
+that give new life to the old original left-over blaze. And I looked
+across to that row of tired men, not so very much dressed up, and I
+thought:--
+
+"'You're the men of this world and we're the women. And there ain't no
+more thrilling fact in this universe, save one, _save one_: And that's
+that we're all human beings. That your job and ours is to make the world
+ready for the folks that are to come, and to make the folks that come
+fit to live in that new world. And yet over there by Black Hollow one of
+our children is dying from something that was your job _and_ ours to do,
+and we didn't take hold of hands and do it!'
+
+"'Oh, Letty!' I says out. 'And Silas and all of you! Let's pretend,
+just for a minute, that we was all citizens and equal. And let's figure
+out things for Otie, just like we had the right!'
+
+
+"I'd asked Letty to spend the night with me, and Elbert walked home with
+us. And just as we got there, he says to her again:--
+
+"'Oh, Letty--you ain't _strong_ enough to help carry things along!'
+
+"'You've got more strength,' she says to him, 'and more brains. But it
+isn't so much the strength or the brains in women that is going to help
+when the time comes. It's the--mother in them.'
+
+"And I says to myself:--
+
+"'And it's the--_human beingness_ of them.' But Letty didn't know that
+yet.
+
+"Elbert answered, after a minute:--
+
+"'You may be right and you may be wrong, but, Letty, Letty, what a woman
+you are!'
+
+"And at that Letty looked up at him, just as she had looked at him that
+morning--just for a minute, and then she dipped down the brim of her big
+hat. I donno what she answered him. I didn't care. I didn't care. For
+what I see was the old wild joy of a woman in being glorified by a male
+creature. And I knew then, and I know now, that that won't never die,
+no matter what.
+
+"Elbert put out his hand.
+
+"'Good night, Letty,' he said.
+
+"She gave him hers, and he closed over it light with his other hand.
+
+"'May I see you to-morrow?' he asked her.
+
+"'Oh, I don't know,' said Letty. 'Come and see if I'll see you--will
+you?'
+
+"He laughed a little, looking in her eyes.
+
+"'At about eight,' he promised. 'Good night....'
+
+"I got the key out from under the mat to a tune inside me. Because I'd
+heard, and I knew that Letty had heard, that tone in Elbert's voice that
+is the human tone--I can't rightly name it, but every woman in the world
+knows it when she hears it--a tone that says: _If I have my way, you and
+I are going to live out our lives together_.
+
+"And I knew then, and I know now, that that tone won't ever die, either.
+And some day, away off in a new world right here on this earth, I
+believe there's going to be a wilder joy in being men and women than all
+the men and women up to now have ever lived or dared or dreamed.
+
+
+
+
+XIII
+
+
+"'Miss Marsh,' says Christopher.
+
+"Mis' Emmons's living-room was like a cup of something cool, and I set
+there in the after-supper light having such a nice rested time drinking
+it in that at first I didn't hear him.
+
+"'Miss Marsh,' he says again, and pulled at my dress. I put out my hand
+to him and he took it. Sometimes I donno but hands are a race of beings
+by themselves that talk and answer and do all the work and act like
+slaves and yet really rule the world.
+
+"'Is it me telling my feet where to go or do they tell me where I go?'
+asked Christopher.
+
+"'You can have it either way you want,' I told him. 'Some does one way
+and some does the other. Which way do you like?'
+
+"He thought for a minute, twisting on one foot with the other up in his
+hand.
+
+"'I'd like 'em to know how without our sayin' so,' he announces finally.
+
+"'Well,' I says, 'I left out that way. That's really the best way of
+all.'
+
+"He looked at me eager.
+
+"'Is it a game?' he says.
+
+"'Yes,' I told him.
+
+"'What's its name?' he ask' me.
+
+"'Game of Life,' I told him again.
+
+"He thought about it, still twisting. Then he done one of his littlest
+laughs, with his head turned away.
+
+"'My feet heard you,' he says. 'Now they know how to play.'
+
+"'I hope so, Christopher,' says I, and kissed him on the back of his
+neck. That made him mad, like it usually done.
+
+"'My neck is my neck,' says he, 'and it's shut in my collar. It ain't
+home to-day.'
+
+"'Is your mouth home?' I ask' him.
+
+"And it was.
+
+"I could of set there talking with him all evening, but not on the night
+of Sodality's Annual. I'd stopped by for Mis' Emmons. She was getting
+ready, and while I waited I could hear folks passing on their way to the
+schoolhouse where the meeting was. For the town was all het up about
+what the meeting was going to do.
+
+"I'd seen half-dozen or so of us that afternoon when we was putting
+plants on the hall platform, and we'd all spoke our minds.
+
+"'I'm gaspin',' observed Mis' Sturgis, 'to take a straw vote of us on
+this amendin' business. Near as I can make out, it's going through.'
+
+"'Near as I can make out,' says Marne Holcomb, 'a good deal more than
+amending is going on here to-night. It looks to me as if Sodality was
+just going to get into its own Cemetery and be forgot, and as if
+something else was coming to meet us--something big!'
+
+"Mis' Toplady spoke up, comfortable, down on her knees putting green
+paper on the pots.
+
+"'Well, my land!' she says, 'I've noticed two-three things in my
+lifetime. And one is, that do what whoever will, things do change. And
+so whenever a new change pops up, I always think: "Oh, I guess you're
+comin' along anyway. I donno's I need to help." An' yet somethin' in me
+always prances to pitch in, too.'
+
+"Timothy was there, occupying himself with the high places us ladies
+couldn't get up to.
+
+"'Well,' says he, 'if folks stop dying, like Sodality evidently intends
+they shall if it goes out of business, maybe you'll stay home some,
+Amandy, and not always be off laying folks out.'
+
+"'I know it,' Mis' Toplady returns, 'I've laid out most everybody I
+know, and of course I'm real glad to do it. But the last dead's hair I
+done up, I caught myself thinking how much more interesting it'd be if
+they was alive an' could find fault. Doin' for the dead gets kind of
+monotonous, _I_ think.'
+
+"'_I_ don't,' says Timothy, decided. 'The minute you work for the
+living, you get all upset with being criticised. I s'pose the dead would
+find fault, if they could, over the way you cut the grass for 'em. But
+they can't an' so there's an end to it, an' we get along, peaceful. If
+they was living folks layin' there, you can bet they'd do some back
+talk.'
+
+"'Well,' says I, 'I've been sick of Sodality for years. But it was about
+the most what-you-might-call society I had, and I hated to give it up.'
+
+"'Me, either,' says Mame Holcomb.
+
+"'Me, either,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I declare I've often said I wouldn't
+know what _to_ do if folks stopped dyin' so's Sodality would have to
+close out.'
+
+"Mis' Sykes was setting watching the rest of us.
+
+"'Well,' she observes, cold, 'if I was usin' the dead to keep in
+society, I donno's I'd own it up.'
+
+"Silas Sykes had just come over from the store to see if there was
+anything he could meddle in.
+
+"'Heh!' says he, showing his teeth. 'Not many of Sodality, as I can
+see, _deserves_ to die and be done for, civilized.'
+
+"'Don't you worry yourself, Silas Sykes,' says I, 'we're going to be
+done things for before we die hereafter, and more civilized than ever
+you dreamed of, all up and down your ledger. That's where you do dream,
+ain't it, Silas?' I says. And though I said it gay, I meant it frank.
+
+"I remember I looked off down the room, and all of a sudden I see it as
+it would be that night, packed with folks. Somehow, we'd got to saying
+less about the Sodality part of the meeting, and more about the _open_
+part. Most of the town would be there. We'd got the School Board to
+leave us announce the second party for that night, following the
+meeting, and music was coming, and us ladies had froze the ice-cream,
+and the whole time reminded me of a big bud, flowered slow and bursting
+sudden.
+
+"'Land, land,' I says, fervent, 'I feel like Friendship Village was a
+person that I was going to meet to-night for the first time.'
+
+"'You express yourself so odd sometimes, Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes,
+distant--but Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, they
+both looked up and nodded, and they knew.
+
+"I set holding Christopher in Mis' Emmons's living-room, and thinking
+about this and most everything else, when I looked out and see Insley
+going along. He hadn't been back in town since Christopher's father's
+funeral, two days before, and I'd been wanting to talk over with him a
+thing or two that was likely to come up at the meeting, that of course
+he was going to be at, and that had to be handled with thimbles on every
+finger, or somebody'd get pricked. So I rapped smart on the upper sash
+and called to him through the screen, but not before I had seen the look
+on his face. I've caught that special look only once or twice in my
+life--the look of somebody passing the house that is different to them
+from all other houses in the world. The look that wants to be a look and
+won't let itself be, that tries to turn the other way and can't start,
+that thinks it's unconscious and knows it isn't, and that finally, with
+Insley, give it up and looked Mis' Emmons's house straight in the face
+for a minute, as if he might anyhow let himself have that much intimacy.
+
+"I had a little list of things I wanted to see go through that night.
+Enough of us was ready to have Sodality perform its last cemetery rite
+and bury itself so that that was pretty sure to go through, but I wanted
+more than that, and several of us ladies did; and it looked to me like
+the schoolhouse and the young folks and the milk and the meat of this
+town could be done nice things to, so be we managed the meeting right. I
+even had a wild dream that the whole new society might adopt
+Christopher. Well, I donno why that's funny. It ain't funny when a club
+makes a building or a play or a bazaar or a dinner. Why shouldn't it
+make a man?
+
+"I told some of this to Insley, and he caught fire and lit up into a
+torch and had it all thought out beforehand, better than I could of
+dreamed it. But he made me feel bad. Haunted folks--folks haunted by
+something that was and that isn't--always makes me feel bad. How is it
+possible, I see he was asking himself the old, wore-out question, to
+drive out of the world something that is the world?
+
+"While we talked, Christopher went off to sleep in my arms, and even
+while I was so interested, I was enjoying the change that comes--the
+head growing heavier and heavier on my arm, as if sleep weighed
+something.
+
+"'Poor little kiddie,' I says, stupid.
+
+"'Rich little kiddie,' Insley says, wistful.
+
+"'Dear little kiddie,' says somebody else.
+
+"In the dining room doorway Robin stood--in a doorway as we had first
+seen her.
+
+"'Put him over here on the couch, do,' she says. 'It's much too hot to
+hold him, Calliope.'
+
+"She'd called me that at Mr. Bartlett's funeral, and I recollect how my
+throat went all over me when she done so. Ain't it funny about your own
+first name? It seems so _you_ when somebody nice says it for the first
+time--more you than you ever knew you were.
+
+"Insley lifted Chris in his arms to do as she said, and then stood
+staring at her across the child.
+
+"'I've been thinking,' he said, blunt--it's like watching the sign of
+folks to watch the different kind of things that makes them blunt. 'It's
+not my affair, but do you think you ought to let Chris get so--so used
+to you? What will he do when you're--when you go away?'
+
+"At this she said nothing for a moment, then she smiled up at him.
+
+"'I meant what I told him that night his father died,' she answered.
+'I'm going to keep Chris with me, always.'
+
+"'Always?' He stared at her, saw her face mean what she said. 'How fine
+of you! How fine of Mr. Proudfit!' said Insley.
+
+"She waited just a breath, then she met his eyes, brave.
+
+"'Not fine of me,' she says--'only fine for me. And not--Mr. Proudfit
+at all. I ought to take back what I told you--since I did tell you. That
+is not going to be.'
+
+"I don't think Insley meant for a minute to show any lack of formal
+respect for Christopher's sleep. But what Insley did was simply to turn
+and sit him down, bolt upright, on my lap. Then he wheeled round, trying
+to read her face.
+
+"'Do you mean you aren't going to marry him?' he demanded, rough--it's
+like watching another sign of folks to watch for the one thing that will
+make one or another rough.
+
+"'We are not going to be married,' she said. 'I mean that.'
+
+"I suppose likely the room went away altogether then, Christopher and me
+included, and left Insley there in some place a long ways from
+everywhere, with Robin's face looking at him. And he just naturally took
+that face between his hands.
+
+"'Robin,' he said, 'don't make me wait to know.'
+
+"Insley was the suddenest thing. And land, what it done to her name to
+have him say it. Just for a minute it sounded as if her name was the
+population of the world,--but with room for everybody else, too.
+
+"I think she put up her hands to take down his hands, but when she
+touched them, I think hers must have closed over his, next door to on
+purpose.
+
+"'Dear,' she says, 'tell me afterward.'
+
+"In that minute of stillness in which any new heaven is let down on a
+suitable new earth, a little voice piped up:--
+
+"'Tell it now,' says the voice. 'Is it a story? Tell it now.'
+
+"And there was Christopher, wide awake where he had been set down rude
+on my knee, and looking up at them, patient.
+
+"'I was dreamin' my dream,' he explained, polite. 'It was about all the
+nice things there is: You and you and you and hot ice-cream and the
+house's party.... Is they any more?' he asked, anxious.
+
+"Robin put out her arms for him, and she and Insley and I smiled at one
+another over his head.
+
+"'Ever so many more,' we told him.
+
+
+"I slipped out then and found Mis' Emmons, and I guess I come as near
+shining as anything that's like me can.
+
+"'What's the matter?' she says to me. 'You look as if you'd turned up
+the wick.'
+
+"'I did. They have. I won't tell,' I says. 'Oh, Mis' Emmons, I guess
+the meeting to-night won't need to adopt Christopher.'
+
+"She looked up at me quick, and then she started shining, too.
+
+"'What a universe it is,' she says, '--what a universe it is.'
+
+"Then we went off down to the meeting together. And the village was
+wonderful to go through, like a home some of us had hollowed out of the
+hills and was living in, common. As we went walking to the schoolhouse,
+the sidewalks seemed to me no more than ways dickered up to fasten us
+together, and to fasten us to them whose feet had wore the road before
+us, and to lead us to them that was coming, coming after: Christopher
+and Eph and Spudge Cadoza and Otie Daniel, or them like these. Otie
+Daniel had died the night before. Dr. Barrows had said Eph would not be
+lame, but we see he wan't sure of the value of the boy's physical life.
+But even so, even so we had a chance with Chris, and we had a chance
+with Spudge, and we had millions more. My feet wanted to run along them
+roads to meet the millions and my fingers tingled to get things ready.
+And as we went down Daphne Street to that meeting, I see how we all
+_was_ getting things ready, and I could of sung out for what I saw:--
+
+"For Mame Holcomb, sprinkling clothes on the back porch and hurrying to
+get to the hall.
+
+"For Mis' Uppers, picking her currants before she went, so's to get an
+early start on her jam in the morning.
+
+"For Viny Liberty, setting sponge for her bread loud enough so we heard
+her clear out in the street, and for Libby, shutting up her chicken coop
+that they earned their own living with.
+
+"For Mis' Toplady, driving by with Timothy, and her in the brown silk
+she'd made herself, like she's made all she's got.
+
+"For Abagail Arnold, wiping out her window to be filled to-morrow with
+the pies of her hand.
+
+"For little Mis' Sparks, rocking her baby on the front stoop and
+couldn't come to the meeting at all, 'count of having nobody to leave
+him with.
+
+"For them that had left cloth bleaching in their side yards and was
+saving the price of buying bleached. For them that had done their day's
+work, from parlour to wood-shed, and had hurried up the supper dishes
+and changed their dress and was on their way to the schoolhouse. For
+them that had lived lives like this and had died at it. For all the
+little dog-eared, wore-out account books where every one of them women
+figured out careful what they couldn't spend. And I looked down the
+street till I couldn't see no farther, and yet Daphne Street was going
+on, round and round the world, and acrost and acrost it, full of women
+doing the same identical way. And I could see away off to the places
+that Daphne Street led past, where women has all these things done for
+them and where the factories is setting them free, like us here in the
+village ain't free just yet, and I felt a wicked envy for them that can
+set their hands to the New Work, that us here in Friendship Village is
+trying so hard to get in between whiles. And I could see away ahead to
+times when sponge and currants and clothes and coops and similar won't
+have to be mothered by women 'most as much as children are; but when
+women, Away Off Then, will be mothers and workers and general human
+beings such as yet we only know how to think about being, scrappy and
+wishful. But all the time, in their arms and in ours and nowheres else,
+lays all the rest of the world that is ever going to be. And something
+in me kind of climbed out of me and run along ahead and looked back at
+me over its shoulder and says: 'Keep up, keep up, Calliope.' And before
+I knew it, right out loud, I says: 'I will. I will.'
+
+"An hour later, up in the schoolhouse, Silas Sykes stood arguing, to
+the top of his tone, that the first work of the reorganized
+society--that was to take in the whole town--had ought to be to buy a
+bargain Cupid-and-fish fountain he knew of, for the market square.
+
+"'It's going to take years and years to do--everything,' says Mis'
+Emmons to me, low.
+
+"But that didn't seem like much of anything to either of us. 'What if it
+is,' I says. And she nodded."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mothers to Men, by Zona Gale
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+      The Project Gutenberg eBook of Mothers To Men, by Zona Gale.
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+<pre>
+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mothers to Men, by Zona Gale
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
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+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
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+
+
+
+Title: Mothers to Men
+
+Author: Zona Gale
+
+Release Date: December 2, 2016 [EBook #53650]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHERS TO MEN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Martin Pettit and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
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+</pre>
+
+
+<div class="mynote"><p class="center">Transcriber's Note:<br /><br />
+A Table of Contents has been added.<br /></p></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="center"><a name="cover.jpg" id="cover.jpg"></a><img src="images/cover.jpg" alt="cover" /></div>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="bold2">MOTHERS TO MEN</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<div class="center"><img src="images/logo.jpg" alt="logo" /></div>
+
+<p class="bold">THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+NEW YORK &middot; BOSTON &middot; CHICAGO<br />SAN FRANCISCO<br /><br />
+MACMILLAN &amp; CO., <span class="smcap">Limited</span><br />
+LONDON &middot; BOMBAY &middot; CALCUTTA<br />MELBOURNE<br /><br />
+THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span><br />TORONTO</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h1>MOTHERS TO MEN</h1>
+
+<p class="bold space-above">BY</p>
+
+<p class="bold2">ZONA GALE</p>
+
+<p class="bold">AUTHOR OF "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE," "FRIENDSHIP VILLAGE<br />
+LOVE STORIES," "THE LOVES OF PELLEAS<br />
+AND ETARRE," ETC.</p>
+
+<p class="bold space-above">New York<br />
+THE MACMILLAN COMPANY<br />
+1911<br />
+<br />
+<i>All Rights Reserved</i></p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright, 1911, by The Butterick Publishing Company, The Ridgeway<br />
+Company, The Crowell Publishing Company, and The Standard<br />
+Fashion Company.</span></p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1911,<br /><br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.<br />&mdash;&mdash;<br />
+Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1911.</p>
+
+<p class="center space-above">Norwood Press<br />
+J. S. Cushing Co.&mdash;Berwick &amp; Smith Co.<br />Norwood, Mass., U.S.A.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="bold2">MOTHERS TO MEN</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<h2><span>CONTENTS</span></h2>
+
+<table summary="CONTENTS">
+  <tr>
+    <td><span class="smaller">CHAPTER</span></td>
+    <td> &nbsp; &nbsp; <span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>MOTHERS TO MEN</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_1">1</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>I</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>II</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_28">28</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>III</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_37">37</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>IV</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_64">64</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>V</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_95">95</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_130">130</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>VIII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_195">195</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>IX</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_206">206</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>X</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_242">242</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XI</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_264">264</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_284">284</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>XIII</td>
+    <td><a href="#Page_314">314</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>MOTHERS TO MEN</h2>
+
+<p>"Daddy!"</p>
+
+<p>The dark was so thick with hurrying rain that the child's voice was
+drowned. So he splashed forward a few steps in the mud and puddles of
+the highway and plucked at the coat of the man tramping before. The man
+took a hand from a pocket and stooped somewhat to listen, still plodding
+ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"Daddy! It's the hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went right
+through that hole an' it chokes my toe awful."</p>
+
+<p>The man suddenly squatted in the mud, presenting a broad, scarcely
+distinguishable back.</p>
+
+<p>"Climb up," he commanded.</p>
+
+<p>The boy wavered. His body ached with weariness, his feet were sore and
+cold, something in his head was numb. But in a moment he ran on, two
+steps or three, past the man.</p>
+
+<p>"Nope," he said, "I'm seeing if I could walk all the way. I could&mdash;yet.
+I just told you 'bout my toe, daddy, 'cause I <i>had</i> to talk about it."</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p><p>The man said nothing, but he rose and groped for the child's arm and
+got it about the armpit, and, now and then as they walked, he pulled the
+shoulder awkwardly upward, trying to help.</p>
+
+<p>After a time of silence the rain subsided a little, so that the child's
+voice was less like a drowned butterfly.</p>
+
+<p>"Daddy," he said, "what's velvet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I dunno, sonny. Some kind of black cloth, I guess. Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"It came in my head," the child explained. "I was tryin' to think of
+nice things. Velvet sounds like a king's clothes&mdash;but it sounds like a
+coffin too. I didn't know if it's a nice thing."</p>
+
+<p>This, the man understood swiftly, was because <i>her</i> coffin had been
+black velvet&mdash;the coffin which he had had no money to buy for her, for
+his wife and the boy's mother, the coffin which had been bought with the
+poor fund of a church which he had never entered. "What other nice thing
+you been thinkin' of?" he asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Circus. An' angels. An' ice-cream. An' a barrel o' marbles. An' bein'
+warm an' clean stockin's an' rocked...."</p>
+
+<p>"My God!" said the man.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span></p><p>The child looked up expectantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say anything back?" he inquired eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word," said the man in his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Lemme try," said the child. "God&mdash;oh, God&mdash;<i>God dear</i>!" he called into
+the night.</p>
+
+<p>From the top of the hill on the edge of the Pump pasture which in that
+minute they had reached, they suddenly saw, cheery and yellow and alive,
+the lamps of Friendship Village, shining in the valley; and away at one
+side, less in serene contemplation than in deliberate withdrawal, shone
+the lights of a house set alone on its hill.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, daddy, daddy&mdash;look at the lights!" the child cried. "God didn't say
+nothin' with words. Maybe he talks with lights instead of 'em."</p>
+
+<p>The man quickened his steps until, to keep pace with him, the little boy
+broke into uneven running.</p>
+
+<p>"Is those lights where we're goin', daddy?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"That's where," said the man. He put his hand in his pocket and felt for
+the fifteen cents that lay there, wrapped in paper. The fancied odour
+and warmth of something to drink caught at him until he could hardly
+bear the longing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p><p>But before he could get to the drink he must do something else. The man
+had been fighting away the thought of what he meant to do. But when they
+entered the village and were actually upon its main street, lonely in
+the rainy, eight o'clock summer dusk, what he meant to do had to be
+faced. So he began looking this way and that for a place to leave the
+child. There was a wagon shop. Old wagons stood under the open shed,
+their thills and tongues hanging, not expectant of journeys like those
+of new wagons, but idle, like the worn arms of beaten men. Some men, he
+thought, would leave the boy there, to sleep under a seat and be found
+in the morning; but he was no such father as that, he reflected
+complacently. He meant to leave the boy in a home, give him a fair
+start. There was a little house with a broken picket fence&mdash;someway she
+wouldn't have liked him to be there; <i>she</i> always liked things nice. He
+had never been able to give the boy much that was nice, but now, he said
+to himself, he would take nothing second rate. There was a grocery with
+a light above stairs where very likely the family lived, and there, too,
+was a dry stairway where the child could sit and wait until somebody
+came&mdash;no, not there either.... "The best ain't none too good for the
+little fellow," thought the man.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p><p>"Dad-<i>ee</i>!" cried the child suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>He had run a few steps on and stood with his nose against the misty pane
+of Abagail Arnold's Home Bakery. Covered with pink mosquito-netting were
+a plate of sugar rolls, a fruit cake, a platter of cream puffs, and a
+tall, covered jar of shelled nuts.</p>
+
+<p>"Hustle up&mdash;you!" said the man roughly, and took him by the arm again.</p>
+
+<p>"I was comin'," said the little boy.</p>
+
+<p>Why not leave the child at the bakery? No&mdash;a house. It must be a house,
+with a porch and a front stair and big upstairs rooms and a look of
+money-in-the-bank. He was giving care to the selection. It was as if he
+were exercising some natural paternal office, to be scrupulously
+discharged. Music issued from the wooden saloon building with the false
+two-story front and the coloured windows; from a protesting piano a
+dance tune was being furiously forced, and, as the door swung open, the
+tap and thud of feet, the swell of voices and laughter, the odour of the
+spirits caught at the cold and weary man. "Hurry along&mdash;hurry along!" he
+bade the boy roughly. That was where he would come back afterward, but
+first he must find the right place for the boy.</p>
+
+<p>Vaguely he was seeking for that section of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span> the village which it would
+call "the residence part," with that ugly and naked appropriation of the
+term which excludes all the humbler homes from residence-hood at all.
+But when he had turned aside from the main street he came upon the First
+Church, with lights streaming from the ground-glass windows of the
+prayer-meeting room, and he stood still, staring up at it.</p>
+
+<p>She had cared a good deal about that sort of thing. Churches did
+good&mdash;it was a church that had buried her when he could not. Why not
+there? Why not leave the child there?</p>
+
+<p>He turned aside and mounted the three wooden steps and sat down, drawing
+the boy beside him. Grateful for a chance to rest, the child turned
+sidewise and dropped his head heavily on his father's arm. There was
+light enough for the father to see the thick, wet hair on the babyish
+forehead.</p>
+
+<p>"I did walked all the way, didn't I?" the child said triumphantly.</p>
+
+<p>"You bet you did," said his father absently.</p>
+
+<p>Since the boy's mother had died only three months had passed, but in
+that time had been crowded for the child a lifetime of physical misery.
+Before that time, too, there had been hunger and cold and the torture of
+the continual<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span> quarreling between that mother, sickly, half-fed,
+irritable, and this father, out of work and drunken. Then the mother had
+died, and the man had started out with the boy, seeking new work where
+they would not know his old vice. And in these three months, for the
+boy's sake, that old vice had been kept bound. For the boy's sake he had
+been sober and, if the chance had come, he would have been industrious.
+But, save for odd jobs, the chance never came; there seemed to be a kind
+of ineffectualness in the way he asked for work which forbade him a
+trial. Then one day, after almost three months of the struggle, he had
+waked to the old craving, to the need, the instant need, for liquor. He
+had faced the situation honestly. He knew, or thought he knew, his power
+of endurance. He knew that in a day or two he would be worsted, and that
+there would follow a period of which, afterward, he would remember
+nothing. Meanwhile, what of the boy? He had a fondness for the boy, and
+there remained to the man some shreds of decency and even of tradition.
+He would not turn him over to the "authorities." He would not cast him
+adrift in the city. He resolved to carry him to the country, to some
+near little town where, dimly it seemed to him, the people would be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+more likely to take him in. "They have more time&mdash;an' more room&mdash;an'
+more to eat," he sought to explain it to himself. So he had walked, and
+the child had walked, from the City to Friendship Village. He must find
+a place to leave him: why not leave him here on the church steps,
+"outside the meetin'?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you go to sleep, kiddie," he said, and shook him lightly.</p>
+
+<p>"I was jus' restin' my eye-flaps. Eye-things. <i>What</i> are they, daddy?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eye-lids."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Them. They're tired, too," said the child, and smiled&mdash;the sleepy
+smile which gave his face a baby winsomeness. Then he snuggled in the
+curve of arm, like a drowsy, nosing puppy.</p>
+
+<p>The father sat looking down on him, and in his breast something pulled.
+In these three months he had first become really acquainted with the
+boy, had first performed for him little personal offices&mdash;sewed on a
+button or two, bought him shoes, bound up a hurt finger. In this time,
+too, he had first talked with him alone, tried to answer his questions.
+"Where <i>is</i> my mamma, an' will she rock somebody else?" "Are you going
+to be my daddy till you die, an' <i>then</i> who'll be?" "What is the biggest
+thing everybody knows? Can I know it too?"<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>... Also, in these three
+months, at night he had gone to sleep, sometimes in a bed, oftener in a
+barn, now and again under the stars, with the child breathing within his
+reach, and had waked to keep him covered with his own coat. Now he was
+going to end all this.</p>
+
+<p>"It ain't fair to the kid not to. It ain't fair to cart him around like
+this," he said over and over, defending himself before some dim
+dissenter.</p>
+
+<p>The boy suddenly swung back from his father's arm and looked up in his
+face. "Will&mdash;will there be any supper till morning?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>You might have thought that the man did not hear, he sat so still
+looking down the wet road-ruts shining under the infrequent lamps.
+Hunger and cold, darkness and wet and ill-luck&mdash;why should he not keep
+the boy from these? It was not deserting his child; it was giving him
+into better hands. It did not occur to him that the village might not
+accept the charge. Anything would be better than what he himself had to
+give. Hunger and cold and darkness....</p>
+
+<p>"You stay still here a minute, sonny," said the man.</p>
+
+<p>"You goin' 'way?" the child demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"A minute. You stay still here&mdash;right<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span> where you are," said the man, and
+went into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>The little boy sat still. He was wide awake now that he was alone; the
+walls of the dark seemed suddenly to recede, and instead of merely the
+church steps there was the whole black, listening world to take account
+of. He sat alert, trying to warm each hand on the cold wrist of its
+fellow. Where had his father gone? To find them a place to stay? Suppose
+he came back and said that he had found them a home; and they should go
+to it; and it would have a coal stove and a bedstead, and a pantry with
+cookies and brown sugar in the jars. And a lady would come and cook
+molasses candy for him....</p>
+
+<p>All this time something was hurting him intolerably. It was the foot,
+and the biggest toe, and the hole that was "choking" <i>him</i>. He fumbled
+at his shoe laces, but they were wet and the shoes were wet and sodden,
+and he gave it up. Where had his father gone? How big the world seemed
+when he was gone, and how <i>different</i> the night was. And when the lady
+had the molasses candy cooked, like in a story, she would cool it at the
+window and they would cut it in squares....</p>
+
+<p>As suddenly as he had gone, his father reappeared from the darkness.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span></p><p>"Here," he said roughly, and thrust in the child's hands a paper bag.
+And when he had opened it eagerly there were sugar rolls and cream puffs
+and a piece of fruit cake and some shelled nuts. Fifteen cents' worth of
+food, badly enough selected, in all conscience, but&mdash;fifteen cents'
+worth. The fifteen cents which the man had been carrying in his pocket,
+wrapped in paper.</p>
+
+<p>"Now set there," said his father, "an' eat 'em up. An' listen, son. Set
+there till folks come out from in there. Set there till they come out.
+An' here's somethin' I'm puttin' in your coat pocket&mdash;see? It's a paper.
+Don't you look at it. But when the folks come out from in there&mdash;an' ask
+you anything&mdash;you show 'em that. Remember. Show 'em that."</p>
+
+<p>In the prayer-meeting room the reed organ sent out some trembling,
+throaty chords, and the little group in there sang an old melody. It was
+strange to the man, as he listened&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="center"><div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<div>"Break thou the bread of life</div>
+<div>To me, to me&mdash;"</div>
+</div></div></div>
+
+<p>but, "That's it," he thought, "that's it. Break it to him&mdash;I can't. All
+I can give him is stuff in a paper bag, an' not always that. Now you
+break it to him&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span></p><p>"Dad-<i>ee</i>!" cried the child. "You!"</p>
+
+<p>Startled, the man looked down at him. It was almost like a counter
+charge. But the child was merely holding out to him half his store. The
+man shook his head and went down the steps to the sidewalk and turned to
+look back at the child munching happily from the paper sack. "Break it
+to him&mdash;break it to him&mdash;God!" the father muttered, as he might have
+used a charm.</p>
+
+<p>Again the child looked out expectantly.</p>
+
+<p>"Did he say anything back?" he asked eagerly.</p>
+
+<p>"Not a word&mdash;not a word," said the man again. This time he laughed,
+nervously and foolishly. "But mebbe he will," he mumbled
+superstitiously. "I dunno. Now, you set there. An' then you give 'em the
+paper&mdash;an' go with anybody out o' the church that asks you. Dad may not
+get back for&mdash;quite a while...."</p>
+
+<p>The man went. The child, deep in the delight of a cream puff, wondered
+and looked after him troublously, and was vaguely comforted by the
+murmur of voices beyond the doors.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, God didn't answer back because he was to the church meeting," the
+child thought, when he heard the people moving about within.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>I</h2>
+
+<p>"Inside the church that night," Calliope Marsh is wont to tell it, "the
+Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality was having one
+of our special meetings, with hot chocolate and ice lemonade and two
+kinds of wafers. There wasn't a very big attendance, account of the
+rain, and there was so much refreshments ready that us ladies was urgin'
+the men to have all they wanted.</p>
+
+<p>"'Drink both kinds, Timothy,' Mis Toplady says to her husband,
+persuadin'; 'it'll have to be throwed away if somebody don't drink it
+up.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Lord, Amandy,' says Timothy, testy, 'I do hate to be sicked on to my
+food like that. It takes away my appetite, same as poison would.'</p>
+
+<p>"'They always do it,' says Jimmy Sturgis, morose. 'My wife'll say to me,
+"Jimmy, eat up them cold peas. They'll spoil if you don't," and, "Jimmy,
+can't you make 'way with them cold pancakes?" Till I wish't I could
+starve.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, if you hadn't et up things,' says Mis' Sturgis, mild, 'we'd of
+been scrappin' in the poor-house by now. I dunno but I'd ruther scrap
+where I am.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span></p><p>"'Sure!' says Postmaster Silas Sykes, that always pours oil on troubled
+waters except when the trouble is his own; and then he churns them.</p>
+
+<p>"'I dunno what ailed me in business meeting to-night,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I declare, I was full as nervous as a
+witch. I couldn't keep my feet still anywheres.'</p>
+
+<p>"'The fidgets,' comprehends Mis' Uppers, sympathetic. 'I get 'em in my
+feet 'long toward night sometimes. Turn an' twist an' shift&mdash;I know the
+feeling. Whenever my feet begin that, I always give right up an' take
+off my shoes an' get into my rubbers.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I wish't I had some rubbers now,' says Mis' Mayor Uppers. 'I
+wore my best shoes out to tea an' come right from tea here, like a
+maniac. An' now look at me, in my Three Dollar-and-a-half kids an' the
+streets runnin' rivers.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You take my rubbers,' Mis' Timothy Toplady offered. 'I've set with 'em
+on all evening because I always get 'em mixed up at Sodality, an' I
+declare the water'll feel good to my poor feet.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, no, don't you trouble,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I'll just slip my shoes
+off an' track that one block in my stocking feet. Then I'll put 'em in
+good, hot water an' go to bed. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span> wouldn't of come out to-night at all
+if it hadn't of been for the professor.'</p>
+
+<p>"'For goodness' sakes,' I says, 'don't call him that. You know how he
+hates it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But I do like to say it,' Mis' Uppers insists, wistful. 'He's the only
+professor I ever knew.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Me either,' I says&mdash;and I knew how she felt.</p>
+
+<p>"Just the same, we was getting to like Mr. Insley too much to call him
+that if he didn't want it, or even 'doctor' that was more common, though
+over to Indian Mound College, half way between us and the City, he is
+one or both, and I dunno but his name tapers off with capital letters,
+same as some.</p>
+
+<p>"'I just came over here to work,' he told us when we first see him. 'I
+don't profess anything. And "doctor" means teacher, you know, and I'm
+just learning things. Must you have a formal title for me? Won't Mr.
+do?'</p>
+
+<p>"Most of the College called him just 'Insley,' friendly and approving,
+and dating back to his foot-ball days, and except when we was speaking
+to him, we commonly got to calling him that too. A couple of months
+before he'd come over from the College with a letter of introduction
+from one of the faculty to Postmaster Silas Sykes,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span> that is an alderman
+and our professional leading citizen. The letter from the College said
+that we could use Mr. Insley in any local civic work we happened to be
+doing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Civic work?' Silas says to him, thoughtful. 'You mean shuttin' up
+saloons an' like that?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Not necessarily,' he told him. 'Just work with folks, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a, settin' out bushes?' Silas asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Whatever you're most interested in, Mr. Sykes,' says he. 'Isn't there
+some organization that's doing things here?'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas wasn't interested in so very much of anything except Silas. But
+the word 'organization' helped him out.</p>
+
+<p>"'There's the Friendship Married Ladies Cemetery Improvement Sodality,'
+says he. 'That must be the very kind of a thing you mean.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley laughed a little, but he let Mis' Sykes, that loves new things
+and new people, bring him to our next evening meeting in the church
+parlors, and he'd been back several times, not saying much, but just
+getting acquainted. And that rainy night, when the men met with us to
+talk over some money raising for Sodality, we'd asked him to come over
+too. We all liked him. He had a kind of a used-to-things way, and you
+felt like you'd always known him or, for the time<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> you hadn't, that
+you'd both missed something out; and he had a nice look too, a look that
+seemed to be saying 'good morning' and to be beginning a fine, new
+day&mdash;the best day yet.</p>
+
+<p>"He'd set there kind of broodin' the most of that evening, drinking
+whatever anybody brought him, but not putting his mind to it so very
+much; but it was a bright broodin', an' one that made you think of
+something that's going to open and not just of something that's shut up.
+You can brood both ways, but the effect is as different as a bud from a
+core.</p>
+
+<p>"'Speakin' of money raisin' for Sodality,' says Silas Sykes, kind of
+pretend hearty and pretend casual, like he does, 'why don't Sodality
+make some money off'n the Fourth of July? Everybody else is.'</p>
+
+<p>("Sodality always speaks of itself and of the Cemetery real intimate,
+without the <i>the</i>, an' everybody's got to doing it.)</p>
+
+<p>"Us ladies all set still and kept still. The Fourth of July, that was
+less than a week off, was a sore point with us, being we'd wanted a
+celebration that would <i>be</i> a celebration, and not merely a money-raiser
+for the town.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I say canvass, house to house,' says Timothy. 'Folks would give
+you a dime to get<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> you off'n the front porch that wouldn't come out to a
+dime entertainment, never.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why not ask them that's got Dead in their own families, to pay out for
+'em, an' leave them alone that's got livin' mouths to feed?' says Threat
+Hubbelthwait, querulous. Threat ain't no relations but his wife, and he
+claims to have no Dead of his own. I always say they must be either
+living or dead, or else where's Threat come in? But he won't admit it.</p>
+
+<p>"'What you raisin' money for anyhow?' asks Eppleby Holcomb, quiet.
+Eppleby always keeps still a long time, and then lets out something
+vital.</p>
+
+<p>"As a matter of fact, Sodality didn't have no real work on hand,
+Cemetery lookin' real neat and tasty for Cemetery, and no immediate dead
+coming on as far as we could know; but we didn't have much of anything
+in the treasury, either. And when we didn't have any work on hand, we
+was in the habit of raising money, and when we'd got some money earnt,
+we was in the habit of devising some nice way to spend it. And so we
+kept Sodality real alive.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, there may not be any active dead just now,' Mis' Sykes explains
+it, 'but they are sure to die and need us. We had two country funerals
+to pay for last year. Or I might say,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span> one an' a half, one corpse
+contributing half enough for his own support in Cemetery.'</p>
+
+<p>"With that Insley spoke up, kind of firm and nice, with muscles in his
+tone, like he does:</p>
+
+<p>"'What's the matter with doing something with these folks before they
+die?' he asks.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess we all looked kind of blank&mdash;like when you get asked <i>why</i>
+Columbus discovered America and all you know how to answer is just the
+date he done so on.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'do what?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mustn't there be something to do with them, living, if there's
+everything to be done for them, dead?' Insley asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a' says Mis' Sykes, 'I don't know that I understand just how you
+mean that. Perhaps the Mission Band&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' says Insley. 'You. Us.'</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew a man to say so little and yet to get so much said.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'of course Sodality was formed with the idee
+of caring for Cemetery. You see that lets in the Dead only.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Gosh,' says Eppleby Holcomb, 'how exclusive.' But I don't know as
+anybody heard him but me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' says Insley, slow. 'Well, at any rate, perhaps there are
+things that all of us <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span>Living might do together&mdash;for the sake, say, of
+earning some money for the Dead. There'd be no objection to that, would
+there?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, no,' says Mis' Sykes. 'I'm sure nobody could take exception to
+<i>that</i>. Of course you always have to earn money out of the living.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley looked at us all kind of shy&mdash;at one and another and another of
+us, like he thought he might find some different answer in somebody's
+eyes. I smiled at him, and so did Mis' Toplady, and so did Eppleby; and
+Mis' Eleanor Emmons, the widow-lady, lately moved in, she nodded. But
+the rest set there like their faces was on wrong side out and didn't
+show no true pattern.</p>
+
+<p>"'I mean,' he says, not quite knowing how to make us understand what he
+was driving at, 'I mean, let's get to know these folks while they are
+alive. Aren't we all more interested in folks, than we are in their
+graves?'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Folks</i>,' Timothy Toplady says over, meditative, like he'd heard of
+members, customers, clients, murderers and the like, but never of folks.</p>
+
+<p>"'I mean,' Insley says again, 'oh, any one of a dozen things. For
+instance, do something jolly that'll give your young people something to
+do evenings&mdash;get them to help earn the money for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> Cemetery, if you want
+to,' he adds, laughing a little.</p>
+
+<p>"'There's goin' to be a Vigilance Committee to see after the young folks
+of Friendship Village, nights,' says Silas Sykes, grim.</p>
+
+<p>"'You might have town parties, have the parties in schools and in the
+town hall,' Insley goes on, 'and talk over the Cemetery that belongs to
+you all, and talk over the other things besides the Cemetery that belong
+to you all. Maybe I could help,' he adds, 'though I own up to you now
+I'm really more fond of folks&mdash;speaking by and large&mdash;than I am of
+tombstones.'</p>
+
+<p>"He said a little more to us, about how folks was doing in the world
+outside the village, and he was so humorous about it that they never
+knew how something inside him was hopping with hope, like I betted it
+was, with his young, divine enthusiasm. And when he'd got done he
+waited, all grave and eager, for somebody to peep up. And it was, as it
+would be, Silas Sykes who spoke first.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's all right, it's all right,' says he, 'so long as Sodality don't
+go meddling in the village affairs&mdash;petitionin' the council and
+protestin' an' so on. That gets any community all upset.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's so,' says Timothy, nodding. <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>'Meetin', singin' songs, servin'
+lemonade an' plantin' things in the ground is all right enough. It helps
+on the fellow feelin' amazin'. But pitchin' in for reforms and things&mdash;'
+Timothy shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"'As to reforms,' says Insley, 'give me the fellowship, and the reforms
+will take care of themselves.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Things is quite handy about takin' their course, though,' says Silas,
+'so be we don't yank open the cocoons an' buds an' others.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Mis' Uppers, 'I can't do much more, Professor. I'm drove
+to death, as it is. I don't even get time to do my own improvin' round
+the place.' Mis' Uppers always makes that her final argument. 'Sew for
+the poor?' I've heard her say. 'Why, I can't even get my own fall sewing
+done.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Me, too,' and, 'Me, either,' went round the circle. And, 'I can't do a
+great deal myself,' says Mis' Sykes, 'not till after my niece goes
+away.'</p>
+
+<p>"I thought, 'I shouldn't think you could tend to much of anything else,
+not with Miss Beryl Sessions in the house.' That was the Sykes's niece,
+till then unknown to them, that we'd all of us heard nothing but, since
+long before she come. But of course I kept still, part because I was
+expecting an unknown niece of my own<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> in a week or so, and your unknown
+relatives is quite likely to be glass houses.</p>
+
+<p>"'Another thing,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'don't let's us hold any
+doin's in this church, kicking up the new cork that the Ladies' Aid has
+just put down on the floor. It'll all be tracked up in no time, letting
+in Tom, Dick, and Harry.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't let's get the church mixed up in anything outside, for pity's
+sakes,' says Silas. 'The trustees'll object to our meeting here, if we
+quit working for a dignified object and go to making things mutual,
+promiscuous. Churches has got to be church-like.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, Silas,' says Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying anything,
+'I donno as some of us could bring ourselves to think of Christ as real
+Christ-like, if he come back the way he use' to be.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley sat looking round on them all, still with his way of saying good
+morning on a good day. I wondered if he wasn't wishing that they'd hang
+on that way to something worth hanging to. For I've always thought, and
+I think now, that they's a-plenty of stick-to-itiveness in the world;
+but the trouble is, it's stuck to the wrong thing.</p>
+
+<p>"The talk broke up after that, like somebody had said something in bad
+taste; and we <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span>conversed around in groups, and done our best to make
+'way with the refreshments. And Insley set talking to Mis' Eleanor
+Emmons, the new widow, lately moved in.</p>
+
+<p>"About Mis' Emmons the social judgment of Friendship Village was for the
+present hanging loose. This was partly because we didn't understand her
+name.</p>
+
+<p>"'My land, was her husband a felon or a thief or what that she don't use
+his name?' everybody asked everybody. 'What's she stick her own name in
+front of his last name like that for? Sneaked out of usin' his Christian
+name as soon as his back was turned, <i>I</i> call it,' said some. 'My land,
+I'd use my dead husband's forename if it was Nebuchadnezzar. <i>My</i>
+opinion, we'd best go slow till she explains herself.'</p>
+
+<p>"But I guess Insley had more confidence.</p>
+
+<p>"'You'll help, I know?' I heard him say to Mis' Emmons.</p>
+
+<p>"'My friend,' she says back, 'whatever I can do I'll do. It's a big job
+you're talking about, you know.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's <i>the</i> big job,' says Insley, quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"Pretty soon Mis' Toplady got up on her feet, drawing her shawl up her
+back.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' she says, 'whatever you decide, count on me&mdash;I'll always do for
+chinkin' in.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> I've got to get home now and set my bread or it won't be
+up till day <i>after</i> to-morrow. Ready, Timothy? Good night all.'</p>
+
+<p>"She went towards the door, Timothy following. But before they got to
+it, it opened, and somebody come in, at the sight of who Mis' Toplady
+stopped short and the talk of the rest of us fell away. No stranger,
+much, comes to Friendship Village without our knowing it, and to have a
+stranger walk unbeknownst into the very lecture-room of the First Church
+was a thing we never heard of, without he was a book agent or a
+travelling man.</p>
+
+<p>"Here, though, was a stranger&mdash;and such a stranger. She was so
+unexpected and so dazzling that it shot through my head she was like a
+star, taking refuge from all the roughness and the rain outside&mdash;a star,
+so it come in my head, using up its leisure on a cloudy night with
+peepin' in here and there to give out brightness anyway. The rough, dark
+cheviot that the girl wore was sort of like a piece of storm-cloud
+clinging about that brightness&mdash;a brightness of wind-rosy face and blowy
+hair, all uncovered. She stood on the threshold, holding her wet
+umbrella at arm's length out in the entry.</p>
+
+<p>"'I beg your pardon. Are you ready, Aunt Eleanor?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Eleanor Emmons turned and looked at her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin!' she says. 'Why, you must be wet through.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm pretty wet,' says the girl, serene, 'I'm so messy I won't come in.
+I'll just stop out here on the steps. Don't hurry.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Wait a minute,' Mis' Emmons says. 'Stay where you are then, please,
+Robin, and meet these people.'</p>
+
+<p>"The girl threw the door wide, and she stepped back into the vestibule,
+where her umbrella had been trailing little puddles; and she stood there
+against the big, black background of the night and the village, while
+Mis' Emmons presented her.</p>
+
+<p>"'This is my niece, Miss Sidney,' she told us. 'She has just come to me
+to-day&mdash;for as long as I can keep her. Will you all come to see her?'</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't much the way Mis' Sykes had done, singing praises of Miss
+Beryl Sessions for weeks on end before she'd got there; nor the way I
+was doing, wondering secret about my unknown niece, and what she'd be
+like. Mis' Emmons introduced her niece like she'd always been one of us.
+She said our names over, and we went towards her; and Miss Sidney leaned
+a little inside the frame of the doorway and put<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> out her hand to us
+all, a hand that didn't have any glove on and that in spite of the rain,
+was warm.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm so sorry,' she says, 'I'm afraid I'm disgracing Aunt Eleanor. But
+I couldn't help it. I love to walk in the rain.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's what rain is for,' Insley says to her; and I see the two change
+smiles before Mis' Hubbelthwait's 'Well, I do hope you've got some good
+high rubbers on your feet' made the girl grave again&mdash;a sweet grave, not
+a stiff grave. You can be grave both ways, and they're as different from
+each other as soup from hot water.</p>
+
+<p>"'I have, thank you,' she says, 'big storm boots. Did you know,' she
+adds, 'that somebody else is waiting out here? Somebody's little bit of
+a beau? And I'm afraid he's gone to sleep.'</p>
+
+<p>"We looked at one another, wondering. Who was waiting for any of us?
+'Not me,' one after another says, positive. 'We've all raced home alone
+from this church since we was born,' Mis' Uppers adds, true enough.</p>
+
+<p>"We was curious, with that curiosity that it's kind of fun to have, and
+we all crowded forward into the entry. And a little to one side of the
+shining lamp path was setting a child&mdash;a little boy, with a paper bag in his arms.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>II</h2>
+
+<p>"Who on earth was he, we wondered to ourselves, and we all jostled
+forward, trying to see down to him, us women lifting up our skirts from
+the entry wet. He was like a little wad of clothes, bunched up on the
+top step, but inside them the little fellow was all curled up, sleeping.
+And we knew he hadn't come for any of us, and he didn't look like he was
+waiting for anybody in particular.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas fixed up an explanation, ready-done:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'He must belong down on the flats,' says Silas. 'The idear of his
+sleepin' here. I said we'd oughter hev a gate acrost the vestibule.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Roust him up an' start him home,' says Timothy Toplady, adviceful.</p>
+
+<p>"'I will,' says Silas, that always thinks it's his share to do any
+unclaimed managing; and he brought down his hand towards the child's
+shoulder. But his hand didn't get that far.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let me wake him up,' says Robin Sidney.</p>
+
+<p>"She laid her umbrella in the wet of the steps and, Silas being
+surprised into giving way, she stooped over the child. She woke him up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>
+neither by speaking to him nor grasping his arm, but she just slipped
+her hands along his cheeks till her hands met under his chin, and she
+lifted up his chin, gentle.</p>
+
+<p>"'Wake up and look at me,' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"The child opened his eyes, with no starting or bewildering, and looked
+straight up into her face. There was light enough for us all to see that
+he smiled bright, like one that's real glad some waiting is done. And
+she spoke to him, not making a point of it and bringing it out like
+she'd aimed it at him, but just matter-of-fact gentle and commonplace
+tender.</p>
+
+<p>"'Whose little boy are you?' she ask' him.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm goin' with whoever wants me to go with 'em,' says the child.</p>
+
+<p>"'But who are you&mdash;where do you live?' she says to him. 'You live, don't
+you&mdash;in this town?'</p>
+
+<p>"The child shook his head positive.</p>
+
+<p>"'I lived far,' he told her, 'in that other place. I come up here with
+my daddy. He says he might not come back to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin Sidney knelt right down before him on the wet steps.</p>
+
+<p>"'Truly,' she said, 'haven't you any place to go to-night?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, yes,' says the child, 'he says I must<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> go with whoever wants me to
+go with 'em. Do&mdash;do you?'</p>
+
+<p>"At that Miss Sidney looked up at us, swift, and down again. The wind
+had took hold of a strand of her hair and blew it across her eyes, and
+she was pushing it away as she got up. And by then Insley was standing
+before her, back of the little boy, that he suddenly stooped down and
+picked up in his arms.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's get inside, shall we?' he says, commanding. 'Let's all go back
+in and see about him.'</p>
+
+<p>"We went back into the church, even Silas taking orders, though of
+course that was part curiosity; and Insley sat down with the child on
+his knee, and held out the child's feet in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'He's wet as a rat,' he says. 'Look at his shoes.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a, make him tell his name, why don't you?' says Mis' Sykes,
+sharp. '<i>I</i> think we'd ought to find out who he is. What's your name,
+Boy?' she adds, brisk.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley dropped the boy's feet and took a-hold of one of his hands.
+'Yes,' he says, hasty, 'we must try to do that.' But he looked right
+straight over Mis' Sykes's shoulder to where, beyond the others, Robin
+Sidney was standing.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span> 'He was your friend first,' he said to her. 'You
+found him.'</p>
+
+<p>"She come and knelt down beside the child where, on Insley's knee, he
+sat staring round, all wondering and questioning, to the rest of us. But
+she seemed to forget all about the rest of us, and I loved the way she
+was with that little strange boy. She kind of put her hands on him,
+wiping the raindrops off his face, unbuttoning his wet coat, doing a
+little something to his collar; and every touch was a kind of a little
+stroke that some women's hands give almost without their knowing it. I
+loved to watch her, because I'm always as stiff as a board with a
+child&mdash;unless I'm alone with them. Then I ain't.</p>
+
+<p>"'My name's Robin,' she says to the little fellow. 'What's yours, dear?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Christopher,' he says right off. 'First, Christopher. An' then John.
+An' then Bartlett. Have you only got one name?' he asked her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, I've got two,' she says. 'The rest of mine is Sidney. Where&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Only two?' says the child. 'Why, I've got three.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Only two,' she answers. 'Where did your father go&mdash;don't you know
+that, Christopher?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span></p><p>"That seemed to make him think of something, and he looked down at his
+paper bag.</p>
+
+<p>"'First he bringed me these,' he says, and his face lighted up and he
+held out his bag to her. 'You can have one my cream-puffs,' he offers
+her, magnificent. I held my breath for fear she wouldn't take it, but
+she did. 'What fat ones!' she says admiring, and held it in her hand
+while she asked him more. It was real strange how we stood around, us
+older women and all, waiting for her to see what she could get out of
+him. But there wasn't any use. He was to go with whoever asked him to
+go&mdash;that was all he knew.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas Sykes snaps his watch. 'It's gettin' late,' he gives out, with a
+backward look at nothing in particular. 'Hadn't we best just leave him
+at the police station? Threat Hubbelthwait and me go right past there.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady, she sweeps round on him, pulling her shawl over her
+shoulders&mdash;one of them gestures of some women that makes it seem like
+even them that works hard and don't get out much of anywhere has motions
+left in them that used to be motioned in courts and castles and like
+that. 'Police station! Silas Sykes,' says she, queenly, 'you put me in
+mind of a stone wall, you're that sympathizin'.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span></p><p>"'Well, <i>we</i> can't take him, Amandy,' Timothy Toplady reminds her,
+hurried. 'We live too far. 'Twouldn't do to walk him 'way there.'
+Timothy will give, but he wants to give to his own selected poor that he
+knows about; an' he won't never allow himself no luxuries in givin' here
+an' there, when something just happens to come up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, he may of come from where there's disease&mdash;you can't tell,' says
+Mis' Uppers. 'I think we'd ought to go slow.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' says two-three others, 'we'd best go slow. Why, his father may
+be looking for him.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Eleanor Emmons spoke up serene.</p>
+
+<p>"'While we're going slow,' she says, 'I think I'll just take him home
+and get his feet dry. I live the nearest. Mr. Sykes, you might report
+him at the police station as you go by, in case someone is looking for
+him. And if nobody inquires, he can sleep on my couch beside my grate
+fire to-night. Can't he, Robin?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd love it,' says the girl.</p>
+
+<p>"'Excellent,' says Insley, and set the little boy on his feet.</p>
+
+<p>"But when he done that, the child suddenly swung round and caught Miss
+Sidney's arm and looked up in her face; and his little nose was screwed
+up alarming.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span></p><p>"'What <i>is</i> it&mdash;what's the matter, Christopher?' she ask' him. And the
+rest of us that had begun moving to go, stopped to listen. And in that
+little stillness Christopher told us:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' he says, 'it's that hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went
+right through that hole. And it's <i>chokin'</i> me.'</p>
+
+<p>"Just exactly as if a hand had kind of touched us all, a nice little
+stir went round among us women. And with that, Insley, who had been
+standing there so big and strong and able and willing, and waiting for a
+chance to take hold, he just simply put his hands on his knees and
+stooped over and made his back right for the little fellow to climb up
+on. The child knew what it was for, soon enough&mdash;we see somebody
+somewheres must of been doing it for him before, for he scrambled right
+up, laughing, and Miss Sidney helping him. And a kind of a little
+ripple, that wan't no true words, run round among us all. Most women and
+some men is strong on ripples of this sort, but when it comes right down
+to doing something in consequence, we ain't so handy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Leave me come along and help take care of him a little while,' I says;
+and I thought it was because I was ashamed of myself and trying to make
+up for not offering before. But<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span> I think really what was the matter with
+me was that I just plain wanted to go along with that little boy.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm your automobile,' says Insley to the little fellow, and he laughed
+out, delighted, hanging onto his paper sack.</p>
+
+<p>"'If you'll give me the big umbrella, Aunt Eleanor,' says Miss Sidney on
+the church steps, 'I'll try to keep the rain off the automobile and the
+passenger.'</p>
+
+<p>"The rain had just about stopped when we four started down Daphne
+Street. The elms and maples along the sidewalk was dripping soft, and
+everybody's gardens was laying still, like something new had happened to
+them. It smelled good, and like everything outdoors was going to start
+all over again and be something else, sweeter.</p>
+
+<p>"When we got most to Mis' Emmon's gate, I stopped stock still, looking
+at something shining on the hill. It was Proudfit House, lit up from top
+to bottom&mdash;the big house on the hill that had stood there, blind and
+dark, for months on end.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, some of the Proudfits must of come home,' I says out loud.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Emmons answered up, all unexpected to me, for I never knew she
+knew the Proudfits.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span> 'Mr. Alex Proudfit is coming on to-morrow,' she
+says. And I sort of resented her that was so near a stranger in the
+village hearing this about Alex Proudfit before I did, that had known
+him since he was in knickerbockers.</p>
+
+<p>"'Am I keeping the rain off you two people?' Miss Sidney asks as, at the
+corner, we all turned our backs on Proudfit House.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nobody,' Insley says&mdash;and his voice was always as smooth and round as
+wheels running along under his words, 'nobody ever kept the rain off as
+you are keeping it off, Miss Sidney.'</p>
+
+<p>"And, 'I did walked all that way&mdash;in that rain,' says Christopher,
+sleepy, in his automobile's collar.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>III</h2>
+
+<p>"If it was anyways damp or chilly, Mis' Emmons always had a little blaze
+in the grate&mdash;not a heat blaze, but just a Come-here blaze. And going
+into her little what-she-called living-room at night, I always thought
+was like pushing open some door of the dark to find a sort of
+cubby-corner hollowed out from the bigger dark for tending the homey
+fire. That rainy night we went in from the street almost right onto the
+hearth. And it was as pleasant as taking the first mouthful of
+something.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley, with Christopher still on his back, stood on the rug in front
+of the door and looked round him.</p>
+
+<p>"'How jolly it always looks here, Mrs. Emmons,' he says. 'I never saw
+such a hearty place.'</p>
+
+<p>"I donno whether you've ever noticed the difference in the way women
+bustle around? Most nice women do bustle when something comes up that
+needs it. Some does it light and lifty, like fairies going around on
+missions; and some does it kind of crackling and nervous, like goblins
+on business. Mis' Emmons was the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> first kind, and it was real
+contagious. You caught it yourself and begun pulling chairs around and
+seeing to windows and sort of settling away down deep into the minute.
+She begun doing that way now, seeing to the fire and the lamp-shade and
+the sofa, and wanting everybody to be dry and comfortable, instant.</p>
+
+<p>"'You are so good-natured to like my room,' she says. 'I furnished it
+for ten cents&mdash;yes, not much more. The whole effect is just colour,' she
+says. 'What I have to do without in quality I go and wheedle out of the
+spectrum. What <i>should</i> we do without the rainbow? And what in the world
+am I going to put on that child?'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley let Christopher down on the rug by the door, and there he stood,
+dripping, patient, holding his paper bag, and not looking up and around
+him, same as a child will in a strange room, but just looking hard at
+the nice, red, warm blaze. Miss Sidney come and stooped over him, with
+that same little way of touching him, like loving.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's go and be dry now,' she says, 'and then let's see what we can
+find in the pantry.'</p>
+
+<p>"The little fellow, he just laughed out, soft and delicious, with his
+head turned away and without saying anything.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p><p>"'I never said such a successful thing,' says Miss Sidney, and led him
+upstairs where we could hear Mis' Emmons bustling around cosey.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Insley and I sat down by the fire. I remember I looked over towards
+him and felt sort of nervous, he was so good looking and so silent. A
+good-looking <i>talking</i> man I ain't afraid of, because I can either
+admire or despise him immediate, and either way it gives me something to
+do answering back. But one that's still, it takes longer to make out,
+and it don't give you no occupation for your impressions. And Insley,
+besides being still, was so good looking that it surprised me every new
+time I see him. I always wanted to say: Have you been looking like that
+all the time since I last saw you, and how <i>do</i> you keep it up?</p>
+
+<p>"He had a face and a body that showed a good many men looking out of 'em
+at you, and all of 'em was men you'd like to of known. There was
+scholars that understood a lot, and gentlemen that acted easy, and
+outdoor men that had pioneered through hard things and had took their
+joy of the open. All of them had worked hard at him&mdash;and had give him
+his strength and his merriness and his big, broad shoulders and his
+nice, friendly boyishness, and his eyes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span> that could see considerably
+more than was set before them. By his own care he had knit his body
+close to life, and I know he had knit his spirit close to it, too. As I
+looked over at him that night, my being nervous sort of swelled up into
+a lump in my throat and I wanted to say inside me: O God, ain't it nice,
+ain't it nice that you've got some folks like him?</p>
+
+<p>"He glanced over to me, kind of whimsical.</p>
+
+<p>"'Are you in favour of folks or tombstones?' he asks, with his eyebrows
+flickering up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Me?' I says. 'Well, I don't want to be clannish, but I do lean a good
+deal towards folks.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You knew what I meant to-night?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I answered, 'I knew.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought you did,' he says grave.</p>
+
+<p>"Then he lapsed into keeping still again and so did I, me through not
+quite knowing what to say, and him&mdash;well, I wasn't sure, but I thought
+he acted a good deal as if he had something nice to think about. I've
+seen that look on people's faces sometimes, and it always makes me feel
+a little surer that I'm a human being. I wondered if it was his new work
+he was turning over, or his liking the child's being cared for, or the
+mere nice minute, there<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> by the grate fire. Then a door upstairs shut,
+and somebody come down and into the room, and when he got up, his look
+sort of centred in that new minute.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Miss Sidney that come in, and she set down by the fire like
+something pleased her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Aunt Eleanor is going to decorate Christopher herself,' she says. 'She
+believes that she alone can do whatever comes up in this life to be
+done, and usually she's right.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley stood looking at her for a minute before he set down again. She
+had her big black cloak off by then, and she was wearing a
+dress-for-in-the-house that was all rosy. She wasn't anything of the
+star any longer. She was something more than a star. I always think one
+of the nicest commonplace minutes in a woman's everyday is when she
+comes back from somewheres outside the house where she's been, and sets
+down by the fire, or by a window, or just plain in the middle of the
+room. They always talk about pigeons 'homing'; I wish't they kept that
+word for women. It seems like it's so exactly what they <i>do</i> do.</p>
+
+<p>"'I love the people,' Miss Sidney went on, 'that always feel that
+way&mdash;that if something they're interested in is going to be really well
+done, then they must do it themselves.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span></p><p>"Insley always knew just what anybody meant&mdash;I'd noticed that about
+him. His mind never left what you'd said floating round, loose ends in
+the room, without your knowing whether it was going to be caught and
+tied; but he just nipped right onto your remark and <i>tied it in the
+right place</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"'I love them, too,' he says now. 'I love anybody who can really feel
+responsibility, from a collie with her pups up. But then I'm nothing to
+go by. I find I'm rather strong for a good many people that can't feel
+it, too&mdash;that are just folks, going along.'</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose he expected from her the nice, ladylike agreeing, same as
+most women give to this sort of thing, just like they'd admit they're
+fond of verbenas or thin soles. But instead of that, she caught fire.
+Her look jumped up the way a look will and went acrost to his. I always
+think I'd rather have folks say 'I know' to me, understanding, than to
+just pour me out information, and that was what she said to him.</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' she says, 'on the train to-day&mdash;if you could have seen them.
+Such dreadful-looking people, and underneath&mdash;the <i>giving-up-ness</i>. I
+believe in them,' she added simple.</p>
+
+<p>"When a thing you believe gets spoke by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> somebody that believes it, too,
+it's like the earth moved round a little faster, and I donno but it
+does. Insley looked for a minute like he thought so.</p>
+
+<p>"'I believe in them,' he says; 'not the way I used to, and just because
+I thought they must be, somehow, fundamentally decent, but because it's
+true.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know just when I first knew that,' Miss Sidney says. 'It come to me,
+of all places, in a subway train, when I was looking at a row of faces
+across the car. Nobody, <i>nobody</i> can look interesting in that row along
+the side of a subway car. And then I saw....'</p>
+
+<p>"She thought for a minute and shook her head.</p>
+
+<p>"'I can't tell you,' she says, 'it sounds so little and&mdash;no account. It
+was a little thing, just something that happened to a homely woman with
+a homely man, in a hat like a pirate's. But it almost&mdash;let me in. I can
+do it ever since&mdash;look into people, into, or through, or with ...' she
+tries to explain it. Then her eyes hurried up to his face, like she was
+afraid he might not be understanding. He just nodded, without looking at
+her, but she knew that he knew what she meant, and that he meant it,
+too.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span></p><p>" ... I thought it was wonderful to hear them. I felt like an old
+mountain, or anything natural and real ancient, listening to the Song of
+Believing, sung by two that's young and just beginning. We all sing it
+sometime in our lives&mdash;or Lord grieve for them that never do&mdash;and I
+might as well own up that I catch myself humming that same song a good
+deal of the time, to keep myself a-going. But I love to hear it when
+it's just begun.</p>
+
+<p>"They was still talking when Mis' Emmons come downstairs with
+Christopher. Land, land but the little chap looked dear, dragging along,
+holding up a long-skirted lounging dress of Mis' Emmons's. I never had
+one of them lounging dresses. There's a lot of common things that it
+never seems to me I can buy for myself: a nice dressing-gown, a block of
+black pins, a fancy-headed hat pin, and a lemon-squeezer. I always use a
+loose print, and common pins, and penny black-headed hat pins, and go
+around squeezing my lemons by hand. I donno why it is, I'm sure.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm&mdash;I'm&mdash;I'm&mdash;a little boy king!' Christopher stutters, all excited
+and satisfied, while Insley was a-packing him in the Morris chair.</p>
+
+<p>"'Rained on!' says Mis' Emmons, in that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> kind of dismay that's as pure
+feminine as if it had on skirts. 'Water isn't a circumstance to what
+that dear child was. He was saturated&mdash;bless him. He must have been out
+for perfect hours.'</p>
+
+<p>"Christopher, thinking back into the rain, mebbe, from the pleasantness
+of that minute, smiled and took a long breath.</p>
+
+<p>"'I walked from that other place,' he explains, important.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Emmons knew he was hungry, and she took Miss Sidney and Insley off
+to the kitchen to find something to eat, and left me with the little
+fellow, me spreading out his clothes in front of the fire to dry. He set
+real still, like being dry and being with somebody was all he wanted.
+And of course that is a good deal.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't always quite know how to start talking to a child. I'm always
+crazy to talk with them, but I'm so afraid of that shy, grave,
+criticizin' look they have. I feel right off like apologizing for the
+silly question I've just asked them. I felt that way now when
+Christopher looked at me, real dignified and wondering. 'What you going
+to be when you grow up to be a man?' was what I had just asked him. And
+yet I don't know what better question I could of asked him, either.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span></p><p>"'I'm goin' to have a cream-puff store, an' make it all light in the
+window,' he answers ready.</p>
+
+<p>"'All light in the window?' I says puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"'And I'm going to keep a church,' he goes on, 'and I'm going to make
+nice, black velvet for their coffings.'</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know quite what to make of that, not being able to think back
+very far into his mind. So I kept still a few minutes.</p>
+
+<p>"'What was you doin' in the church?' he says to me, all at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't really know. Waiting for you to come, I guess, Christopher,' I
+says.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Was</i> you?' he cried, delighted. 'Pretty soon I came!' He looked in
+the fire, sort of troubled. 'Is God outdoors nights?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"I said a little something.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' he says, 'I thought he was in the house by the bed when you say
+your prayer. An' I thought he was in church. But I don't think he stays
+in the dark, much.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mebbe you don't,' I says, 'but you wait for him in the dark, and mebbe
+all of a sudden some night you can tell that something is there. And
+just you wait for that night to come.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's a nice game,' says Christopher, bright. 'What game is that?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I donno,' I says. 'Game of Life, I guess.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p><p>"He liked the sound; and he set there&mdash;little waif, full of no supper,
+saying it over like a chant:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Game o' life&mdash;game o' life&mdash;game o' l-i-f-e&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Just at that minute I was turning his little pockets wrong side out to
+dry them, and in one of them I see a piece of paper, all crumpled up and
+wrinkled. I spread it out, and I see it had writing on. And I held it up
+to the light and read it, read it through twice.</p>
+
+<p>"'Christopher,' I says then, 'where did you get this piece of paper? It
+was in your pocket.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at it, blank, and then he remembered.</p>
+
+<p>"'My daddy,' he says. 'My daddy told me to give it to folks. I forgot.'</p>
+
+<p>"'To folks?' I says. 'To what folks?'</p>
+
+<p>"'To whoever ask' me anything,' he answers. 'Is it a letter?' he ask'.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I says, thoughtful, 'it's a letter.'</p>
+
+<p>"'To tell me what to do?' he ask' me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I says, 'but more, I guess, to tell us what to do.'</p>
+
+<p>"I talked with him a little longer, so's to get his mind off the paper;
+and then I told him to set still a minute, and I slipped out to where
+the rest was.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span></p><p>"The pantry had a close, spicey, foody smell of a pantry at night, when
+every tin chest and glass jar may be full up with nice things to eat
+that you'd forgot about&mdash;cocoanut and citron and cinnamon bark. In
+grown-up folks one of the things that is the last to grow up is the
+things a pantry in the evening promises. You may get over really liking
+raisins and sweet chocolate; you may get to wanting to eat in the
+evening things that you didn't use' to even know the names of and don't
+know them now, and yet it never gets over being nice and eventive to go
+out in somebody's pantry at night, especially a pantry that ain't your
+own.</p>
+
+<p>"'Put everything on a tray,' Mis' Emmons was directing them, 'and find
+the chafing-dish and let's make it in there by Christopher. Mr. Insley,
+can you make toast? Don't equivocate,' she says; '<i>can</i> you make toast?
+People fib no end over what they can make. I'm always bragging about my
+omelettes, and yet one out of every three I make goes flat, and I know
+it. And yet I brag on. Beans, buckwheat, rice&mdash;what do you want to
+cream, Robin? Well, look in the store-room. There may be something
+there. We must tell Miss Sidney about Grandma Sellers' store-room, Mr.
+Insley,' she says, and then tells it herself, laughing like a girl,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span> how
+Grandma Sellers, down at the other end of Daphne Street, has got a
+store-room she keeps full of staples and won't let her son's wife use a
+thing out. 'I've been hungry,' Grandma Sellers says, 'and I ain't
+ashamed of that. But if you knew how good it feels to have a still-room
+stocked full, you wouldn't ask me to disturb a can of nothing. I want
+them all there, so if I should want them.' 'She's like me,' Mis' Emmons
+ends, 'I always want to keep my living-room table tidy, to have a place
+in case I should want to lay anything down. And if I put anything on it,
+I snatch it up, so as to have a place in case I want to lay anything
+down.'</p>
+
+<p>"They was all laughing when I went out into the kitchen, and I went up
+to Mis' Emmons with the paper.</p>
+
+<p>"'Read that,' I says.</p>
+
+<p>"She done so, out loud&mdash;the scrawlin', downhill message:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"'Keep him will you,' the paper said, 'I don't chuck him to get rid
+of but hes only got me since my wifes dead and the drinks got me
+again. Ive stood it quite awhile but its got me again so keep him
+and oblidge. will send money to him to the P O here what I can
+spare I aint chuckin him but the drinks got me again.</p>
+
+<p class="right">"'resp, his father.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span></p><p>"'P S his name is Christopher Bartlett he is a good boy his throat
+gets sore awful easy.'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"When Mis' Emmons had got through reading, I remember Miss Sidney's face
+best. It was so full of a sort of a leaping-up pity and wistfulness that
+it went to your heart, like words. I knew that with her the minute
+wasn't no mere thrill nor twitter nor pucker, the way sad things is to
+some, but it was just a straight sounding of a voice from a place of
+pain. And so it was to Insley. But Mis' Emmons, she never give herself
+time to be swamped by anything without trying to climb out right while
+the swamping was going on.</p>
+
+<p>"'What'll we do?' she says, rapid. 'What in this world shall we do? Did
+you ever hear of anything&mdash;well, I wish somebody would tell me what
+we're going to do.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's be glad for one thing,' says Allen Insley, 'that he's here with
+you people to-night. Let's be glad of that first&mdash;that he's here with
+you.'</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Sidney looked away to the dark window.</p>
+
+<p>"'That poor man,' she says. 'That poor father....'</p>
+
+<p>"We talked about it a little, kind of loose ends and nothing to fasten
+to, like you will. Mis'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span> Emmons was the first to get back inside the
+minute.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' she says, brisk, 'do let's go in and feed the child while we
+have him. Nobody knows when he's had anything to eat but those unholy
+cream-puffs. Let's heat him some broth and let's carry in the things.'</p>
+
+<p>"Back by the fire Christopher set doing nothing, but just looking in the
+blaze like his very eyesight had been chilly and damp and needed seeing
+to. He cried out jolly when he see all the pretty harness of the
+chafing-dish and the tray full of promises.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' he cries, '<i>Robin!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>"She went over to him, and she nestled him now like she couldn't think
+of enough to do for him nor enough things to say to keep him company. I
+see Insley watching her, and I wondered if it didn't come to him like it
+come to me, that for the pure art of doing nothing so that it seems like
+it couldn't be got along without, a woman&mdash;some women&mdash;can be commended
+by heaven to a world that always needs that kind of doing nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Children have a genius for getting rid of the things that don't
+count,' Miss Sidney says. 'I love his calling me "Robin." Mustn't there
+be some place where we don't build walls around our names?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span></p><p>"Insley thought for a minute. 'You oughtn't to be called "Miss," and
+you oughtn't to wear a hat,' he concluded, sober. 'Both of them make
+you&mdash;too much <i>there</i>. They draw a line around you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't feel like Miss to myself,' she says, grave. 'I feel like
+Robin. I believe I <i>am</i> Robin!'</p>
+
+<p>"And I made up my mind right then and there that, to myself anyway, I
+was always going to call her Robin. It's funny about first names. Some
+of them fit right down and snuggle up close to their person so that you
+can't think of them apart. And some of them slip loose and dangle along
+after their person, quite a ways back, so that you're always surprised
+when now and then they catch up and get themselves spoke by someone. But
+the name Robin just seemed to wrap Miss Sidney up in itself so that, as
+she said, she <i>was</i> Robin. I like to call her so.</p>
+
+<p>"It was her that engineered the chafing-dish. A chafing-dish is a thing
+I've always looked on a little askant. I couldn't cook with folks
+looking at me no more than I could wash my face in company. I remember
+one hot July day when there was a breeze in my front door, I took my
+ironing-board in the parlor and tried to iron there. But land, I felt
+all left-handed; and I know it would be that way if I ever tried to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>
+cook in there, on my good rug. Robin though, she done it wonderful. And
+pretty soon she put the hot cream gravy on some crumbled-up bread and
+took it to Christopher, with a cup of broth that smelled like when they
+used to say, 'Dinner's ready,' when you was twelve years old.</p>
+
+<p>"He looked up at her eager. 'Can you cut it in squares?' he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'In what?' she asks him over.</p>
+
+<p>"'Squares. And play it's molasses candy&mdash;white molasses candy?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' says Robin, 'no, not in squares. But let's play it's hot
+ice-cream.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Hot ice-cream</i>,' he says, real slow, his eyes getting wide. To play
+Little Boy King and have hot ice-cream was about as much as he could
+take care of, in joy. Sometimes I get to wondering how we ever do
+anything else except collect children together and give them nice little
+simple fairylands. But while, on the sly, we was all watching to see
+Christopher sink deep in the delight of that hot toothsome supper, he
+suddenly lays down his spoon and stares over to us with wide eyes, eyes
+that there wasn't no tears gathering in, though his little mouth was
+quivering.</p>
+
+<p>"'What is it&mdash;what, dear?' Robin asks, from her stool near his feet.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span></p><p>"'My daddy,' says the little boy. 'I was thinking if he could have some
+this.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin touched her cheek down on his arm.</p>
+
+<p>"'Blessed,' she says, 'think how glad he'd be to have you have some.
+He'd want you to eat it&mdash;wouldn't he?'</p>
+
+<p>"The child nodded and took up his spoon, but he sighed some. 'I wish't
+he'd hurry,' he says, and ate, obedient.</p>
+
+<p>"Robin looked up at us&mdash;I don't think a woman is ever so lovely as when
+she's sympathizing, and it don't make much difference what it's over, a
+sore finger or a sore heart, it's equally becoming.</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' she says to us, 'I know just the <i>place</i> where that hurts. I
+remember, when I was little, being in a house that a band passed, and
+because mother wasn't there, I ran inside and wouldn't listen. It's such
+a special kind of hurt....'</p>
+
+<p>"From the end of the settle that was some in the shadow, Insley set
+watching her, and he looked as if he was thinking just what I was
+thinking: that she was the kind that would most always know just the
+place things hurt. And I bet she'd know what to do&mdash;and a thousand kinds
+of things that she'd go and do it.</p>
+
+<p>"'O ...' Christopher says. 'I like this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span> most next better than molasses
+candy, cutted in squares. I do, Robin!' He looked down at her, his spoon
+waiting. 'Is you that Robin Redbreast?' he inquired.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm any Robin you want me to be,' she told him. 'To-morrow we'll play
+that, shall we?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Am I here to-morrow? Don't I have to walk to-morrow?' he ask' her.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, you won't have to walk to-morrow,' she told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Christopher leaned back, altogether nearer to luxury than I guess he'd
+ever been.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm a little boy king, and it's hot ice-cream, and I love <i>you</i>,' he
+tops it off to Robin.</p>
+
+<p>"She smiled at him, leaning on his chair.</p>
+
+<p>"'Isn't it a miracle,' she says to us, 'the way we can call out&mdash;being
+liked? We don't do something, and people don't pay any attention and
+don't know the difference. Then some little thing happens, and there
+they are&mdash;liking us, doing a real thing.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know it,' I says, fervent. 'Sometimes,' I says, 'it seems to me
+wonderful cosey to be alive! I'm glad I'm it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'So am I,' says Insley, and leaned forward. 'There's never been such a
+time to be alive,' he says. 'Mrs. Emmons, why don't we ask Miss Sidney
+for some plans for our plan?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span></p><p>"Do you know how sometimes you'll have a number of floating ideas in
+your mind&mdash;wanting to do this, thinking that would be nice, dreaming of
+something else&mdash;and yet afraid to say much about it, because it seems
+like the ideas or the dreams is much too wild for anybody else to have,
+too? And then mebbe after a while, you'll find that somebody had the
+same idea and dreamed it out, and died with it? Or somebody else tried
+to make it go a little? Well, that was what begun to happen to me that
+night while I heard Insley talk, only I see that my floating ideas, that
+wan't properly attached to the sides of my head, was actually being
+worked out here and there, and that Insley knew about them.</p>
+
+<p>"I donno how to tell what my ideas was. I'd had them from time to time,
+and a good many of us ladies had, only we didn't know what to do with
+them. And an idea that you don't know what to do with is like a wild
+animal out of its cage: there ain't no performance till it's adjusted.
+For instance, when we'd wanted to pave Daphne Street and the whole town
+council had got up and swung its arms over its head and said that having
+an economical administration was better than paving&mdash;why, then us ladies
+had all had the same idee about that.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span></p><p>"'Is the town run for the sake of being the town, with money in its
+treasury, or is the town run for the folks in it?' I remember Mis'
+Toplady asking, puzzled. 'Ain't the folks the town really?' she ask'.
+'And if they are, why can't they pave themselves with their own money?
+Don't that make sense?' she ask' us, and we thought it did.</p>
+
+<p>"Us ladies had got Daphne Street paved, or at least it was through us
+they made the beginning, but there was things we hadn't done. We was all
+taking milk of Rob Henney that we knew his cow barns wasn't at all
+eatable, but he was the only milk wagon, nobody else in town delivering,
+so we kept on taking, but squeamish, squeamish. Then there was the
+grocery stores, leaving their food all over the sidewalk, dust-peppered
+and dirt-salted. But nobody liked to say anything to Silas Sykes that
+keeps the post-office store, nor to Joe Betts, that his father before
+him kept the meat market, being we all felt delicate, like at asking a
+church member to come out to church. Then us ladies had bought a zinc
+wagon and started it around to pick up the garbage to folks' doors, but
+the second summer the council wouldn't help pay for the team, because it
+was a saving council, and so the wagon was setting in a shed, with its
+hands<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span> folded. Then there was Black Hollow, that we'd wanted filled up
+with dirt instead of scummy water, arranging for typhoid fever and other
+things, but the council having got started paving, was engaged in paving
+the swamp out for miles, Silas Sykes's cousin being in the wooden block
+business. And, too, us ladies was just then hopping mad over the doings
+they was planning for the Fourth of July, that wasn't no more than
+making a cash register of the day to earn money into. All these things
+had been disturbing us, and more; but though we talked it over
+considerable, none of us knew what to do, or whether anything could be.
+It seemed as though every way we moved a hand, it hit out at the council
+or else went into some business man's pocket. And not having anybody to
+tell us what other towns were doing, we just set still and wished,
+passive.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and that night, while I heard Insley talking, was the first I
+knew that other towns had thought about these things, too, and was
+beginning to stir and to stir things. Insley talked about it light
+enough, laughing, taking it all casual on the outside, but underneath
+with a splendid earnestness that was like the warp to his words. He
+talked like we could pick Friendship Village up, same as a strand if we
+wanted,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> and make it fine and right for weaving in a big pattern that
+his eyes seemed to see. He talked like our village, and everybody's
+village and everybody's city wasn't just a lot of streets laid down and
+walls set up, and little families and little clubs and little separate
+groups of folks organized by themselves. But he spoke like the whole
+town was just one street and <i>no</i> walls, and like every town was a piece
+of the Big Family that lives on the same street, all around the world
+and back again. And he seemed to feel that the chief thing all of us was
+up to was thinking about this family and doing for it and being it, and
+getting it to be the way it can be when we all know how. And he seemed
+to think the things us ladies had wanted to do was some of the things
+that would help it to be the way it can.</p>
+
+<p>"When he stopped, Robin looked up at him from the hearth-rug: '"The
+world is beginning,"' she quotes to him from somewheres; "'I must go and
+help the king."'</p>
+
+<p>"He nodded, looking down at her and seeing, as he must have seen, that
+her face was all kindled into the same kind of a glory that was in his.
+It was a nice minute for them, but I was so excited I piped right up in
+the middle of it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' I says, '<i>them</i> things! Was it them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span> kind of things you meant
+about in Sodality to-night that we'd ought to do? Why, us ladies has
+wanted to do things like that, but we felt sort of sneaking about it and
+like we was working against the council and putting our interests before
+the town treasury&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'And of the cemetery,' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Is <i>that</i>,' I ask' him, 'what you're professor of, over to Indian
+Mound college?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Something like that,' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nothing in a book, with long words and italics?' I ask' him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' he says, 'it's getting in books now, a little. But it doesn't
+need any long words.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' I says, 'it's just being professor of human beings, then?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Trying to be, perhaps,' he says, grave.</p>
+
+<p>"'Professor of Human Beings,' I said over to myself; 'professor of being
+human....'</p>
+
+<p>"On this nice minute, the front door, without no bell or knock, opened
+to let in Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, with a shawl over her head
+and a tin can in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, I won't set any, thanks,' she says. 'I just got to
+thinking&mdash;mercy, no. Don't give me any kind of anything to eat any such
+time of night as this. I should be up till midnight taking soda. That's
+what ails folks' stomachs,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span> my notion&mdash;these late lunches on nobody
+knows what. No, I got to bed and I was just dropping off when I happened
+to sense how wringing wet that child was, and that I betted he'd take
+cold and have the croup in the night, and you wouldn't have no
+remedy&mdash;not having any children, so. It rousted me right up wide awake,
+and I dressed me and run over here with this. Here. Put some on a rag
+and clap it on his chest if he coughs croupy. I donno's it would hurt
+him to clap it on him, anyway, so's to be sure. No, I can't stop. It's
+'way past my bed-time....'</p>
+
+<p>"'There's lots of professors of being human, Miss Marsh,' Insley says to
+me, low.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Holcomb stood thinking a minute, brushing her lips with the fringe
+of her shawl.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mebbe somebody up to the Proudfits' would do something for him,' she
+says. 'I see they're lit up. Who's coming?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Alex Proudfit will be here to-morrow,' Mis' Emmons told her. 'He
+has some people coming to him in a day or two, for a house party over
+the Fourth.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Will he be here so soon?' says Insley. 'I've been looking forward to
+meeting him&mdash;I've a letter to him from Indian Mound.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Whatever happens,' says Mis' Holcomb,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> 'I'll get up attic first thing
+in the morning and find some old clothes for this dear child. I may be
+weak in the pocket-book, but I'm strong on old duds.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley and I both said good night, so's to walk home with Mis' Holcomb,
+and Christopher kissed us both, simple as belonging to us.</p>
+
+<p>"'We had that hot ice-cream,' he announced to Mis' Holcomb.</p>
+
+<p>"'The lamb!' says she, and turns her back, hasty.</p>
+
+<p>"I wondered a little at Mis' Emmons not saying anything to her about the
+letter we'd found, that made us know somebody would have to do
+something. But just as we was starting out, Mis' Emmons says to me low,
+'Don't let's say anything about his father yet. I have a plan&mdash;I want to
+think it over first.' And I liked knowing that already she had a plan,
+and I betted it was a plan that would be born four-square to its own
+future.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley stood holding the door open. The rain had stopped altogether
+now, and the night was full of little things sticking their heads up in
+deep grasses and beginning to sing about it. I donno about what, but
+about something nice. And Insley was looking toward Robin, and I see
+that all the ancestors he'd ever had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> was lingering around in his face,
+like they knew about something he was just beginning to know about.
+Something nice&mdash;nicer than the little outdoor voices.</p>
+
+<p>"'Good night, Miss Sidney,' he says. 'And what a good night for
+Christopher!' And he looked as if he wanted to add: 'And for me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Good night, Mis' Emmons,' I says. 'It's been an evening like a full meal.'</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>IV</h2>
+
+<p>"By messenger the next day noon come a letter for me that made me laugh
+a little and that made me a little bit mad, too. This was it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"'Dear Calliope:</p>
+
+<p>"'Come up and help straighten things out, do. This place breathes
+desolation. Everything is everywhere except everything which
+everyone wants, which is lost. Come at once, Calliope, pray, and
+dine with me to-night and give me as much time as you can for a
+fortnight. I'm having some people here next week&mdash;twenty or so for
+over the Fourth&mdash;and a party. A company, you know! I need you.</p>
+
+<p class="right">"'<span class="smcap">Alex Proudfit.</span>'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"It was so exactly like Alex to send for me just plain because he wanted
+me. Never a word about if I was able or if I wasn't putting up berries
+or didn't have company or wasn't dead. I hadn't heard a sound from him
+in the two years or more that he'd been gone, and yet now it was just
+'Come,' like a lord. And for that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span> matter like he used to do when he was
+in knickerbockers and coming to my house for fresh cookies, whether I
+had any baked or not. But I remember actually baking a batch for him one
+day while he galloped his pony up and down the Plank Road waiting for
+them. And I done the same way now. I got my work out of the way and went
+right up there, like I'd always done for that family in the forty years
+I could think back to knowing them, when I was a girl. I guessed that
+Alex had lit down sudden, a day or so behind his telegram to the
+servants; and I found that was what he had done.</p>
+
+<p>"Proudfit House stands on a hill, and it looks like the hill had
+billowed up gentle from underneath and had let some of the house flow
+down the sides. It was built ambitious, of the good cream brick that
+gives to a lot of our Middle West towns their colour of natural flax in
+among the green; it had been big in the beginning, and to it had been
+added a good many afterthoughts and postscripts of conservatory and
+entrance porch and sun room and screened veranda, till the hill couldn't
+hold them all. The house was one of them that was built fifty years ago
+and that has since been pecked and patted to suit modern uses, pinched
+off here and pulled off there to fit notions refining themselves
+gradual. And<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span> all the time the house was let to keep some nice, ugly
+things that after a while, by mere age and use-to-ness, were finally
+accepted wholesale as dignified and desirable. The great brown mansard
+roof, niched and glassed in two places for statues&mdash;and having them,
+too, inside my memory and until Mr. Alex pulled them down; the scalloped
+tower on a wing; the round red glass window on a stairway&mdash;these we all
+sort of come to agree to as qualities of the place that couldn't be
+changed no more'n the railroad track. Tapestries and water-colours and
+Persian carpets went on inside the house, but outside was all the little
+twists of a taste that had started in naked and was getting dressed up
+by degrees.</p>
+
+<p>"Since the marriage of her daughter Clementina, Madame Proudfit had
+spent a good deal of time abroad, and the house had been shut up. This
+shutting up of people's houses always surprises me. When I shut up my
+house to go away for a couple of months or so, I just make sure the
+kitchen fire is out, and I carry the bird down to Mis' Holcomb's, and I
+turn the key in the front door and start off. But land, land when
+Proudfit House is going to be shut, the servants work days on end. Rugs
+up, curtains down, furniture covered and setting around out of place,
+pictures and ornaments wrapped up<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span> in blue paper&mdash;I always wonder <i>why</i>.
+Closing my house is like putting it to sleep for a little while, but
+closing Proudfit House is some like seeing it through a spasm and into a
+trance. They done that to the house most every summer, and I used to
+think they acted like spring was a sort of contagion, or a
+seventeen-year locust, or something to be fumigated for. I supposed that
+was the way the house looked when Alex got home to it, and of course a
+man must hate it worse than a woman does, because he doesn't know which
+end to tell them to take hold of to unravel. So I went right up there
+when he sent for me&mdash;and then it was a little fun, too, to be on the
+inside of what was happening there, that all the village was so curious
+about.</p>
+
+<p>"He'd gone off when I got there, gone off on horseback on some business,
+but he'd left word that he'd be back in a little while, and would I help
+him out in the library. I knew what that meant. The books was all out of
+the shelves and packed in paper, and he wanted me to see that they got
+back into their right places, like I'd done many and many a time for his
+mother. So I worked there the whole afternoon, with a couple of men to
+help me, and the portrait of Linda Proudfit on the wall watching me like
+it wanted to tell me something, maybe<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span> about the way she went off and
+died, away from home; and a little after four o'clock a servant let
+somebody into the room.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked up expecting to see Alex, and it surprised me some to see
+Insley instead. But I guessed how it was: that Alex Proudfit being a
+logical one to talk over Friendship Village with, Insley couldn't lose a
+day in bringing him his letter.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, Miss Marsh,' says he, 'and do you live everywhere, like a good
+fairy?'</p>
+
+<p>"I thought afterwards that I might have said to him: 'No, Mr. Insley.
+And do you appear everywhere, like a god?' But at the time I didn't
+think of anything to say, and I just smiled. I'm like that,&mdash;if I like
+anybody, I can't think of a thing to say back; but to Silas Sykes I
+could talk back all day.</p>
+
+<p>"We'd got the room part in order by then, and Insley sat down and looked
+around him, enjoyable. It was a beautiful room. I always think that that
+library ain't no amateur at its regular business of being a vital part
+of the home. Some rooms are awful amateurs at it, and some ain't no more
+than apprentices, and some are downright enemies to the house they're
+in. But that library I always like to look around. It seems to me, if I
+really knew<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span> about such things, and how they ought to be, I couldn't
+like that room any better. Colour, proportion, window, shadow&mdash;they was
+all lined up in a kind of an enjoyable professionalism of doing their
+best. The room was awake now, too&mdash;I had the windows open and I'd
+started the clock. Insley set looking around as if there was sighs
+inside him. I knew how, down in New England, his father's home sort of
+behaved itself like this home. But after college, he had had to choose
+his way, and he had faced about to the new west, the new world, where
+big ways of living seemed to him to be sweeping as a wind sweeps. He had
+chose as he had chose, and I suppose he was glad of that; but I knew the
+room he had when he was in town, at Threat Hubbelthwait's hotel, must be
+a good deal like being homesick, and that this library was like coming
+home.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mr. Proudfit had just returned and would be down at once,' the man
+come back and told him. And while he waited Insley says to me:</p>
+
+<p>"'Have you seen anything of the little boy to-day, Miss Marsh?'</p>
+
+<p>"I was dying to answer back: 'Yes, I see Miss Sidney early this
+morning,' but you can't answer back all you die to. So I told him yes,
+I'd seen all three of them and they was to be<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span> up in the city all day to
+buy some things for Christopher. Mis' Emmons and Robin was both to come
+up to Proudfit House to Alex's house party&mdash;seems they'd met abroad
+somewheres a year or more back; and they was going to bring Christopher,
+who Mis' Emmons didn't show any sign of giving up while her plan,
+whatever it was, was getting itself thought over. So they'd whisked the
+child off to the city that day to get him the things he needed. And
+there wasn't time to say anything more, for in come Alex Proudfit.</p>
+
+<p>"He was in his riding clothes&mdash;horseback dress we always call it in the
+village, which I s'pose isn't city talk, proper. He was long and thin
+and brown, and sort of slow-moving in his motions, but quick and nervous
+in his talk; and I don't know what there was about him&mdash;his clothes, or
+his odd, old-country looking ring, or the high white thing wound twice
+around his neck, or his way of pronouncing his words&mdash;but he seemed a
+good deal like a picture of a title or a noted man. The minute you
+looked at him, you turned proud of being with him, and you pretty near
+felt distinguished yourself, in a nice way, because you was in his
+company. Alex was like that.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't like having kept you waiting,' he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> says to Insley. 'I'm just
+in. By Jove, I've left Topping's letter somewhere&mdash;Insley, is it? thank
+you. Of course. Well, Calliope, blessings! I knew I could count on you.
+How are you&mdash;you look it. No, don't run away. Keep straight on&mdash;Mr.
+Insley will pardon us getting settled under his nose. Now what can I get
+you, Mr. Insley? If you've walked up, you're warm. No? As you will. It's
+mighty jolly getting back&mdash;for a minute, you know. I couldn't stop here.
+How the devil do you stop here all the time&mdash;or do you stop here all the
+time?...' All this he poured out in a breath. He always had talked fast,
+but now I see that he talked more than fast&mdash;he talked foreign.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm here some of the time,' says Insley; 'I hoped that you were going
+to be, too.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I?' Alex said. 'Oh, no&mdash;no. I feel like this: while I'm in the world,
+I want it at its best. I want it at its latest moment. I want to be
+living <i>now</i>. Friendship Village&mdash;why, man, it's living half a century
+ago&mdash;anyway, a quarter. It doesn't know about <span class="smaller">A.D.</span> nineteen-anything. I
+love the town, you know, for what it is. But confound it, I'm living
+<i>now</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley leaned forward. I was dusting away on an encyclop&aelig;dia, but I see
+his face and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span> knew what it meant. This was just what he'd been hoping
+for. Alex Proudfit was a man who understood that the village hadn't
+caught up. So he would want to help it&mdash;naturally he would.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm amazed at the point of view,' Alex went on. 'I never saw such
+self-sufficiency as the little towns have. In England, on the continent,
+the villages know their place and keep it, look up to the towns and all
+that&mdash;play the peasant, as they are. Know their betters. Here? Bless
+you. Not a man down town here but will tell you that the village has got
+everything that is admirable. They believe it, too. Electric light,
+water, main street paved, cemetery kept up, "nice residences,"
+telephones, library open two nights a week, fresh lettuce all
+winter&mdash;fine, up-to-date little place! And, Lord, but it's a back-water.
+With all its improvements the whole <i>idea</i> of modern life somehow
+escapes it&mdash;music and art, drama, letters, manners, as integral parts of
+everyday living&mdash;what does it know of them? It thinks these things are
+luxuries, outside the scheme of real life, like monoplanes. Jove, it's
+delicious!'</p>
+
+<p>"He leaned back, laughing. Insley must have felt his charm. Alex always
+was fascinating. His eyes were gray and sort of <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span>hobnobbed with your
+own; his square chin just kind of threatened a dimple without breaking
+into one; his dark hair done clusters like a statue; and then there was
+a lot of just plain charm pouring off him. But of course more than with
+this, Insley was filled with his own hope: if Alex Proudfit understood
+some things about the village that ought to be made right, it looked to
+him as though they might do everything together.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' Insley says, 'you don't know&mdash;you don't know how glad I am to
+hear you say this. It's exactly the thing my head has been full of....'</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course your head is full of it,' says Alex. 'How can it help but be
+when you're fast here some of the time? If you don't mind&mdash;what is it
+that keeps you here at all? I don't think I read Topping's letter
+properly....'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley looked out from all over his face.</p>
+
+<p>"'I stay,' he says, 'just because all this <i>is</i> so. It needs somebody to
+stay, don't you think?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah, yes, I see,' says Alex, rapid and foreign. 'How do you mean,
+though? Surely you don't mean renouncing&mdash;and that sort of thing?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Renouncing&mdash;no!' says Insley. 'Getting into the game.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p><p>"He got his enthusiasm down into still places and outlined what he
+meant. It was all at the ends of his fingers&mdash;what there was to do if
+the town was to live up to itself, to find ways to express the everyday
+human fellowship that Insley see underneath everything. And Alex
+Proudfit listened, giving that nice, careful, pacifying attention of
+his. He was always so polite that his listening was like answering. When
+Insley got through, Alex's very disagreeing with him was sympathizing.</p>
+
+<p>"'My dear man,' says he&mdash;I remember every word because it was something
+I'd wondered sometimes too, only I'd done my wondering vague, like you
+do&mdash;'My dear man, but are you not, after all, anticipating? This is just
+the way Nature works&mdash;beating these things into the heads and hearts of
+generations. Aren't you trying to do it all at once?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm trying to help nature, to be a part of nature&mdash;exactly,' says
+Insley, 'and to do it here in Friendship Village.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' says Alex, 'you'll be talking about facilitating God's plan
+next&mdash;helping him along, by Jove.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley looks at him level. 'I mean that now,' he says, 'if you want to
+put it that way.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span></p><p>"'Good Lord,' says Alex, 'but how do you know what&mdash;what he wants?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't you?' says Insley, even.</p>
+
+<p>"Alex Proudfit turned and touched a bell. 'Look here,' he says, 'you
+stay and dine, won't you? I'm alone to-night&mdash;Calliope and I are. Stay.
+I always enjoy threshing this out.'</p>
+
+<p>"To the man-servant who just about breathed with a well-trained stoop of
+being deferential, his master give the order about the table. 'And,
+Bayless, have them hunt out some of those tea-roses they had in bloom
+the other day&mdash;you should see them, Calliope. Oh, and, Bayless, hurry
+dinner a bit. I'm as hungry as lions,' he added to us, and he made me
+think of the little boy in knickerbockers, asking me for fresh cookies.</p>
+
+<p>"He slipped back to their topic, ranking it right in with tea-roses. In
+the hour before dinner they went on 'threshing it out' there in that
+nice luxurious room, and through the dinner, too&mdash;a simple, perfect
+dinner where I didn't know which to eat, the plates or the food, they
+was both so complete. Up to Proudfit House I can hardly ever make out
+whether I'm chewing flavours or colours or shapes, but I donno as I
+care. Flavours, thank my stars,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> aren't the only things in life I know
+how to digest.</p>
+
+<p>"First eager, then patient, Insley went over his ground, setting forth
+by line and by line, by vision and by vision, the faith that was in
+him&mdash;faith in human nature to come into its own, faith in the life of a
+town to work into human life at its best. And always down the same road
+they went, they come a-canterin' back with Alex Proudfit's 'Precisely.
+It is precisely what is happening. You can't force it. You mustn't force
+it. To do the best we can with ourselves and to help up an under dog or
+two&mdash;if he deserves it&mdash;that's the most Nature lets us in for. Otherwise
+she says: "Don't meddle. I'm doing this." And she's right. We'd bungle
+everything. Believe me, my dear fellow, our spurts of civic
+righteousness and national reform never get us anywhere in the long run.
+In the long run, things go along and go along. You can't stop them. If
+you're wise, you won't rush them.'</p>
+
+<p>"At this I couldn't keep still no longer. We was at the table then, and
+I looked over to Alex between the candlesticks and felt as if he was
+back in knickerbockers again, telling me God had made enough ponies so
+he could gallop his all day on the Plank Road if he wanted to.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span></p><p>"'You and Silas Sykes, Alex,' I says, 'have come to the same motto.
+Silas says Nature is real handy about taking her course so be you don't
+yank open cocoons and buds and like that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Old Silas,' says Alex. 'Lord, is he still going on about everything?
+Old Silas....'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I says, 'he is. And so am I. Out by my woodshed I've got a
+Greening apple tree. When it was about a year old a cow I used to keep
+browst it down. It laid over on the ground, broke clean off all but one
+little side of bark that kept right on doing business with sap, like it
+didn't know its universe was sat on. I didn't get time for a week or two
+to grub it up, and when I did go to it, I see it was still living,
+through that little pinch of bark. I liked the pluck, and I straightened
+it up and tied it to the shed. I used to fuss with it some. Once in a
+storm I went out and propped a dry-goods box over it. I kept the earth
+rich and drove the bugs off. I kind of got interested in seeing what it
+would do next. What it done was to grow like all possessed. It was
+twenty years ago and more that the cow come by it, and this year I've
+had seven bushels of Greenings off that one tree. Suppose I hadn't tied
+it up?'</p>
+
+<p>"'You'd have saved yourself no end of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> trouble, dear Calliope,' says
+Alex, 'to say nothing of sparing the feelings of the cow.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I ain't so anxious any more,' says I, 'about sparing folks' feelings
+as I am about sparing folks. Nor I ain't so crazy as I used to be about
+saving myself trouble, either.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Dear Calliope,' says Alex, 'what an advocate you are. Won't you be my
+advocate?'</p>
+
+<p>"He wouldn't argue serious with me now no more than he would when he was
+in knickerbockers. But yet he was adorable. When we got back to the
+library, I went on finishing up the books and I could hear him being
+adorable. He dipped down into the past and brought up rich things&mdash;off
+down old ways of life in the village that he'd had a part in and then
+off on the new ways where his life had led him. Java&mdash;had Insley ever
+been in Java? He must show him the moonstone he got there and tell him
+the story they told him about it. But the queerest moonstone story was
+one he'd got in Lucknow&mdash;so he goes on, and sends Bayless for a cabinet,
+and from one precious stone and another he just naturally drew out
+romances and adventures, as if he was ravelling the stones out into
+them. And then he begun taking down some of his old books. And when it
+come to books, the appeal to Insley was like<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> an appeal of friends, and
+he burrowed into them musty parchments abundant.</p>
+
+<p>"'By George,' Insley says once, 'I didn't dream there were such things
+in Friendship Village.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Next thing you'll forget they're in the world,' says Alex,
+significant. 'Believe me, a man like you ought not to be down here, or
+over to Indian Mound, either. It's an economic waste. Nature has fitted
+you for her glorious present and you're living along about four decades
+ago. Don't you think of that?...'</p>
+
+<p>"Then the telephone on the library table rang and he answered a call
+from the city. 'Oh, buy it in, buy it in, by all means,' he directs.
+'Yes, cable to-night and buy it in. That,' he says, as he hung up, 'just
+reminds me. There's a first night in London to-night that I've been
+promising myself to see.... What a dog's life a business man leads. By
+the way,' he goes on, 'I've about decided to put in one of our plants
+around here somewhere&mdash;a tannery, you know. I've been off to-day looking
+over sites. I wonder if you can't give me some information I'm after
+about land around Indian Mound. I'm not saying anything yet,
+naturally&mdash;they'll give other people a bonus to establish in their
+midst, but the smell of leather is too much for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> them. We always have to
+surprise them into it. But talk about the ultimate good of a town ... if
+a tannery isn't that, what is it?'</p>
+
+<p>"It was after nine o'clock when I got the books set right&mdash;I loved to
+handle them, and there was some I always looked in before I put them up
+because some of the pictures give me feelings I remembered, same as
+tasting some things will&mdash;spearmint and caraway and coriander. Insley,
+of course, walked down with me. Alex wanted to send us in the
+automobile, but I'm kind of afraid of them in the dark. I can't get it
+out of my head that every bump we go over may be bones. And then I guess
+we both sort of wanted the walk.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley was like another man from the one that had come into the library
+that afternoon, or had been talking to us at Mis' Emmons's the night
+before. Down in the village, on Mis' Emmons's hearth, with Robin sitting
+opposite, it had seemed so easy to know ways to do, and to do them.
+Everything seemed possible, as if the whole stiff-muscled universe could
+be done things to if only everybody would once say to it: <i>Our</i>
+universe. But now, after his time with Alex, I knew how everything had
+kind of <i>tightened</i>, closed in around him, shot up into high walls.
+Money, tanneries, big deals by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span> cable, moonstones from Java, they almost
+made me slimpse too, and think, What's the use of believing Alex
+Proudfit and me belong to the same universe? So I guessed how Insley was
+feeling, ready to believe that he had got showed up to himself in his
+true light, as a young, emotioning creature who dreams of getting
+everybody to belong together, and yet can't find no good way. And Alex
+Proudfit's parting words must of followed him down the drive and out on
+to the Plank Road:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Take my advice. Don't spend yourself on this blessed little hole. It's
+dear to me, but it <i>is</i> a hole ... eh? You won't get any thanks for it.
+Ten to one they'll turn on you if you try to be one of them. Get out of
+here as soon as possible, and be in the real world! This is just
+make-believing&mdash;and really, you know, you're too fine a sort to throw
+yourself away like this. Old Nature will take care of the town in good
+time without you. Trust her!'</p>
+
+<p>"Sometimes something happens to make the world seem different from what
+we thought it was. Them times catch all of us&mdash;when we feel like we'd
+been let down gentle from some high foot-path where we'd been going
+along, and instead had been set to walk a hard road in a silence that
+pointed its finger at us. If we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> get really knocked down sudden from a
+high foot-path, we can most generally pick ourselves up and rally. But
+when we've been let down gentle by arguments that seem convincing, and
+by folks that seem to know the world better than we do, then's the time
+when there ain't much of any rally to us. If we're any good, I s'pose we
+can climb back without rallying. Rallying gives some spring to the
+climb, but just straight dog-climbing will get us there, too.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a lovely July night, with June not quite out of the world yet.
+There was that after-dark light in the sky that makes you feel that the
+sky is going to stay lit up behind and shining through all night, as if
+the time was so beautiful that celestial beings must be staying awake to
+watch it, and to keep the sky lit and turned down low.... We walked
+along the Plank Road pretty still, because I guessed how Insley's own
+thoughts was conversation enough for him; but when we got a ways down,
+he kind of reached out with his mind for something and me being near by,
+his mind clutched at me.</p>
+
+<p>"'What if it <i>is</i> so, Miss Marsh?' he says. 'What if the only thing for
+us to do is to tend to personal morality and an occasional lift to an
+under dog or two&mdash;"if he deserves it." What if that's all&mdash;they meant us
+to do?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span></p><p>"It's awful hard giving a reason for your chief notions. It's like
+describing a rose by the tape-measure.</p>
+
+<p>"'Shucks!' I says only. 'Look up at the stars. I don't believe it.'</p>
+
+<p>"He laughed a little, and he did look up at them, but still I knew how
+he felt. And even the stars that night looked awful detached and able to
+take care of themselves. And they were a-shining down on the Plank Road
+that would get to be Daphne Street and go about its business of leading
+to private homes&mdash;<i>private</i> homes. The village, that little cluster of
+lights ahead there, seemed just shutting anybody else out, going its own
+way, kind of mocking anybody for any idea of getting really inside it.
+It was plain enough that Insley had nothing to hope for from Alex
+Proudfit. And Alex's serene sureness that Nature needed nobody to help,
+his real self-satisfied looking on at processes which no man could
+really hurry up&mdash;my, but they made you feel cheap, and too many of
+yourself, and like none of you had a license to take a-hold. For a
+second I caught myself wondering. Maybe Nature&mdash;stars and streets and
+processes&mdash;<i>could</i> work it out without us.</p>
+
+<p>"Something come against my foot. I pushed at it, and then bent over and
+touched it. It<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span> was warm and yieldy, and I lifted it up. And it was a
+puppy that wriggled its body unbelievable and flopped on to my arm its
+inch and a quarter of tail.</p>
+
+<p>"'Look at,' I says to Insley, which, of course, he couldn't do; but I
+put the little thing over into his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, little brother,' says he. 'Running away?'</p>
+
+<p>"We was just in front of the Cadozas', a tumble-down house halfway
+between Proudfit House and the village. It looked like the puppy might
+belong there, so we turned in there with it. I'd always sort of dreaded
+the house, setting in back among lilacs and locusts and never lit up.
+When I stopped to think of it, I never seemed to remember much about
+those lilacs and locusts blooming&mdash;I suppose they did, but nobody caught
+them at it often. Some houses you always think of with their lilacs and
+locusts and wisteria and hollyhocks going all the time; and some you
+never seem to connect up with being in bloom at all. Some houses you
+always seem to think of as being lit up to most of their windows, and
+some you can't call to mind as showing any way but dark. The Cadozas'
+was one of the unblossoming, dark kind, and awful ramshackle, besides.
+I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span> always use' to think it looked like it was waiting for some kind of
+happening, I didn't know what. And sometimes when I come by there in the
+dark, I used to think: It ain't happened yet.</p>
+
+<p>"We went around to the back door to rap, and Mis' Cadoza opened it&mdash;a
+slovenly looking woman she is, with no teeth much, and looking like what
+hair she's got is a burden to her. I remember how she stood there
+against a background of mussy kitchen that made you feel as if you'd
+turned something away wrong side out to where it wasn't meant to be
+looked at.</p>
+
+<p>"'Is it yours, Mis' Cadoza?' I says, Insley holding out the puppy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Murder, it's Patsy,' says Mis' Cadoza. 'Give 'm here&mdash;he must of
+followed Spudge off. Oh, it's you, Miss Marsh.'</p>
+
+<p>"Over by the cook stove in the corner I see past her to something that
+made me bound to go inside a minute. It was a bed, all frowzy and
+tumbled, and in it was laying a little boy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' I says, 'I heard Eph was in bed. What's the matter with him?'
+And I went right in, past his mother, like I was a born guest. She drew
+off, sort of grudging&mdash;she never liked any of us to go there, except
+when some of them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> died, which they was always doing. 'Come in and see
+Eph, Mr. Insley,' I says, and introduced him.</p>
+
+<p>"The little boy wasn't above eight years old and he wasn't above six
+years big.... He was laying real still, with his arms out of bed, and
+his little thin hands flat down on the dark covers. His eyes, looking up
+at us, watching, made me think of some trapped thing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, little brother,' says Insley, 'what's the trouble?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Cadoza come and stood at the foot of the bed and jerked at the top
+covers.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've put him in the bed,' she says, 'because I'm wore out lifting him
+around. An' I've got the bed out here because I can't trapse back an'
+forth waitin' on him.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Is he a cripple?' asks Insley, low. I liked so much to hear his
+voice&mdash;it was as if it lifted and lowered itself in his throat without
+his bothering to tell it which kind it was time to do. And I never heard
+his voice make a mistake.</p>
+
+<p>"'Cripple?' says Mis' Cadoza, in her kind of undressed voice. 'No. He
+fell in a tub of hot water years ago, and his left leg is witherin' up.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Let me see it,' says Insley, and pulled the covers back without
+waiting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span></p><p>"There ain't nothing more wonderful than a strong, capable, quick human
+hand doing something it knows how to do. Insley's hands touched over the
+poor little leg of the child until I expected to see it get well right
+there under his fingers. He felt the cords of the knee and then looked
+up at the mother.</p>
+
+<p>"'Haven't they told you,' he says, 'that if he has an operation on his
+knee, you can have a chance at saving the leg? I knew a case very like
+this where the leg was saved.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I ain't been to see nobody about it,' says Mis' Cadoza, leaving her
+mouth open afterwards, like she does. 'What's the good? I can't pay for
+no operation on him. I got all I can do to keep 'm alive.'</p>
+
+<p>"Eph moved a little, and something fell down on the floor. Mis' Cadoza
+pounced on it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't I forbid you?' she says, angry, and held out to us what she'd
+picked up&mdash;a little dab of wet earth. 'He digs up all my house plants,'
+she scolds, like some sort of machinery grating down on one place
+continual, 'an' he hauls the dirt out and lays there an' makes
+<i>figgers</i>. The idear! Gettin' the sheets a sight....'</p>
+
+<p>"The child looked over at us, defiant. He<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span> spoke for the first time, and
+I was surprised to hear how kind of grown-up his voice was.</p>
+
+<p>"'I can get 'em to look like faces,' he says. 'I don't care what <i>she</i> says.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Show us,' commands Insley.</p>
+
+<p>"He got back the bit of earth from Mis' Cadoza, and found a paper for
+the crumbs, and pillowed the boy up and sat beside him. The thin, dirty
+little hands went to work as eager as birds pecking, and on the earth
+that he packed in his palm he made, with his thumb nail and a pen handle
+from under his pillow, a face&mdash;a boy's face, that had in it something
+that looked at you. 'But I can never get 'em to look the same way two
+times,' he says to us, shy.</p>
+
+<p>"'He's most killed my Lady Washington geranium draggin' the clay out
+from under the roots,' Mis' Cadoza put in, resentful.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley sort of sweeps around and looks acrost at her, deep and gentle,
+and like he understood about her boy and her geranium considerable
+better than she did.</p>
+
+<p>"'He won't do it any more,' he says. 'He'll have something better.'</p>
+
+<p>"The boy looked up at him. 'What?' he asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Clay,' says Insley, 'in a box. With things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span> for you to make the clay
+like. Do you want that?'</p>
+
+<p>"The boy kind of curled down in his pillow and come as near to shuffling
+as he could in the bed, and he hadn't an idea what to say. But I tell
+you, his eyes, they wasn't like any trapped thing any more; they was
+regular <i>boy's</i> eyes, lit up about something.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mrs. Cadoza,' Insley says, 'will you do something for me? We're trying
+to get together a little shrubbery, over at the college. May I come in
+and get some lilac roots from you some day?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Cadoza looked at him&mdash;and looked. I don't s'pose it had ever come
+to her before that anybody would want anything she had or anything she
+could do.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, sure,' she says, only. 'Sure, you can, Mr. What's-name.'</p>
+
+<p>"And then Insley put out his hand, and she took it, I noted special. I
+donno as I ever see anybody shake hands with her before, excep' when
+somebody was gettin' buried out of her house.</p>
+
+<p>"When we got out on the road again, I noticed that Insley went swinging
+along so's I could hardly keep up with him; and he done it sort of
+automatic, and like it was natural<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span> to him. I didn't say anything. If
+I've learned one thing living out and in among human beings, it's that
+if you don't do your own keeping still at the right time, nobody else is
+going to do it for you. He spoke up after a minute like I thought he
+would; and he spoke up buoyant&mdash;kind of a reverent buoyant:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't believe we're discharged from the universe, after all,' he
+says, and laughed a little. 'I believe we've still got our job.'</p>
+
+<p>"I looked 'way down the Plank Road, on its way to its business of being
+Daphne Street, and it come to me that neither the one nor the other
+stopped in Friendship Village. But they led on out, down past the wood
+lots and the Pump pasture and across the tracks and up the hill, and
+right off into that sky that somebody was keeping lit up and turned down
+low. And I said something that I'd thought before:</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't it,' I says, 'like sometimes everybody in the world come and
+stood right close up beside of you, and spoke through the walls of you
+for something inside of you to come out and be there with them?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's it,' he says, only. 'That's it.' But I see his mind nipped onto
+what mine meant, and tied it in the right place.</p>
+
+<p>"When we got to Mis' Emmons's corner, I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> turned off from Daphne Street
+to go that way, because I'd told her I'd look in that night and see what
+they'd bought in town. It was late, for the village, but Mis' Emmons
+never minded that. The living-room light was showing through the
+curtains, and Insley, saying good night to me, looked towards the
+windows awful wistful. I guessed why. It was part because he felt as if
+he must see Robin Sidney and they must talk over together what Alex
+Proudfit had said to him. And part it was just plain because he wanted
+to see her again.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why don't you come in a minute,' I says, 'and ask after Christopher?
+Then you can see me home.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Wouldn't they mind it being late?' he asks.</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help smiling at that. Once Mis' Emmons had called us all up
+by telephone at ten o'clock at night to invite us to her house two days
+later. She explained afterwards that she hadn't looked at the clock for
+a week, but if she had, she might have called us just the same. 'For my
+life,' she says, 'I <i>can't</i> be afraid of ten o'clock. Indeed, I rather
+like it.' I told him this, while we was walking in from her gate.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mrs. Emmons,' he says, when she come to the door, 'I've come because I
+hear that you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> like ten o'clock, and so do I. I wanted to ask if you've
+ever been able to make it last?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' she says. 'I prefer a new one every night&mdash;and this one to-night
+is an exceptionally good one.'</p>
+
+<p>"She always answered back so pretty. I feel glad when folks can. It's
+like they had an extra brain to 'em.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley went in, and he sort of filled up the whole room, the way some
+men do. He wasn't so awful big, either. But he was pervading.
+Christopher had gone to bed, and Robin Sidney was sitting there near a
+big crock of hollyhocks&mdash;she could make the centre and life of a room a
+crock full of flowers just as you can make it a fireplace.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come in,' she says, 'and see what we bought Christopher. I wanted to
+put him in black velvet knickerbockers or silver armour, but Aunt
+Eleanor has bought chiefly khaki middies. She's such a sensible
+relative.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What are we going to do with him?' Insley asks. I loved the way he
+always said 'we' about everything. Not 'they' or 'you,' but always,
+'What are <i>we</i> going to do.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll keep him awhile,' Mis' Emmons says, 'and see what develops. If I
+weren't going to Europe this fall&mdash;but something may happen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> Things do.
+Calliope,' she says to me, 'did I buy what I ought to have bought?'</p>
+
+<p>"I went over to see the things spread out on the table, and Insley
+turned round to where Robin was. I don't really believe he had been very
+far away from where she was since the night before, when Christopher
+come. And he got right into what he had to say, like he was impatient
+for the sympathy in her eyes and in her voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'I must tell you,' he says. 'I could hardly wait to tell you. Isn't it
+great to be knocked down and picked up again, without having to get back
+on your own feet. I&mdash;wanted to tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell me,' she says. And she looked at him in her nice, girl way that
+lent him her eyes in good faith for just a minute and then took them
+back again.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've been to see Alex Proudfit,' he said. 'I've dined with him.'</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think she said anything at all, but Insley went on, absorbed in
+what he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"'I talked with him,' he says, 'about what we talked of last night&mdash;the
+things to do, here in the village. I thought he might care&mdash;I was
+foolish enough for that. Have you ever tried to open a door in a solid
+wall? When<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span> I left there, I felt as if I'd tried just that. Seriously,
+have you ever tried to talk about the way things are going to be and to
+talk about it to a perfectly satisfied man?'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin leaned forward, but I guess he thought that was because of her
+sympathy. He went right on:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I want never to speak of this to anyone else, but I can't help telling
+you. You&mdash;understand. You know what I'm driving at. Alex Proudfit is a
+good man&mdash;as men are counted good. And he's a perfect host, a
+fascinating companion. But he's a type of the most dangerous selfishness
+that walks the world&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin suddenly laid her hand, just for a flash, on Insley's arm.</p>
+
+<p>"'You mustn't tell me,' she says. 'I ought to have told you before. Alex
+Proudfit&mdash;I'm going to be Alex Proudfit's wife.'</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>V</h2>
+
+<p>"In the next days things happened that none of us Friendship Village
+ladies is likely ever to forget. Some of the things was nice and some
+was exciting, and some was the kind that's nice after you've got the
+introduction wore off; but all of them was memorable. And most all of
+them was the kind that when you're on the train looking out the car
+window, or when you're home sitting in the dusk before it's time to
+light the lamp, you fall to thinking about and smiling over, and you
+have them always around with you, same as heirlooms you've got ready for
+yourself.</p>
+
+<p>"One of these was the Fourth of July that year. It fell a few days after
+Alex Proudfit come, and the last of the days was full of his guests
+arriving to the house party. The two Proudfit cars was racking back and
+forth to the station all day long, and Jimmy Sturgis, he went near crazy
+with getting the baggage up. I never see such a lot of baggage. 'Land,
+land,' says Mis' Toplady, peeking out her window at it, 'you'd think
+they was all trees and they'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span> come bringing extra sets of branches,
+regular forest size.' Mis' Emmons and Robin and Christopher went up the
+night before the Fourth&mdash;Mis' Emmons was going to do the chaperoning,
+and Alex had asked me to be up there all I could to help him. He knows
+how I love to have a hand in things. However, I couldn't be there right
+at first, because getting ready for the Fourth of July was just then in
+full swing.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what it is to want to do over again something that you
+ain't done for years and years? I don't care what it is&mdash;whether it's
+wanting to be back sitting around the dinner table of your home when you
+was twelve, and them that was there aren't there now; or whether it's
+rocking in the cool of the day on the front porch of some old house that
+got tore down long ago; or whether it's walking along a road you use' to
+know every fence post of; or fishing from a stream that's dried up or
+damned these twenty years; or eating spice' currants or pickle' peaches
+that there aren't none put up like them now; or hearing a voice in a
+glee club that don't sing no more, or milking a dead cow that <i>wasn't</i>
+dead on the spring mornings you mean about&mdash;no, sir, I don't care what
+one of them all it happens to be, if you know what it is to want to do
+it again and can't, 'count of death and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>distance and long-ago-ness,
+then I tell you you know one of the lonesomest, hurtingest feelings the
+human heart can, sole outside of the awful things. And that was what had
+got the matter with me awhile ago.</p>
+
+<p>"It had come on me in the meeting of townspeople called by Silas Sykes a
+few weeks before, to discuss how Friendship Village should celebrate the
+Fourth. We hadn't had a Fourth in the village in years. Seeing the
+Fourth and the Cemetery was so closely connected, late years, Sodality
+had took a hand in the matter and had got fire-crackers and pistols
+voted out of town, part by having family fingers blowed off and clothes
+scorched full of holes, and part through Silas and the other dealers
+admitting they wan't no money in the stuff and they'd be glad to be
+prevented by law from having to sell it. So we shut down on it the year
+after little Spudge Cadoza bit down on a cap to see if it'd go off, and
+it done so. But we see we'd made the mistake of not hatching up
+something to take the place of the noise, because the boys and girls all
+went off to the next-town Fourths and come home blowed up and scorched
+off, anyway. And some of the towns, especially Red Barns, that we can
+see from Friendship Village when it's clear, was feeling awful touchy
+and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span>chip-shouldered towards us, and their two weekly papers was saying
+we borrowed our year's supply of patriotism off the county, and sponged
+on public spirit, and like that. So the general Friendship feeling was
+that we'd ought to have a doings this year, and Postmaster Sykes, that
+ain't so much public spirited as he is professional leading
+citizen,&mdash;platform introducer of all visiting orators and so on,&mdash;he
+called a mass-meeting to decide what to do.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes, she was awful interested, too, through being a born leader
+and up in arms most of the time to do something new. And this year she
+was anxious to get up something fancy to impress her niece with&mdash;the new
+niece that was coming to visit her, and that none of us had ever see,
+and that the Sykes's themselves had only just developed. Seems she was
+looking for her family tree and she wrote to Mis' Sykes about being
+connect'. And the letter seemed so swell, and the address so
+mouth-melting and stylish that Mis' Sykes up and invited her to
+Friendship Village to look herself up in their Bible, Born and Died
+part.</p>
+
+<p>"The very night of that public mass-meeting Miss Beryl Sessions&mdash;such
+was the niece's name&mdash;come in on the Through, and Mis' Sykes, she
+snapped her up from the supper table to bring<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> her to the meeting and
+show her off, all brimming with the blood-is-thicker-than-water
+sentiments due to a niece that looked like that. For I never see
+sweller. And being in the Glee Club I set where I got a good view when
+Mis' Sykes rustled into the meeting, last minute, in her best black
+cashmere, though it was an occasion when the rest of us would wear our
+serges and alapacas, and Mis' Sykes knew it. All us ladies see them both
+and took in every stitch they had on without letting on to unpack a
+glance, and we see that the niece was wearing the kind of a dress that
+was to ours what mince-pie is to dried apple, and I couldn't blame Mis'
+Sykes for showing her off, human.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas had had Dr. June open the meeting with prayer, and I can't feel
+that this was so much reverence in Silas as that he isn't real
+parliamentary nor yet real knowledgeable about what to do with his
+hands, and prayer sort of broke the ice for him. That's the way Silas
+is.</p>
+
+<p>"'Folks,' says he, 'we're here to consider the advisability of bein'
+patriotic this year. Of having a doings that'll shame the other towns
+around for their half-an'-half way of giving things. Of making the
+glorious Fourth a real business bringer. Of having a speech that'll
+bring in the country trade&mdash;the Honourable<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span> Thaddeus Hyslop has been
+named by some. And of getting our city put in the class of the wide
+awake and the hustlers and the up-to-date and doing. It's a grand chance
+we've passed up for years. What are we going to do for ourselves this
+year? To decide it is the purpose of this mass-meetin'. Sentiments are
+now in order.'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas set down with a kitterin' glance to his new niece that he was
+host and uncle of and pleased to be put in a good light before, first
+thing so.</p>
+
+<p>"Several men hopped up&mdash;Timothy Toplady saying that Friendship Village
+was a city in all but name and numbers, and why not prove it to the
+other towns? Jimmy Sturgis that takes tintypes, besides running the 'bus
+and was all primed for a day full of both&mdash;'A glorious Fourth,' says he,
+'would be money in our pockets.' And the farm machinery and furniture
+dealers, and Gekerjeck, that has the drug store and the ice-cream
+fountain, and others, they spoke the same. Insley had to be to the
+college that night, or I don't believe the meeting would have gone the
+way it did go. For the first line and chorus of everything that all the
+men present said never varied:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'The Fourth for a business bringer.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p><p>"It was Threat Hubbelthwait that finally made the motion, and he wasn't
+real sober, like he usually ain't, but he wound up on the key-note:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I sold two hundred and four lunches the last Fourth we hed in
+Friendship Village,' says he, pounding his palm with his fist, 'an' I
+move you that we celebrate this comin' Fourth like the blazes.'</p>
+
+<p>"And though Silas softened it down some in putting it, still that was
+substantially the sentiment that went through at that mass-meeting, that
+was real pleased with itself because of.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, us ladies hadn't taken no part. It ain't our custom to appear
+much on our feet at public gatherings, unless to read reports of a
+year's work, and so that night we never moved a motion. But we looked at
+each other, and us ladies has got so we understand each other's
+eyebrows. And we knew, one and all, that we was ashamed of the men and
+ashamed of their sentiments. But the rest didn't like to speak out,
+'count of being married to them. And I didn't like to, 'count of not
+being.</p>
+
+<p>"But when they got to discussing ways and means of celebrating, a woman
+did get onto her feet, and a little lilt of interest run round the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span> room
+like wind. It was Miss Beryl Sessions, the niece, that stood up like
+you'd unwrapped your new fashion magazine and unrolled her off'n the
+front page.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wonder,' says she&mdash;and her voice went all sweet and chirpy and
+interested, 'whether it would amuse you to know some ways we took to
+celebrate the Fourth of July last year at home ...' and while the men
+set paying attention to her appearance and thinking they was paying
+attention to her words alone, she went on to tell them how 'at home' the
+whole town had joined in a great, Fourth of July garden party on the
+village 'common,' with a band and lanterns and fireworks at night, and a
+big marquee in the middle, full of ice-cream. 'We made it,' she wound
+up, 'a real social occasion, a town party with everybody invited. And
+the business houses said that it paid them over and over.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, of course that went with the men. Land, but men is easy tamed, so
+be the tameress is somebody they ain't used to and is gifted with a good
+dress and a kind of a 'scalloped air. But when she also has some idea of
+business they go down and don't know it. 'Why, I should think that'd
+take here like a warm meal,' says Timothy Toplady, instant&mdash;and I see
+Mis' Amanda Toplady's chin come home to place like she'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span> heard Timothy
+making love to another woman. 'Novel as the dickens,' says Simon
+Gekerjeck. 'Move we adopt it.' And so they done.</p>
+
+<p>"While they was appointing committees I set up there in the Glee Club
+feeling blacker and blacker. Coming down to the meeting that night, I
+recollect I'd been extra gentle in my mind over the whole celebration
+idea. Walking along in the seven-o'clock light, with the sun shining
+east on Daphne Street and folks all streaming to the town-meeting, and
+me sensing what it was going to be for, I'd got all worked up to 'most a
+Declaration of Independence lump in my throat. When I went in the door
+to the meeting, little Spudge Cadoza and some other children was hanging
+around the steps and Silas Sykes was driving them away; and it come to
+me how deathly ridiculous that was, to be driving <i>children</i> away from a
+meeting like that, when children is what such meetings is for; and I'd
+got to thinking of all the things Insley was hoping for us, and I'd been
+real lifted up on to places for glory. And here down had come the men
+with their talk about a <i>paying</i> Fourth, and here was Miss Beryl
+Sessions showing us how to celebrate in a way that seemed to me real
+sweet but not so very patriotic. It was then that all of a sudden it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span>
+seemed to me I'd die, because I wanted so much to feel the way I'd use
+to feel when it was going to be the Fourth o' July. And when they sung
+'Star Spangled Banner' to go home on and all stood up to the sentiment,
+I couldn't open my mouth. I can't go folks that stands up and carols
+national tunes and then talks about having a Fourth that'll be a real
+business bringer.</p>
+
+<p>"'What'd you think of the meeting?' says Mis' Toplady, low, to me on the
+way out.</p>
+
+<p>"'I think,' says I, frank, 'it was darn.'</p>
+
+<p>"'There's just exactly what we all think,' says Mis' Toplady, in a
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"But all the same, preparations was gone into head first. Most of us was
+put on to from one to five committees&mdash;I mean most of them that works.
+The rest of the town was setting by, watching it be done for them,
+serene or snarling, according to their lights. Of course us ladies
+worked, not being them that goes to a meeting an' sets with their mouths
+shut and then comes out and kicks at what the meetin' done. Yet, though
+we wan't made out of that kind of meal, we spoke our minds to each
+other, private.</p>
+
+<p>"'What under the canopy <i>is</i> a marquee?' asks Mis' Amanda Toplady, when
+we met at her house to plan about refreshments.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke right up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, it's a finger ring,' she says. 'One of them with stones running
+the long way. The minister's wife's got a blue stone one....'</p>
+
+<p>"'Finger ring!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, scornful. 'It's a title. That's
+what it is. From England.'</p>
+
+<p>"We looked at them both, perplexish. Mis' Holcomb is always up on
+things&mdash;it was her that went into short sleeves when the rest of us was
+still crocheting cuff turnovers, unconscious as the dead. But Mis'
+Uppers had been the Mayor's wife, and though he'd run away, 'count o'
+some money matter, still a title is a title, an' we thought Mis' Uppers
+had ought to know.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, she spoke up timid. 'I
+see,' she says, 'in the <i>Caterer's Gazette</i> a picture called "Marquee
+Decorated for F&ecirc;te." The picture wan't nothing but a striped tent. Could
+a tent have anything to do with it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Pity sakes, no,' says Mis' Uppers. 'This is somethin' real city done,
+Abagail.'</p>
+
+<p>"We worked on what we could, but we all felt kind of lost and left out
+of it, and like we was tinkering with tools we didn't know the names<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> of
+and a-making something we wasn't going to know how to use. And when the
+article about our Fourth flared out in the <i>Friendship Daily</i> and Red
+Barns and Indian Mound weeklies, we felt worse than we had before:
+'Garden Party.' 'All Day F&ecirc;te.' '<i>Al Fresco</i> Celebration,' the editors
+had wrote it up.</p>
+
+<p>"'All <i>what</i>?' says Mis' Uppers, listening irritable to the last one. 'I
+can't catch that word no more'n a rabbit.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's a French word,' Mis' Holcomb told her, superior. 'Seems to me
+I've heard it means a failure. It's a funny way to put it, ain't it? I
+bet, though, that's what it'll be.'</p>
+
+<p>"But the men, my, the men thought they was doing things right. The
+Committee on Orator, with Silas for rudder, had voted itself Fifty
+Dollars to squander on the speech, and they had engaged the Honourable
+Thaddeus Hyslop, that they'd hoped to, and that was formerly in our
+legislature, to be the orator of the day; they put up a platform and
+seats on the 'common'&mdash;that wan't nothing but the market where loads of
+wood stood to be sold; they was a-going to cut evergreens and plant them
+there for the day; the Committee on Fireworks was a-going to buy set
+pieces for the evening; they was a-going to raise Ned. Somebody that was
+on<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span> one of the committees wanted to have some sort of historic scenes,
+but the men wouldn't hear to it, because that would take away them that
+had to do the business in the stores; no caluthumpians, no grand basket
+dinner&mdash;just the garden party, real sweet, with Miss Beryl Sessions and
+a marquee full of ice-cream that the ladies was to make.</p>
+
+<p>"'It sounds sort of sacrilegious to me,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'connectin'
+the Fourth up with society and secular doin's. When I was young, my
+understandin' of a garden party would of been somethin' worldly. Now it
+seems it's patriotic. Well, I wonder how it's believed to be in the
+sight of the Lord?'</p>
+
+<p>"But whether it was right or whether it was wrong, none of it rung like
+it had ought to of rang. They wan't no <i>glow</i> to it. We all went around
+like getting supper on wash-day, and not like getting up a meal for
+folks that meant a lot to us. It wan't going to be any such Fourth as
+I'd meant about and wanted to have come back. The day come on a pacing,
+and the nearer it come, the worse all us ladies felt. And by a few days
+before it, when our final committee meeting come off in Abagail Arnold's
+home bakery, back room, 'count of being central, we was all blue as the
+grave, and I donno but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> bluer. We set waiting for Silas that was having
+a long-distance call, and Abagail was putting in the time frosting dark
+cakes in the same room. We was most all there but the niece Miss Beryl
+Sessions. She had gone home, but she was coming back on the Fourth in an
+automobile full o' city folks.</p>
+
+<p>"'The <i>marquee's</i> come,' says Mis' Holcomb, throwing out the word
+clickish.</p>
+
+<p>"Nobody said anything. Seems it <i>was</i> a tent all along.</p>
+
+<p>"'Silas has got in an extra boy for the day,' says Mis' Sykes,
+complacent. 'It's the littlest Cadoza boy, Spudge. He's goin' to walk up
+an' down Daphne Street all day, with a Prize Coffee board on his back.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Where's Spudge's Fourth comin' in?' I couldn't help askin'.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes stared. She always could look you down, but she's got a much
+flatter, thicker stare since her niece come. 'What's them kind o' folks
+<i>for</i> but such work?' says she, puckering.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I donno, I donno,' says I. 'I thought mebbe they was partly made
+to thank the Lord for bein' born free.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How unpractical you talk, Calliope,' she says.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span></p><p>"'I donno that word,' says I, reckless from being pent up. 'But it
+seems like a liberty-lovin' people had ought to hev <i>one</i> day to love
+liberty on an' not tote groceries and boards and such.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Don't it!</i>' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, explosive.</p>
+
+<p>"'What you talking?' says Mis' Sykes, cold. 'Don't you know the Fourth
+of July can be made one of the best days of the year for your own town's
+good? What's that if it ain't patriotic?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's Yankee shrewd,' says I, snapping some, 'that's what it is. It
+ain't Yankee spirited, by a long shot.'</p>
+
+<p>"'"<i>By a long shot</i>,"' quotes Mis' Sykes, withering. She always was
+death on wording, and she was far more death after her niece come. But I
+always thought, and I think now, that correcting your advisary's grammar
+is like telling him there's a smooch on his nose, and they ain't either
+of them parliamental <i>or</i> decent.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Uppers sighed. 'The whole thing,' says she, candid, 'sounds to me
+like Fourth o' July in Europe or somewheres. No get-up-an'-get anywheres
+to it. What do they do in Europe on the Fourth o' July, anyway?' she
+wondered. 'I donno's I ever read.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span></p><p>"'I donno, either,' says Mis' Holcomb, dark, 'but I bet you it's one of
+these All Frost celebrations&mdash;or whatever it is they say.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady set drying her feet by Abagail's stove, and she looked
+regular down in the mouth. 'Well, sir,' she said, 'a Fourth o' July all
+rosettes an' ribbins so don't sound to me one bit like the regular
+Fourth at all. It don't sound to me no more'n the third&mdash;or the fifth.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was getting that same homesick feeling that I'd had off and on all
+through the getting ready, that hankering for the old kinds of Fourths
+of Julys when I was a little girl. When us girls had a quarter apiece to
+spend, and father'd cover the quarter with his hands on the gate-post
+for us to guess them; and when the boys picked up scrap-iron and sold
+old rubbers to get their Fourth money. It wan't so much what we used to
+do that I wanted back as it was the <i>feeling</i>. Why, none of our spines
+use' to be laid down good and flat in our backs once all day long. And I
+wisht what I'd wisht more than once since the mass-meeting, that some of
+us ladies had of took hold of that Fourth and had run it so's 'twould of
+been like you mean 'way inside when you say 'The Fourth of July'&mdash;and
+that death and distance and long-ago-ness is awful in the way of.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span></p><p>"'We'd ought to of had a grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods,' I
+says, restless.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' a p'rade,' says Mis' Toplady. 'I donno nothin' that makes me feel
+more patriotic than the minute before the p'rade comes by.'</p>
+
+<p>"'An' children in the Fourth somehow,' Mis' Uppers says. 'Land, children
+is who it's for, anyhow,' she says, like I'd been thinking; 'an' all
+we've ever done for 'em about it is to leave 'em kill 'emselves with
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was there, just there, and before Mis' Sykes could dicker a
+reply that in come tearing her husband from his long-distance
+telephoning, and raced into the room like he hadn't a manner in his kit.</p>
+
+<p>"'We're all over with,' Silas shouts. 'It's all done for! Thaddeus
+Hyslop is smashed an' bleedin'. He can't come. We ain't got no speech.
+His automobile's turned over on top of his last speakin' place.
+Everybody else that ain't one-horse is sure to be got for somewheres
+else. Our Fourth of July is rooned. We're done for. The editor's gettin'
+it in the <i>Weekly</i> so's to warn the county. We'll be the Laughing Stock.
+Dang the luck!' says Silas; 'why don't some o' you say somethin'?'</p>
+
+<p>"But it wasn't all because Silas was doing it all that the men didn't
+talk, because when he'd<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span> stopped, they all stood there with their mouths
+open and never said a word. Seems to me I did hear Timothy Toplady bring
+out, 'Blisterin' Benson,' but nobody offered nothing more fertile. That
+is, nobody of the men did. But 'most before I got my thoughts together I
+heard two feet of a chair come down onto the floor, and Mis' Amanda
+Toplady stood up there by Abagail's cook stove, and she took the griddle
+lifter and struck light on the side of the pipe.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hurrah!' she says. 'Now we can have a real Fourth. A Fourth that does
+as a Fourth is.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What you talkin', Amanda Toplady?' says Silas, crisp; and ''Mandy,
+what the blazes do you mean?' says Timothy, her lawful lord. But Mis'
+Toplady didn't mind them, nor mind Mis' Sykes, that was staring at her
+flat and thick.</p>
+
+<p>"'I mean,' says Mis' Toplady, reckless, 'I been sick to death of the
+idea of a Fourth with no spirit to it. I mean I been sick to death of a
+Fourth that's all starched white dresses an' company manners an' no
+hurrahs anywheres about it. An' us ladies, most all of us, feels the
+same. We didn't like to press in, bein' you men done the original
+plannin', an' so not one of us has said "P'rade," nor nothin' else to
+you. But now that your orator has fell through on himself, you men just
+leave us ladies in on this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> thing to do more'n take orders, an' you
+needn't be the Laughin' Stock o' nothin' an' nobody. I guess you'll all
+stand by me. What say, ladies?'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, you'd ought to of heard us. We joined in like a patch of
+grasshoppers singing. They wasn't one of us that hadn't been dying to
+get our hands on that Fourth and make it a Fourth full of unction and
+oil of joy, like the Bible said, and must of meant what we meant.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, ladies,' I remember I says, fervent, 'I feel like we could make a
+Fourth o' July just like stirrin' up a white cake, so be we was let.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What d' you know about managin' a Fourth?' snarls Silas. 'You'll have
+us all in the hole. You'll have us shellin' out of our own pockets to
+make up&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady whirled on him. 'Would you druther have Red Barns an'
+Indian Mound a-jumpin' on you through the weekly press for bein'
+bluffers, an' callin' us cheap an' like that, or would you druther not?'
+she put it to him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dang it,' says Silas, 'I never tried to do a thing for this town that
+it didn't lay down an' roll all over me. I wish I was dead.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You wan't tryin' to do this thing for this town,' says Mis' Toplady
+back at him, like the wind. 'You was tryin' to do it for the <i>stores</i>
+of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> this town, an' you know it. You was tryin' to ride the Fourth for a
+horse to the waterin' trough o' good business, an' you know it, Silas
+Sykes,' says she, 'an' so was Jimmy and Threat an' all of you. The hull
+country tries to get behind the Fourth of July an' make money over its
+back like a counter. It ain't what was meant, an' us ladies felt it all
+along. An' neither was it meant for a garden party day alone, though
+<i>that</i>,' says Mis' Toplady, gracious, 'is a real sweet side idea. An'
+Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Sessions had ought to go on an' run that part of it,
+bein' the&mdash;tent's here,' she could <i>not</i> bring herself to use that other
+word. 'But,' she says, 'that ain't all of a real Fourth, nor yet a
+speech ain't, though he did use to be in the legislature. Them things
+alone don't make a real flag, liberty-praisin' Fourth, to me nor to none
+of us.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Silas, sour, 'what you goin' to <i>do</i> if the men decides to
+let you try this?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That ain't the way,' says Mis' Toplady, like a flash; 'it ain't for
+the men to <i>let us do</i> nothin'. It's for us all to do it together, yoke
+to yoke, just like everything else ought to be done by us both, an' no
+talk o' "<i>runnin</i>'" by either side.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But what's the idee&mdash;what's the idee?'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span> says Silas. 'Dang it all,
+somebody's got to hev an idee.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Us ladies has got 'em,' says Mis' Toplady, calm. 'An',' says she, 'one
+o' the first of 'em is that if we have anything to do with runnin' the
+Fourth of our forefathers, then after 10 <span class="smaller">A.M.</span>, all day on that day,
+every business house in town has got to shut down.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What?' says Silas, his voice slippin'. 'Gone crazy-headed, hev ye?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, Silas,' says Mis' Toplady, 'nor yet hev we gone so graspin' that
+we can't give up a day's trade to take notice of our country.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Lord Harry,' says Silas, 'you can't get a dealer in town to do it, an'
+you know it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, yes, you can, Silas,' says somebody, brisk. And it was Abagail,
+frosting dark cakes over by the side of the room. 'I was goin' to shut
+up shop, anyway, all day on the Fourth,' Abagail says.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' lose the country trade in lunches?' yells Silas. 'Why, woman,
+you'd be Ten Dollars out o' pocket.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I wan't never one to spend the mornin' thankin' God an' the afternoon
+dippin' oysters,' says Abagail. And Silas scrunched. He done that one
+year when his Thanksgiving oysters come late, and he knew he done it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p><p>"Well, they went over it and over it and tried to think of some other
+way, and tried to hatch up some other speaker without eating up the
+whole Fifty Dollars in telephone tolls, and tried most other things. And
+then we told them what we'd thought of different times, amongst us as
+being features fit for a Fourth in the sight of the Lord and the sight
+of men. And they hemmed and they hawed and they give in about as
+graceful as a clothes-line winds up when you've left it out in the
+sleet, but they did give in and see reason. Timothy last&mdash;that's quite
+vain of being firm.</p>
+
+<p>"'If we come out with a one-horse doin's, seems like it'd be worse than
+sittin' down flat-foot failed,' he mourns, grieving.</p>
+
+<p>"Amanda, his wife, give him one of her looks. 'Timothy,' says she,
+'when, since you was married to me, did I ever fail to stodge up a
+company dinner or a spare bed or a shroud when it was needed sudden?
+When did any of us ladies ever fail that's here? Do you sp'ose we're any
+more scant of idees about our own nation?'</p>
+
+<p>"And Timothy had to keep his silence. He knew what she said was the Old
+Testament truth. But I think what really swung them all round was the
+thought of Red Barns and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> Indian Mound. Imagination of what them two
+weekly papers would say, so be we petered out on our speech and didn't
+offer nothing else, was too much for flesh and blood to bear. And the
+men ended by agreeing to seeing to shutting every business house in
+Friendship Village and they went off to do it,&mdash;resolved, but groaning
+some, like men will.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes, she made some excuse and went, too. 'I'll run the garden
+party part,' says she. 'My niece an' I'll do that, an' try our best to
+get some novelty into your Fourth. An' we'll preside on the marquee,
+like we'd agreed. More I don't say.'</p>
+
+<p>"But the rest of us, we stayed on there at Abagail's, and we planned
+like mad.</p>
+
+<p>"We didn't look in no journal nor on no woman's page for something new.
+We didn't rush to our City relations for novelties. We didn't try for
+this and that nor grasp at no agony whatever. We just went down deep
+into the inside of our understanding and thought what the Fourth was and
+how them that made it would of wanted it kept. No fingers blowed off nor
+clothes scorched up, no houses burned down, no ear-drums busted
+out&mdash;none of them would of been in <i>their</i> programme, and they wan't in
+ours. Some of the things that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> was in ours we'd got by hearing Insley
+tell what they was doin' other places. Some o' the things he suggested
+to us. Some o' the things we got by just going back and back down the
+years an' <i>remembering</i>&mdash;not so much what we'd done as the way we use'
+to feel, long ago, when the Fourth was the Fourth and acted like it knew
+it. Some of the things we got by just reaching forward and forward, and
+seeing what the Fourth is going to mean to them a hundred years from
+now&mdash;so be we do our part. And some of the things we got through sheer
+make-shift woman intelligence, that put its heads together and used
+everything it had, that had anything to do with the nation, or the town,
+or with really living at all the way that first Fourth of July meant
+about, 'way down inside.</p>
+
+<p>"Before it was light on the morning of the Fourth, I woke up, feeling
+all happy and like I wanted to hurry. I was up and dressed before the
+sun was up, and when I opened my front door, I declare it was just like
+the glory of the Lord was out there waiting for me. The street was
+laying all still and simple, like it was ready and waiting for the
+light. Early as it was, Mis' Holcomb was just shaking her breakfast
+table-cloth on her side stoop, and she waved it to me, big and billowy
+and white,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span> like a banner. And I offs with my apron and waved it back,
+and it couldn't of meant no more to either of us if we had been shaking
+out the folds of flags. It was too early for the country wagons to be
+rattling in yet, and they wan't no other sounds&mdash;except a little bit of
+a pop now and then over to where Bennie Uppers and little Nick Toplady
+was up and out, throwing torpedoes onto the bricks; and then the birds
+that was trilling an' shouting like mad, till every tree all up and down
+Daphne Street and all up and down the town and the valley was just one
+living singing. And all over everything, like a kind of a weave to it,
+was that something that makes a Sunday morning and some holiday mornings
+better and sweeter and <i>goldener</i> than any other day. I ain't got much
+of a garden, not having any real time to fuss in it, but I walked out
+into the middle of the little patch of pinks and parsley that I have
+got, and I says 'way deep in me, deeper than thinking: 'It don't make no
+manner of differ'nce how much of a fizzle the day ends up with, this,
+here and now, is the way it had ought to start.'</p>
+
+<p>"Never, not if I live till beyond always, will I forget how us ladies'
+hearts was in our mouths when, along about 'leven o'clock, we heard the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span>
+Friendship Village Stonehenge band coming fifing along, and we knew the
+parade was begun. We was all on the market square&mdash;hundreds of us, seems
+though. Red Barns and Indian Mound had turned out from side to side of
+themselves, mingling the same as though ploughshares was
+pruning-hooks&mdash;or whatever that quotation time is&mdash;both towns looking
+for flaws in the day, like enough, but both shutting up about it,
+biblical. Even the marquee, with its red and white stripes, showing
+through the trees, made me feel good. 'Land, land,' Mis' Toplady says,
+'it looks kind of homey and old-fashioned, after all, don't it? I mean
+the&mdash;tent,' she says&mdash;she would <i>not</i> say the other word; but then I
+guess it made her kind of mad seeing Mis' Sykes bobbing around in there
+in white duck an' white shoes&mdash;her that ain't a grandmother sole because
+of Nature and not at all through any lack of her own years. Everything
+was all seeming light and confident&mdash;but I tell you we didn't feel so
+confident as we'd meant to when we heard the band a-coming to the tune
+o' 'Hail, Columbia! Happy Land.' And yet now, when I look back on that
+Independence Day procession, it seems like regular floats is no more
+than toy doings beside of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span></p><p>"What do you guess us ladies had thought up for our procession,&mdash;with
+Insley back of us, letting us think we thought it up alone? Mebbe you'll
+laugh, because it wan't expensive to do; but oh; I think it was nice.
+We'd took everything in the town that done the town's work, and we'd run
+them all together. We headed off with the fire-engine, 'count of the
+glitter&mdash;and we'd loaded it down with flags and flowers, and the hook
+and ladder and hose-carts the same, wheels and sides; and flags in the
+rubber caps of the firemen up top. Then we had the two big sprinkling
+carts, wound with bunting, and five-foot flags flying from the seats.
+Then come all the city teams drawn by the city horses&mdash;nice, plump
+horses they was, and rosettes on them, and each man had decorated his
+wagon and was driving it in his best clothes. Then come the steam roller
+that Friendship Village and Red Barns and Indian Mound owns together and
+scraps over some, though that didn't appear in its appearance, puffing
+along, with posies on it. Then there was the city electric light repair
+wagon, with a big paper globe for an umbrella, and the electric men
+riding with their leggings on and their spurs, like they climb the
+poles; and behind them the telephone men was riding<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span>&mdash;because the town
+owns its own telephone, too&mdash;and then the four Centrals, in pretty
+shirtwaists, in a double-seated buggy loaded with flowers&mdash;the telephone
+office we'd see to it was closed down, too, to have its Fourth, like a
+human being. And marching behind them was the city waterworks men, best
+bib and tucker apiece. And then we hed out the galvanized garbage wagon
+that us ladies hed bought ourselves a year ago, and that wasn't being
+used this year count of the city pleading too poison poor; and it was
+all scrubbed up and garnished and filled with ferns and drove by its own
+driver and the boy that had use' to go along to empty the cans. And then
+of course they was more things&mdash;some of them with day fireworks shooting
+up from them&mdash;but not the hearse, though we had all we could do to keep
+Timothy Toplady from having it in, 'count of its common public office.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and then we'd done an innovation&mdash;an' this was all Insley's idea,
+and it was him that made us believe we could do it. Coming next, in
+carriages and on foot, was the mayor and the city council and every last
+man or woman that had anything to do with running the city life. They
+was all there&mdash;city treasurer, clerk of the court, register of deeds,
+sheriffs, marshals,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span> night-watchmen, health officer, postmaster, janitor
+of the city hall, clerks, secretaries, stenographers, school board, city
+teachers, and every one of the rest&mdash;they was all there, just like they
+had belonged in the p'rade the way them framers of the first Fourth of
+July had meant they should fit in: Conscience and all. But some of them
+servants of the town had made money off'n its good roads, and some off'n
+its saloons, and some off'n getting ordinances repealed, and some off'n
+inspecting buildings and sidewalks that they didn't know nothing about,
+and some was making it even then by paving out into the marsh; and some
+in yet other ways that wasn't either real elbow work nor clean head
+work. What else could they do? We'd ask' them to march because they
+represented the town, and rather'n own they <i>didn't</i> represent the town,
+there they was marching; but if some of them didn't step down Daphne
+Street feeling green and sick and sore and right down schoolboy ashamed
+of themselves, then they ain't got the human thrill in them that somehow
+I <i>cannot</i> believe ever dies clear out of nobody. They was a lump in my
+throat for them that had sold themselves, and they was a lump for them
+that hadn't&mdash;but oh, the differ'nce in the lumps.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span></p><p>"'Land, land,' I says to Mis' Toplady, 'if we ain't done another thing,
+we've made 'em remember they're servants to Friendship Village&mdash;like
+they often forget.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't we?' she says, solemn. 'Ain't we?'</p>
+
+<p>"And then next behind begun the farm things: the threshin' machines and
+reapers and binders and mowers and like that, all drawn by the farm
+horses and drove by their owners and decorated by them, jolly and gay;
+and, too, all the farm horses for miles around&mdash;we was going to give a
+donated surprise prize for the best kep' and fed amongst them. And last,
+except for the other two bands sprinkled along, come the leading
+citizens, and who do you guess <i>they</i> was? Not Silas nor Timothy nor
+Eppleby nor even Doctor June, nor our other leading business men and our
+three or four professionals&mdash;no, not them; but the real, true, leading
+citizens of Friendship Village and Indian Mound and Red Barns and other
+towns and the farms between&mdash;the <i>children</i>, over two hundred of them,
+dressed in white if they had it and in dark if they didn't, with or
+without shoes, in rags or out of them, village-tough descended or with
+pew-renting fathers, all the same and together, and carrying a flag and
+singing to the tops of their voices 'Hail, Columbia,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span> that the bands
+kept a-playing, some out of plumb as to time, but all fervent and
+joyous. It was us women alone that got up that part. My, I like to think
+about it.</p>
+
+<p>"They swung the length of Daphne Street and twice around the market
+square, and they come to a halt in front of the platform. And Doctor
+June stood up before them all, and he prayed like this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Lord God, that let us start free an' think we was equal, give us to
+help one another to be free an' to get equal, in deed an' in truth.'</p>
+
+<p>"And who do you s'pose we hed to read the Declaration of Independence?
+Little Spudge Cadoza, that Silas had been a-going to hev walk up and
+down Daphne Street with a board on his back&mdash;Insley thought of him, and
+we picked him out a-purpose. And though he didn't read it so thrilling
+as Silas would of, it made me feel the way no reading of it has ever
+made me feel before&mdash;oh, because it was kind of like we'd snapped up the
+little kid and set him free all over again, even though he wasn't it but
+one day in the year. And it sort of seemed to me that all inside the
+words he read was trumpets and horns telling how much them words was
+<i>going</i> to mean to him and his kind before he'd had time to die. And
+then the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span> Glee Club struck into 'America,' and the whole crowd joined in
+without being expected, and the three bands that was laying over in the
+shade hopped up and struck in, too&mdash;and I bet they could of heard us to
+Indian Mound. Leastways to Red Barns, that we can see from Friendship
+Village when it's clear.</p>
+
+<p>"The grand basket dinner in the Depot Woods stays in my head as one
+picture, all full of veal loaf and 'scalloped potato and fruit salad and
+nut-bread and deviled eggs and bake' beans and pickle' peaches and layer
+cake and drop sponge-cake and hot coffee&mdash;the kind of a dinner that
+comes crowding to your thought whenever you think 'Dinner' at your
+hungriest. And after we'd took care of everybody's baskets and set them
+under a tree for a lunch towards six, us ladies went back to the market
+square. And over by the marquee we see the men gathered&mdash;all but Insley,
+that had slipped away as quick as we begun telling him how much of it
+was due to him. Miss Beryl Sessions had just arrived, in a automobile,
+covered with veils, and she was introducing the other men to her City
+friends. Us ladies sort of kittered around back of them, not wanting to
+press ourselves forward none, and we went up to the door of the marquee
+where, behind the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span> refreshment table, Mis' Sykes was a-standing in her
+white duck.</p>
+
+<p>"'My,' says Mis' Holcomb to her, 'it's all going off nice so far, ain't
+it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'They ain't a great deal the matter with it,' says Mis' Sykes, snappy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Uppers, grieving, 'the parade an' the
+basket dinner seemed to me both just perfect.'</p>
+
+<p>"'The parade done well enough,' says Mis' Sykes, not looking at her. 'I
+donno much about the dinner.'</p>
+
+<p>"And all of a sudden we recollected that she hadn't been over to the
+grand basket dinner at all.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis' Toplady, blank, 'ain't you et nothin'?'</p>
+
+<p>"'My niece,' says Mis' Sykes, dignified, 'didn't get here till now. Who
+was I to leave in the <i>tent</i>? I've et,' says she, cold, 'two dishes of
+ice-cream an' two chocolate nut-cakes.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady just swoops over towards her. 'Why, my land,' she says,
+hearty, 'they's stuff an' to spare packed over there under the trees.
+You go right on over and get your dinner. Poke right into any of our
+baskets&mdash;ours is grouped around mine that's tied with<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> a red bandanna to
+the handle. And leave us tend the marquee. What say, ladies?'</p>
+
+<p>"And I don't think she even sensed she used that name.</p>
+
+<p>"When she'd gone, I stood a minute in the marquee door looking off
+acrost the market square, hearing Miss Beryl Sessions and the men
+congratulating each other on the glorious Fourth they was a-having, and
+the City folks praising them both sky high.</p>
+
+<p>"'Real nice idee it was,' says Silas, with his hands under his best coat
+tails. 'Nice, tastey, up-to-date Fourth. And cheap to do.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, we all hung out for a good Fourth this year,' says Timothy,
+complacent.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's a simply lovely idea,' says Miss Beryl Sessions, all sweet and
+chirpy and interested, 'this making the Fourth a county party and
+getting everybody in town, so. But tell me: Whatever made you close your
+shops? I thought the Fourth could always be made to pay for itself over
+and over, if the business houses went about it right.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, well,' says Silas, lame but genial, 'we closed up to-day. We kind
+o' thought we would.'</p>
+
+<p>"But I stood looking off acrost the market square, where the children
+was playing, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span> quoits was being pitched, and the ball game was going
+to commence, and the calathumpians was capering, and most of Red Barns
+and Indian Mound and Friendship Village was mingling, lion and lamb; and
+I looked on along Daphne Street, where little Spudge Cadoza wasn't
+walking with a Prize Coffee board on his back,&mdash;and all of a sudden I
+felt just the way I'd wanted to feel, in spite of all the distance and
+long-ago-ness. And I turned and says to the other women inside the
+marquee:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Seems to me,' I says, 'as if the Fourth of July <i>had</i> paid for itself,
+over and over. Oh, don't it to you?'</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>VI</h2>
+
+<p>"The new editor of the <i>Friendship Village Evening Daily</i> give a fine
+write-up of the celebration. He printed it on the night after the
+Fourth, not getting out any paper at all on the day that was the day;
+but on the night after that, the news columns of his paper fell flat and
+dead. In a village the day following a holiday is like the hush after a
+noise. The whole town seems like it was either asleep or on tiptoe. And
+in Friendship Village this hush was worse than the hush of other years.
+Other years they'd usually been accidents to keep track of, and mebbe
+even an amputation or two to report. But this Fourth there was no
+misfortunes whatever, nor nothing to make good reading for the night of July 6.</p>
+
+<p>"So the editor thought over his friends and run right down the news
+column, telling what there <i>wasn't</i>. Like this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p class="center">"'<span class="smcap">Supper Table Jottings</span></p>
+
+<p>"'Postmaster Silas Sykes is well.</p>
+
+<p>"'Timothy Toplady has not had a cold since before Christmas.
+Prudent Timothy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span></p><p>"'Jimmy Sturgis has not broken his leg yet this year as he did
+last. Keep it up, Jimmy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Eppleby Holcomb has not been out of town for quite a while.</p>
+
+<p>"'None of the Friendship ladies has given a party all season.</p>
+
+<p>"'The First Church is not burnt down nor damaged nor repaired.
+Insurance $750.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nothing local is in much of any trouble.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nobody is dead here to-day except the usual ones.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nobody that's got a telephone in has any company at the present
+writing. Where is the old-time hospitality?</p>
+
+<p>"'Subscriptions payable in advance.</p>
+
+<p>"'Subscriptions payable in advance.</p>
+
+<p>"'Subscriptions payable in advance.'</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"It made quite some fun for us, two or three of us happening in the
+post-office store when the paper come out&mdash;Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady
+and me. But we took it some to heart, too, because to live in a town
+where they ain't nothing active happening all the time is a kind of
+running account of everybody that's in the town. And us ladies wan't
+that kind.</p>
+
+<p>"All them locals done to Silas Sykes, though, was to set him fussing
+over nothing ever happening to him. Silas is real particular about<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span> his
+life, and I guess he gets to thinking how life ain't so over-particular
+about him.</p>
+
+<p>"'My dum,' he says that night, 'that's just the way with this town. I
+always calculated my life was goin' to be quite some pleasure to me. But
+I don't see as it is. If I thought I was going to get sold in my death
+like I've been in my life, I swan I'd lose my interest in dyin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Timothy Toplady was over in behind the counter picking out her
+butter, and she whirled around from sampling the jars, and she says to
+Mis' Sykes and me:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Ladies,' she says, 'le's us propose it to the editor that seems to
+have such a hard job, that us members of Sodality take a hold of his
+paper for a day and get it out for him and put some news in it, and sell
+it to everybody, subscribers and all, that one night, for ten cents.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Silas Sykes looks up and stopped winking and breathing, in a way
+she has when she sights some distant money for Sodality.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, land,' she says, 'I bet they'd go like hot cakes.'</p>
+
+<p>"But Silas he snorts, scorching.</p>
+
+<p>"'Will you ladies tell me,' he says, 'where you going to <i>get</i> your news
+to put in your paper? The Fourth don't come along every day. Or less you
+commit murder and arson and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span>runaways, there won't be any more in your
+paper than they is in its editor's.'</p>
+
+<p>"That hit a tender town-point, and I couldn't stand it no longer. I
+spoke right up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I donno, I donno, Silas,' I says. 'They's those in this town
+that's doin' the murderin' for us, neat an' nice, right along,' I told
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mean to say?' snapped Silas.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mean to say,' says I, 'most every grocery store in this town an' most
+every milkman an' the meat market as well is doin' their best to drag
+the health out o' people's systems for 'em. Us ladies is more or less
+well read an' knowledgeable of what is goin' on in the world outside,' I
+says to Silas that ain't, 'an' we know a thing or two about what ought
+to be clean.'</p>
+
+<p>"Since Insley come, we had talked a good deal more about these things
+and what was and what shouldn't be; and especially we had talked it in
+Sodality, on account of our town stores and social ways and such being
+so inviting to disease and death. But we hadn't talked it official,
+'count of Sodality being for Cemetery use, and talking it scattering we
+hadn't been able to make the other men even listen to us.</p>
+
+<p>"'Pack o' women!' says Silas, now, and went off to find black molasses
+for somebody.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Toplady sampled her butter, dreamy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Rob Henny's butter here,' she says, 'is made out of cow sheds that I
+can't bear to think about. An' Silas knows it. Honest,' she says, 'I'm
+gettin' so I spleen against the flowers in the fields for fear Rob
+Henny's cows'll get holt of 'em. I should think the <i>Daily</i> could write
+about that.'</p>
+
+<p>"I remember how us three women looked at each other then, like our
+brains was experimenting with our ideas. And when Mis' Toplady got her
+butter, we slipped out and spoke together for a few minutes up past the
+Town Pump. And it was there the plan come to a head and legs and arms.
+And we see that we had a way of picking purses right off of every day,
+so be the editor would leave us go ahead&mdash;and of doing other things.</p>
+
+<p>"The very next morning we three went to see the editor and get his
+consent.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's your circulation, same as City papers print to the top of the
+page?' Mis' Toplady asks him, practical.</p>
+
+<p>"'Paid circulation or got-out circulation?' says the editor.</p>
+
+<p>"'Paid,' says Mis' Toplady, in silver-dollar tones.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah, well, <i>paid for</i> or subscribed for?' asks the editor.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p><p>"'Paid for,' says Mis' Toplady, still more financial.</p>
+
+<p>"'Six hundred and eighty paid for,' the editor says, 'an' fifty-two
+that&mdash;mean to pay.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My!' says Mis' Toplady, shuddering. 'What business is! Well, us ladies
+of the Sodality want to run your paper for one day and charge all your
+subscribers ten cents extra for that day's paper. Will you?'</p>
+
+<p>"The editor, he laughed quite a little, and then he looked thoughtful.
+He was new and from the City and young and real nervous&mdash;he used to pop
+onto his feet whenever a woman so much as come in the room.</p>
+
+<p>"'Who would collect the ten cents?' says he.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sodality,' says Mis' Toplady, firm. 'Ourself, cash an' <i>in advance</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"The editor nodded, still smiling.</p>
+
+<p>"'Jove,' he said, 'this fits in remarkably well with the fishing I've
+been thinking about. I confess I need a day. I suppose you wouldn't want
+to do it this week?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady looked at me with her eyebrows. But I nodded. I always
+rather hurry up than not.</p>
+
+<p>"'So be we had a couple o' hours to get the news to happenin',' says
+she, 'that had ought to do us.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span></p><p>"The editor looked startled.</p>
+
+<p>"'News!' said he. 'Oh, I say now, you mustn't expect too much. I ought
+to warn you that running a paper in this town is like trying to raise
+cream on a cistern.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady smiled at him motherly.</p>
+
+<p>"'You ain't ever tried pouring the cream into the cistern, I guess,' she
+says.</p>
+
+<p>"So we settled it into a bargain, except that, after we had planned it
+all out with him and just as we was going out the door, Mis' Toplady
+thought to say to him:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'You know, Sodality don't know anything about it yet, so you'd best not
+mention it out around till this afternoon when we vote to do it. We'll
+be up at eight o'clock Thursday morning, rain or shine.'</p>
+
+<p>"There wasn't ever any doubt about Sodality when it see Sixty Dollars
+ahead&mdash;which we would get if everybody bought a paper, and we was
+determined that everybody should buy. Sodality members scraps among
+themselves personal, but when it comes to raising money we unite yoke to
+yoke, and all differences forgot. It's funny sometimes at the meetings,
+funny and disgraceful, to hear how we object to each other, especially
+when we're tired, and then how we all unite together on something for<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span>
+the good of the town. I tell you, it makes me feel sometimes that the
+way ain't so much to try to love each other,&mdash;which other folks'
+peculiarities is awful in the way of,&mdash;but for us all to pitch in and
+love something altogether, your town or your young folks, or your
+cemetery or keeping something clean or making somethin' look nice&mdash;and
+before you know it you're loving the folks you work with, no matter how
+peculiar, or even more so. It's been so nice since we've been working
+for Cemetery. Folks that make each other mad every time they try to talk
+can sell side by side at the same bazaar and count the money mutual.
+There's quite a few disagreements in Sodality, so we have to be real
+careful who sets next to who to church suppers. But when we pitch in to
+work for something, we sew rags and 'scallop oysters in the same pan
+with our enemies. Don't it seem as if that must mean something?
+Something big?</p>
+
+<p>"Sodality voted to publish the paper, all right, and elected the
+officers for the day: Editor, Mis' Postmaster Sykes, 'count of her
+always expecting to take the lead in everything; assistant editor, me,
+'count of being well and able to work like a dog; business manager and
+circulation man, Mis' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span>Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, 'count of no dime
+ever getting away from her unexpected. And the reporters was to be most
+of the rest of the Sodality: Mis' Timothy Toplady, the three Liberty
+girls, Mis' Mayor Uppers, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, Mis' Threat
+Hubbelthwait, an' Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery. It was
+hard for Abagail to get away from her cook stove and her counter, so we
+fixed it that she was to be let off any other literary work along of her
+furnishing us our sandwiches and hard-boiled eggs that day noon. It was
+quite a little for Abagail to do, but she's always real willing, and we
+didn't ask coffee of her. Mis' Sturgis, her that is the village invalid,
+we arranged should have charge of the Woman's Column, and bring down her
+rocking chair and make her beef broth right there on the office
+wood-stove.</p>
+
+<p>"I guess we was all glad to go down early in the morning that day,
+'count of not meeting the men. One and all and with one voice the
+Friendship men had railed at us hearty.</p>
+
+<p>"'Pack o' women!' says Silas Sykes, over and over.</p>
+
+<p>"'You act like bein' a woman an' a wife was some kind o' nonsense,' says
+Mis' Sykes back at him, majestic. 'Well, I guess bein' yours is.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span></p><p>"'Land, Amandy,' says Timothy Toplady, 'you women earn money so
+<i>nervous</i>. Why don't you do it regular an' manly?'</p>
+
+<p>"Only Eppleby Holcomb had kept his silence. Eppleby sees things that the
+run of men don't see, or, if they did see them, they would be bound to
+stick them in their ledgers where they would never, never belong.
+Eppleby was our friend, and Sodality never had truer.</p>
+
+<p>"So though we went ahead, the men had made us real anxious. And most of
+us slipped down to the office by half past seven so's not to meet too
+many. The editor had had a column in the paper about what we was goin'
+to do&mdash;'Loyal to our Local Dead' he headed it, and of course full half
+the town was kicking at the extra ten cents, like full half of any town
+can and will kick when it's asked to pay out for its own good, dead or
+alive. But we was leaving all that to Mis' Holcomb, that knows a thing
+or two about the human in us, and similar.</p>
+
+<p>"Extra-paper morning, when we all come in, Mis' Sykes she was sitting at
+the editor's desk with her big apron on and a green shade to cover up
+her crimping kids, and her list that her and Mis' Toplady and I had made
+out, in front of her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span></p><p>"'Now then, let's get right to work,' she says brisk. 'We ain't any too
+much time, I can tell you. It ain't like bakin' bread or gettin' the
+vegetables ready. We've all got to use muscles this day we ain't used to
+usin',' she says, 'an' we'd best be spry.'</p>
+
+<p>"So then she begun giving out who was to do what&mdash;assignments, the
+editor named it when he told us what to do. And I skipped back an' hung
+over the files, well knowing what was to come.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes stood up in her most society way, an'&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Anybody want to back out?' says she, gracious.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land!' says everyone in a No-I-don't tone.</p>
+
+<p>"'Very well,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Mis' Toplady, you go out to Rob Henney's
+place, an' you go through his cow sheds from one end to the other an'
+take down notes so's he sees you doin' it. You go into his kitchen an'
+don't you let a can get by you. Open his churn. Rub your finger round
+the inside of his pans. An' if he won't tell you, the neighbours will.
+Explain to him you're goin' to give him a nice, full printed description
+in to-night's <i>Daily</i>, just the way things are. If he wants it changed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span>
+any, he can clean all up, an' we'll write up the clean-up like a
+compliment.'</p>
+
+<p>"Just for one second them assembled women was dumb. But it hardly took
+them that instant to sense what was what. And all of a sudden, Mame
+Holcomb, I guess it was, bursted out in a little understanding giggle,
+and after a minute everybody joined in, too. For we'd got the whole
+world of Friendship Village where we wanted it, and every one of them
+women see we had, so be we wasn't scared.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mis' Uppers,' Mis' Sykes was going on, 'you go down to Betts's meat
+market. You poke right through into the back room. An' you tell Joe
+Betts that you're goin' to do a write-up of that room an' the alley back
+of it for the paper to-night, showin' just what's what. If so be he
+wants to turn in an' red it up this mornin', tell him you'll wait till
+noon an' describe it then, <i>providin'</i> he keeps it that way. An' you
+might let him know you're goin' to run over to his slaughterhouse an'
+look around while you're waitin', an' put that in your write-up, too.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Miss Hubbelthwait,' Mis' Sykes went on, 'you go over to the Calaboose.
+They won't anybody be in the office&mdash;Dick's saloon is that. Skip right
+through in the back part, an' turn<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> down the blankets on both beds an'
+give a thorough look. If it's true they's no sheets an' pillow-cases on
+the calaboose beds, an' that the blankets is only washed three times a
+year so's to save launderin', we can make a real interestin' column
+about that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Miss Merriman,' says Mis' Sykes to Mis' Fire Chief, 'I've give you a
+real hard thing because you do things so delicate. Will you take a walk
+along the residence part of town an' go into every house an' ask 'em to
+let you see their back door an' their garbage pail. Tell 'em you're
+goin' to write a couple of columns on how folks manage this. Ask 'em
+their idees on the best way. Give 'em to understand if there's a real
+good way they're thinkin' of tryin' that you'll put that in, providin'
+they begin tryin' right off. An' tell 'em they can get it carted off for
+ten cents a week if enough go in on it. An' be your most delicate, Mis'
+Fire Chief, for we don't want to offend a soul.'</p>
+
+<p>"Libby an' Viney Liberty Mis' Sykes sent round to take a straw vote in
+every business house in town to see how much they'd give towards
+starting a shelf library in the corner of the post-office store, a full
+list to be printed in order with the amount or else 'Not a cent'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span> after
+each name. And the rest of Sodality she give urrants similar or even
+more so.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' all o' you,' says Mis' Sykes, 'pick up what you can on the way.
+And if anybody starts in to object, you tell 'em you have instructions
+to make an interview out of any of the interestin' things they say. And
+you might tell 'em you don't want they should be buried in a nice
+cemetery if they don't want to be.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, they started off&mdash;some scairt, but some real brave, too. And
+the way they went, we see every one of them meant business.</p>
+
+<p>"'But oh,' says Mis' Sturgis, fixing her medicine bottles outside on the
+window-sill, '<i>supposin'</i> they can't do it. <i>Supposin'</i> folks ain't nice
+to 'em. What'll we put in the paper then?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes drew herself up like she does sometimes in society.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' she says, 'supposin'. Are we runnin' this paper or ain't we?
+There's nothin' to prevent our writin' editorials about these things, as
+I see. Our husbands can't very well sue us for libel, because they'd hev
+to pay it themselves. Nor they can't put us in prison for debt, because
+who'd get their three meals? I can't see but we're sure of an
+interestin' paper, anyway.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then she looked over at me sort of sad.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span></p><p>"'Go on, Calliope,' says she, 'you know what you've got to do. Do it,'
+she says, 'to the bitter end.'</p>
+
+<p>"I knew, and I started out, and I made straight for Silas Sykes, and the
+post-office store. Silas wan't in the store, it was so early; but he had
+the floor all sprinkled nice, and the vegetables set out, all uncovered,
+close to the sidewalk; and everything real tasty and according to
+grocery-store etiquette. The boy was gone that day. And Silas himself
+was in the back room, sortin' over prunes.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hello, Calliope,' s'he. 'How's literchoor?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Honest as ever,' I says. 'Same with food?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Who says I ain't honest?' says Silas, straightening up, an' holding
+all his fingers stiff 'count of being sticky.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, I donno who,' says I. 'Had anybody ought to? How's business,
+Silas?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says he, 'for us that keeps ourselves up with the modern
+business methods, it's pretty good, I guess.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you mean pretty good, Silas, or do you mean pretty paying?' I ask'
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas put on his best official manner. 'Look at here,' s'e, 'what can I
+do for you? Did you want to buy somethin' or did you want your mail?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span></p><p>"'Oh, neither,' I says. 'I want some help from you, Silas, about the
+paper to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>"My, that give Silas a nice minute. He fairly weltered in satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>"'Huh,' he says, elegant, 'didn't I tell you you was bitin' off more'n
+you could chew? Want some assistance from me, do you, in editin' this
+paper o' yours? Well, I suppose I can help you out a little. What is it
+you want me to do for you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'We thought we'd like to write you up,' I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas just swelled. For a man in public office, Silas Sykes feels about
+as presidential as anybody I ever see. If they was to come out from the
+City and put him on the front page of the morning paper, he's the kind
+that would wonder why they hadn't done it before.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sketch of my life?' s'e, genial. 'Little outline of my boyhood? Main
+points in my career?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' I says, 'no. We thought the present'd be about all we'd hev
+room for. We want to write up your business, Silas,' I says, 'in an
+advertising way.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh!' says Silas, snappy. 'You want me to pay to be wrote up, is that
+it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' I says, 'no; not if you don't want to.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span> Of course everybody'll
+be buried in the Cemetery whether they give anything towards the fund
+for keeping it kep' up or not.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Lord Heavens,' says Silas, 'I've had that Cemetery fund rammed down my
+throat till I'm sick o' the thought o' dyin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"That almost made me mad, seeing we was having the disadvantage of doing
+the work and Silas going to get all the advantages of burial.</p>
+
+<p>"'Feel the same way about some of the Ten Commandments, don't you,
+Silas?' I says, before I knew it.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas just rared.</p>
+
+<p>"'The Ten Commandments!' says he, 'the Ten Commandments! Who can show me
+one I ain't a-keepin' like an old sheep. Didn't I honour my father an'
+mother as long as I had 'em? Did they ever buy anything of me at more
+than cost? Didn't I give 'em new clothes an' send 'em boxes of oranges
+an' keep up their life insurance? Do I ever come down to the store on
+the Sabbath Day? Do I ever distribute the mail then, even if I'm
+expectin' a letter myself? The Sabbath I locked the cat in, didn't I
+send the boy down to let it out, for fear I'd be misjudged if I done it?
+Who do I ever bear false witness against unless I know they've done what
+I say they've done? I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span> can't kill a fly&mdash;an' I'm that tender-hearted
+that I make the hired girl take the mice out o' the trap because I can't
+bring myself to do it. So you might go through the whole list an' just
+find me workin' at 'em an' a-keepin' 'em. What do you mean about the Ten
+Commandments?' he ends up, ready to burst.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't ask me,' I says. 'I ain't that familiar with 'em. I didn't know
+anybody was. Go on about 'em. Take stealing&mdash;you hadn't got to that
+one.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Stealing</i>,' says Silas, pompous. 'I don't know what it is.'</p>
+
+<p>"And with that I was up on my feet.</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought you didn't,' says I. 'Us ladies of Sodality have all thought
+it over an' over again: That you don't know stealing when you see it.
+No, nor not even when you've done it. Come here, Silas Sykes!' I says.</p>
+
+<p>"I whipped by him into the store, and he followed me, sheer through
+being dazed, and keeping still through being knocked dumb.</p>
+
+<p>"'Look here,' I says, 'here's your counter of bakery stuff&mdash;put in to
+take from Abagail, but no matter about that now. Where do you get it?
+From the City, with the label stuck on. What's the bakery like where you
+buy it? It's under a sidewalk and dust dirty, and I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span> happen to know you
+know it. And look at the bread&mdash;not a thing over it, flies promenadin'
+on the crust, and you counting out change on an apple-pie the other
+day&mdash;I see you do it. Look at your dates, all uncovered and dirt from
+the street sticking to them like the pattern. Look at your fly-paper,
+hugged up against your dried-fruit box that's standing wide open. Look
+at you keeping fish and preserved fruit and canned stuff that you know
+is against the law&mdash;going to start keeping the law quick as you get
+these sold out, ain't you, Silas? Look at your stuff out there in front,
+full of street dirt and flies and ready to feed folks. And you keepin'
+the Ten Commandments like an old sheep&mdash;and being a church elder, and
+you might better climb porches and bust open safes. I s'pose you wonder
+what I'm sayin' all this to you for?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, ma'am,' says Silas, like the edge o' something, 'I don't wonder at
+your sayin' <i>anything</i> to anybody.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I've got more to say,' I says, dry. 'I've only give you a sample. An'
+the place I'm goin' to say it is <i>The Friendship Village Evening Daily</i>,
+<i>Extra</i>, to-night, in a descriptive write-up of you and your store. I
+thought it might interest you to know.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span></p><p>"'It's libel&mdash;it's libel!' says Silas, arms waving.</p>
+
+<p>"'All right,' says I, liberating a fly accidentally caught on a date.
+'Who you going to sue? Your wife, that's the editor? And everybody
+else's wife, that's doing the same thing to every behind-the-times
+dealer in town?'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas hung on to that straw.</p>
+
+<p>"'Be they doin' it to the others, too?' he asks.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I says, 'Silas, only&mdash;they ain't goin' to start writing up the
+descriptions till noon. And if you&mdash;and they all&mdash;want to clean up the
+temples where you do business and make them fit for the Lord to look
+down on and a human being to come into, you've got your chance. And
+seeing your boy is gone to-day, if you'll do it, I'll stay and help you
+with it&mdash;and mebbe make room for some of the main points in your career
+as well,' says I, sly.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas looked out the door, his arms folded and his beard almost
+pointing up, he'd made his chin so firm. And just in that minute when I
+was feeling that all the law and the prophets, and the health of
+Friendship Village, and the life of people not born, was hanging around
+that man's neck&mdash;or the principle of them, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span>anyway&mdash;Silas's eye and mine
+fell on a strange sight. Across the street, from out Joe Betts's meat
+market come Joe Betts, and behind him his boy. And Joe begun pointing,
+and the boy begun taking down quarters of beef hung over the sidewalk.
+Joe pointed consid'able. And then he clim' up on his meat wagon that
+stood by the door, and out of the shop I see Mis' Mayor Uppers come,
+looking ready to drop. And she clim' up to the seat beside him&mdash;he
+reaching down real gentlemanly to help her up. And he headed his horse
+around on what I guessed was a bee-line for the slaughterhouse.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, at that, Silas Sykes put his hands on his knees and bent
+over and begun laughing. And he laughed like I ain't seen him since he's
+got old and begun to believe that life ain't cut after his own plan that
+he made. And I laughed a little, too, out of sheer being glad that a
+laugh can settle so many things right in the world. And when he sobered
+down a little, I says gentle:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Silas, I'll throw out the dates and the dusty lettuce. And we'll hev
+it done in no time. I'll be glad to get an early start on the write-up.
+I don't compose very ready,' I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"He was awful funny while we done the work. He was awful still, too.
+Once when I lit on a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span> piece of salt pork that I knew, first look, was
+rusty, 'Them folks down on the flats buys it,' he says. 'They like it
+just as good as new-killed.' 'All right,' s'I, careless, 'I'll make a
+note of that to shine in my article. It needs humour some,' s'I. Then
+Silas swore, soft and under his breath, as an elder should, but quite
+vital. And he took the pork out to the alley barrel, an' I sprinkled
+ashes on it so's he shouldn't slip out and save it afterwards.</p>
+
+<p>"It was 'leven o'clock when we got done, me having swept out behind the
+counters myself, and Silas he mopped his face and stood hauling at his
+collar.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll get on my white kids now,' s'e, dry. 'I can't go pourin' kerosene
+an' slicin' cheese in this place barehanded any more. Gosh,' he says, 'I
+bet when they see it, they'll want to have church in here this comin'
+Sunday.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No need to be sacrilegious, as I know of, Silas,' s'I, sharp.</p>
+
+<p>"'No need to be livin' at all, as I see,' says Silas, morbid; 'just lay
+low an' other folks'll step in an' do it for you, real capable.'</p>
+
+<p>"I give him the last word. I thought it was his man's due.</p>
+
+<p>"When I got back to the office, Libby Liberty an' Mis' Toplady was there
+before me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span> They was both setting on high stools up to the file shelf,
+with their feet tucked up, an' the reason was that Viney Liberty was
+mopping the floor. She had a big pail of suds and her skirt pinned up,
+and she was just lathering them boards. Mis' Sykes at the main desk was
+still labouring over her editorials, breathing hard, the boards steaming
+soap all around her.</p>
+
+<p>"'I couldn't stand it,' Viney says. 'How a man can mould public opinion
+in a place where the floor is pot-black gets me. My land, my ash house
+is a dinin' room side of this room, an' the window was a regular gray
+frost with dust. Ain't men the funniest lot of folks?' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Funny,' says I, 'but awful amiable if you kind of sing their key-note
+to 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes pulled my skirt.</p>
+
+<p>"'How was he?' she asks in a pale voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'He was crusty,' says I, triumphant, 'but he's beat.'</p>
+
+<p>"She never smiled. 'Calliope Marsh,' says she, cold, 'if you've sassed
+my husband, I'll never forgive you.'</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you, men may be some funny, and often are. But women is odd as
+Dick's hatband and I don't know but odder.</p>
+
+<p>"'How'd you get on?' I says to Mis' Toplady and the Libertys. The
+Libertys they handed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> out a list on two sheets, both sides with sums
+ranging from ten to fifty cents towards a shelf library for public use;
+but Mis' Toplady, the tears was near streaming down her cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Rob Henney,' she says, mournful, 'gimme to understand he'd see me
+in&mdash;some place he hadn't ought to of spoke of to me, nor to no
+one&mdash;before I could get in his milk sheds.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What did you say to him?' I ask', sympathetic.</p>
+
+<p>"'I t-told him,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that lookin' for me wouldn't be the
+only reason he'd hev for goin' there. And then he said some more. He
+said he'd be in here this afternoon to stop his subscription off.'</p>
+
+<p>"'So you didn't get a thing?' I says, grieving for her, but Mis'
+Toplady, she bridled through her tears.</p>
+
+<p>"'I got a column!' she flashed out. 'I put in about the sheds, that the
+whole town knows, anyway, an' I put in what he said to me. An' I'm goin'
+to read it to him when he comes in. An' after that he can take his pick
+about havin' it published, or else cleanin' up an' allowin' Sodality to
+inspect him reg'lar.'</p>
+
+<p>"By just before twelve o'clock we was all back in the office, Mis' Fire
+Chief, Mis' Uppers, fresh from the slaughterhouse, and so on, all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span> but
+Mame Holcomb that was out seeing to the circulation. And I tell you we
+set to work in earnest, some of us to the desks, and some of us working
+on their laps, and everybody hurrying hectic. The office was awful
+hot&mdash;Mis' Sturgis had built up a little light fire to heat up her beef
+broth, and she was stirring it, her shawl folded about her, in between
+writing receipts. But it made it real confusing, all of us doing our
+best so hard, and wanting to tell each other what had happened, and
+seeing about spelling and all.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, land,' says Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'you'd ought to <i>see</i> the
+Carters' back door. They wan't nobody to home there, so I just took a
+look, anyway, bein' it was for Sodality, so. They ain't no real garbage
+pail&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Who said, "Give me Liberty or give me Death?"' ask' Mis' Sykes,
+looking up kind o' glassy. 'Was it Daniel Webster or Daniel Boone?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ladies,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, when we'd settled down on Daniel
+Boone, 'if I ever do a crime, I won't stop short at stealin' somebody's
+cow an' goin' to calaboose. I'll do a whole beef corner, or some real
+United States sin, an' get put in a place that's clean. Why over to the
+calaboose&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span></p><p>"'Ugh!' says Mis' Uppers, 'don't say "beef" when I'm where I can hear.
+I donno what I'll do without my steak, but do it I will. Ladies, the
+cleanest of us is soundin' brass an' tinklin' cannibals. Why do they
+call 'em <i>tinklin'</i> cannibals?' she wondered to us all.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh&mdash;,' wailed Mis' Sturgis in the rocking-chair, 'some of you ladies
+give me your salad dressing receipt. Mine is real good on salad, but on
+paper it don't sound fit to eat. I don't seem to have no book-style
+about me to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How do you spell <i>embarrass</i>?' asked Libby Liberty. 'Is it an <i>r</i> an'
+two <i>s</i>'s or two <i>r</i>'s and an <i>s</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's two <i>s</i>'s at the end, so it must be one <i>r</i>,' volunteers Mis'
+Sykes. 'That used to mix me up some, too.'</p>
+
+<p>"Just then up come Abagail Arnold bringing the noon lunch, and she had
+the sandwiches and the eggs not only, but a pot of hot coffee thrown in,
+and a basket of doughnuts, sugared. She set them out on Mis' Sykes's
+desk, and we all laid down our pencils and drew up on our high stools
+and swing chairs, Mis' Sturgis and all, and nothing in the line of food
+had ever looked so welcoming.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, the eatableness of nice refreshments!' says Mis' Toplady, sighing.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p><p>"'This is when it ain't victuals, its viands,' says Mis' Sykes, showing
+pleased.</p>
+
+<p>"But well do I remember, we wasn't started to eat, and Abagail still
+doing the pouring, when the composing room door opened&mdash;I donno <i>why</i>
+they called it that, for we done the composing in the office, and they
+only got out the paper in there&mdash;and in come the foreman, with an apron
+of bed-ticking. He was Riddy Styles, that we all knew him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Excuse me,' he says, hesitating, 'but us fellows thought we'd ought to
+mention that we can't get no paper out by quittin' time if we don't get
+a-hold of some copy pretty quick.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Copy o' what?' says Mis' Sykes, our editor.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, copy,' says Riddy. 'Stuff for the paper.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes looked at him, majestic.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Stuff</i>,' she says. 'You will please to speak,' she says, 'more
+respectfully than that to us ladies, Mr. Styles.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It was meant right,' says Riddy, stubborn. 'It's the word we always
+use.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It ain't the word you use, not with us,' says Mis' Sykes, womanly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Riddy, 'we'd ought to get to settin' up <i>somethin'</i> by
+half past twelve, if we start in on the dictionary.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span></p><p>"Then he went off to his dinner, and the other men with him, and Mis'
+Sykes leaned back limp.</p>
+
+<p>"'I been writin' steady,' she says, 'since half past eight o'clock this
+mornin', an' I've only got one page an' one-half composed.'</p>
+
+<p>"We ask' each other around, and none of us was no more then started, let
+be it was Mis' Toplady, that had got in first.</p>
+
+<p>"'Le's us leave our lunch,' says Mis' Sykes, then. 'Le's us leave it
+un-et. Abagail, you put it back in the basket an' pour the coffee into
+the pot. An' le's us <i>write</i>. Wouldn't we all rather hev one of our sick
+headaches,' she says, firm, 'than mebbe make ourselves the Laughing
+Stock? Ladies, I ask you.'</p>
+
+<p>"An' we woulded, one and all. Sick headaches don't last long, but
+laughed-at has regular right down eternal life.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it strange how slow the writing muscles and such is, that you
+don't use often? Pitting cherries, splitting squash, peeling potatoes,
+slicing apples, making change at church suppers,&mdash;us ladies is lightning
+at 'em all. But getting idees down on paper&mdash;I declare if it ain't more
+like waiting around for your bread to raise on a cold morning. Still
+when you're worried, you can press forward more than normal, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span> among
+us we had quite some material ready for Riddy and the men when they came
+back. But not Mis' Sykes. She wan't getting on at all.</p>
+
+<p>"'If I could only <i>talk</i> it,' she says, grieving, 'or I donno if I could
+even do that. What I want to say is in me, rarin' around my head like
+life, an' yet I can't get it out no more'n money out of a tin bank. I
+shall disgrace Sodality,' she says, wild.</p>
+
+<p>"'Cheer up,' says Libby Liberty, soothing. 'Nobody ever reads the
+editorials, anyway. I ain't read one in years.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You tend to your article,' snaps Mis' Sykes.</p>
+
+<p>"I had got my write-up of Silas all turned in to Riddy, and I was
+looking longing at Abagail's basket, when, banging the door, in come
+somebody breathing like raging, and it was Rob Henney, that I guess we'd
+all forgot about except it was Mis' Toplady that was waiting for him.</p>
+
+<p>"Rob Henney always talks like he was long distance.</p>
+
+<p>"'I come in,' he says, blustering, 'I come in to quit off my
+subscription to this fool paper, that a lot o' fool women&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes looks up at him out from under her hand that her head was
+resting on.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go on out o' here, Mr. Henney,' she says<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span> sharp to him, 'an' quit your
+subscription quiet. Can't you see you're disturbing us?' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"With that Mis' Toplady wheeled around on her high stool and looked at
+him, calm as a clock.</p>
+
+<p>"'Rob Henney,' says she, 'you come over here. I'll read you what I've
+wrote about you,' she told him.</p>
+
+<p>"The piece begun like this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Rob Henney, our esteemed fellow-townsman and milkman, was talked with
+this morning on his cow sheds. The reporter said to same that what was
+wanting would be visiting the stables, churn, cans, pans, and like that,
+being death is milked out of most cows if they are not kept clean and
+inspected regular for signs of consumption. Mr. Henney replied as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>"'First: That his cows had never been inspected because nothing of that
+kind had ever been necessary.</p>
+
+<p>"'Second: That he was in the milk business for a living, and did the
+town expect him to keep it in milk for its health?</p>
+
+<p>"'Third: That folks had been drinking milk since milk begun, and if the
+Lord saw fit to call them home, why not through milk, or even through
+consumption, as well as through pneumonia and others?</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span></p><p>"'Fourth: That he would see the reporter&mdash;a lady&mdash;in the
+lake-that-burneth-with-fire before his sheds and churn and pans and cans
+should be put in the paper.</p>
+
+<p>"'Below is how the sheds, churn, pans, and cans look to-day....' And I
+tell you, Mis' Toplady, she didn't spare no words. When she meant What,
+she said What, elaborate.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know for a minute but we'd hev to mop Rob up off the clean
+floor. But Mis' Toplady she never forgot who she was.</p>
+
+<p>"'Either that goes in the paper to-night,' she says, 'or you'll clean up
+your milk surroundin's&mdash;pick your choice. An' Sodality's through with
+you if you don't, besides.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Put it in print! Put it in print, if you dast!' yells Rob,
+wind-milling his arms some.</p>
+
+<p>"'No need to make an earthquake o' yourself,' Mis' Toplady points out to
+him, serene.</p>
+
+<p>"And at that Rob adds a word intending to express a cussing idee, and he
+outs and down the stairs. And Mis' Toplady starts to take her article
+right in to Riddy. But in the door she met Riddy, hurrying into the
+office again. I never see anybody before that looked both red and
+haggard, but Riddy did. He come right to the point:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Some of you ladies has got to quit handing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span> in&mdash;news,' he says,
+scrabbling for a word to please Mis' Sykes. 'We're up to our eyes in
+here now. An' there ain't enough room in the paper, either, not without
+you get out eight pages or else run a supplement or else throw away the
+whole patent inside. An' those ways, we ain't got enough type even if we
+had time to burn.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes pushed back her green shade, looking just <i>chased</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"'What does he mean?' she says. 'Can't he tend to his type and things
+with us doing all the work?'</p>
+
+<p>"Riddy took this real nettlish.</p>
+
+<p>"'I mean,' s'he, clear but brutal, 'you got to cut your stuff somewheres
+to the tune of a couple o' columns.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it's hard to pick out which colour you'll take when you have a
+new dress only once in every so seldom; or which of your hens you'll
+kill when you know your chickens like you know your own mind; but these
+are nothing to the time we had deciding on what to omit out of the paper
+that night. And the decision hurt us even more than the deciding, for
+what we left out was Mis' Sturgis's two women's columns.</p>
+
+<p>"'We <i>can't</i> leave out meat nor milk nor cleanliness nor the library,'
+says Mis' Toplady, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span>reasonable, 'because them are the things we live by.
+An' so with the other write-ups we got planned. But receipts and
+patterns an' moth balls is only kind o' decorations, seems though.
+Besides, we all know about 'em, an' it's time we stopped talkin' about
+'em, anyway.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sturgis she cried a little on the corner of her shawl.</p>
+
+<p>"'The receipts an' patterns an' moth balls is so w-womanly,' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady whirled round at her.</p>
+
+<p>"'If you know anything more womanly than conquerin' dirt an' disease an'
+the-dead-that-needn't-die,' s'she, 'I'll roll up my sleeves an' be into
+it. But it won't be eyelet embroidery nor yet boiled frostin'!'</p>
+
+<p>"After that they wrote in hasty peace, though four o'clock come racing
+across the day like a runaway horse, and us not out of its way. And a
+few minutes past, when Riddy was waiting in the door for Mis' Sykes's
+last page, somebody most knocked him over, and there come Mis' Holcomb,
+our circulation editor, purple and white, like a ghost.</p>
+
+<p>"'Lock the door&mdash;lock it!' she says. 'I've bolted the one to the foot of
+the stairs. Lock both outside ones an' lay yourselves low!' s'she.</p>
+
+<p>"Riddy an' I done the locking, me well <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span>knowing Mis' Holcomb couldn't
+give a false alarm no more than a map could.</p>
+
+<p>"'What is it?' we says, pressing Mis' Holcomb to speak, that couldn't
+even breathe.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, ladies,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'they've rejoined us, or whatever it
+is they do. I mean they're going to rejoin us from gettin' out
+to-night's paper. The sheriff or the coroner or whoever it is they have,
+is comin' with injunctions&mdash;<i>is</i> that like handcuffs, do you know? An'
+it's Rob Henney's doin'. Eppleby told me. An' I run down the alley an'
+beat 'em to it. They're most here. Let's us slap into print what's wrote
+an' be ready with the papers the livin' minute we can.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes had shoved her green shade onto the back of her head, and
+her crimping pins was all showing forth.</p>
+
+<p>"'What good'll it do us to get the paper <i>out</i>?' says she, in a numb
+voice. 'We can't distribute 'em around to no one with the sheriff to the
+front door with them things to put on us.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Mis' Holcomb smiled, with her eyes shut, where she sat, breathing
+so hard it showed through.</p>
+
+<p>"'I come in the coal door, at the alley,' s'she. 'They'll never think o'
+that. Besides, the crowd'll be in front an' the carrier boys too, an'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span>
+they'll want to show off out there. An' Eppleby knows&mdash;he told me to
+come in that way&mdash;an' he'll keep 'em interested out in front. Le's us
+each take the papers, an' out the coal door, an' distribute 'em around,
+ourselves, without the boys, an' collect in the money same time.'</p>
+
+<p>"And that was how we done. For when they come to the door and found it
+locked, they pounded a little to show who was who and who wan't and then
+they waited out there calm enough, thinking to stop us when the papers
+come down would be plenty time. They waited out there, calm and sure,
+while upstairs Bedlam went on, but noiseless. And after us ladies was
+done with our part, we sat huddled up in the office, soothing Mis'
+Sturgis and each other.</p>
+
+<p>"'In one sentence,' Mis' Holcomb says, 'Eppleby says Rob Henney was
+going to <i>put</i> injunctions on us. An' in the next he says he was goin'
+to <i>serve</i> 'em. What did he mean by that, do you s'pose?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I donno what he meant,' says Mis' Toplady, 'but I wouldn't have
+anything to do with <i>anything</i> Rob Henney served.'</p>
+
+<p>"That made us think of Abagail's lunch, laying un-et in the basket. They
+wasn't none of us felt like eating, but Mis' Sturgis says she bet if we
+didn't eat it, Abagail would feel she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span> hadn't had no part in writing the
+paper like us, and so we broke off a little something once around; but
+food didn't have much fun for us, not then. And nothing did up to the
+minute the paper was done, and we was all ready to sly out the alley
+door.</p>
+
+<p>"With Sodality and Riddy Styles and the composing-room men we had above
+twenty carriers. Riddy and the men helped us, one and all, because of
+course the paper was a little theirs, too, and they was interested and
+liked the lark. Land, land, I ain't felt so young or so wicked as I done
+getting out that alley door. There's them I wish could see that there's
+just as much fun keeping secret about something that may be good as in
+being sly about something regular bad.</p>
+
+<p>"When we finally got outside it was suppertime and summer seeming, and
+the hour was all sweet and frank, and the whole village was buried in
+its evening fried mush and potatoes, or else sprinkling their front
+yards. I donno how it was with the others, but I know I went along the
+streets seeing through them little houses like they was glass, and
+seeing the young folks eating their suppers and growing up and getting
+ready to live and to <i>be</i>. And in us ladies' arms, in them heavy papers,
+it seemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span> to me we was carrying new life to them, in little ways&mdash;in
+little ways, but ways that was going to be big with meaning. And I felt
+as if something in me kind of snuggled up closer to the way things was
+meant to be.</p>
+
+<p>"Us that went west got clear the whole length of Daphne Street without
+anybody seeing what we was doing, or else believing that we was doing it
+orderly and legitimate. And away out by the Pump pasture, we started in
+distributing, and we come working down town, handing out papers to the
+residence part like mad and taking in dimes like wild. They was so many
+of us, and the <i>Evening Daily</i> office was so located, that by the time
+Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I come around the corner where the men
+and Rob Henney and the rejoiners and the carriers was loafing, waiting,
+smoking, and secure, we didn't have many papers left. And we three was
+the first ones back.</p>
+
+<p>"'Evenin' paper?' says Mis' Toplady, casual. '<i>Friendship Village
+Evenin' Daily, Extra?</i> All the news for a dime?'</p>
+
+<p>"Never have I see a man so truly flabbergasted as Rob Henney, and he did
+look like death.</p>
+
+<p>"'You're rejoined!' he yelled, or whatever it is they say&mdash;'you're
+rejoined by law from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> printin' your papers or from deestributin' the
+same.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Rob Henney,' says Mis' Toplady, 'no call to show fight like that.
+Half the town is readin' its papers by now. They've been out for
+three-quarters of an hour,' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"Then soft and faint and acrost the street, we heard somebody laugh, and
+then kind of spat hands; and we all looked up. And there in the open
+upstairs window of the building opposite, we see leaning out Eppleby
+Holcomb and Timothy Toplady and Silas Sykes. And when we crossed eyes,
+they all made a little cheer like a theatre; and then they come clumping
+down stairs and acrost to where we was.</p>
+
+<p>"'Won out, didn't you, by heck!' says Silas, that can only see that far.</p>
+
+<p>"'Blisterin' Benson,' says Timothy, gleeful. '<i>I</i> say we ain't got no
+cause to regret our wifes' brains.'</p>
+
+<p>"But Eppleby, he never said a word. He just smiled slow and a-looking
+past us. And we knew that from the beginning he had seen our whole plan,
+face to face.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and me, seeing how Rob Henney stood
+muttering and beat, and seeing how the day had gone, and seeing what was
+what in the world and in all outside<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span> of it, we looked at each other,
+dead tired, and real happy, and then we just dragged along home to our
+kitchens and went to cooking supper. But oh, it wasn't our same old
+kitchens nor it wasn't our same old Friendship Village. We was in places
+newer and better and up higher, where we see how things are, and how
+life would get more particular about us if we'd get particular about
+some more of life.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>VII</h2>
+
+<p>"Well, of course then we had Sixty Dollars or so to spend, and Sodality
+never could rest a minute when it had money to do with if it wasn't
+doing it, any more than it could rest when it had something to do and no
+money to do with. It made a nice, active circle. Wishing for dreams to
+come true, and then, when they do come true, making the true things
+sprout more dreams, is another of them circles. I always think they're
+what keeps us a-going, not only immortal but busy.</p>
+
+<p>"And then with us there's another reason for voting our money prompt. As
+soon as we've made any and the news has got out around, it's happened
+two-three times that somebody has put in an application for a headstone
+for somebody dead that can't afford one. The first time that was done
+the application was made by the wife of a harness maker that had a
+little shop in the back street and had been saving up his money for a
+good tombstone. 'I ain't had much of a position here in life,' he used
+to say. 'I never was pointed out as a leading citizen.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span> But I'm goin' to
+fix it so's when I'm buried and folks come to the Cemetery, nobody'll
+get by my grave without noticin' my tombstone.' And then he took sick
+with inflammatory rheumatism, and if it didn't last him three years and
+et up his whole tombstone fund. He use' to worry about it considerable
+as the rheumatism kept reducing the granite inch after inch, and he
+died, thinking he wasn't going to have nothing but markers to him. So
+his old wife come and told Sodality, crying to think he wasn't going to
+seem no real true inhabitant of Cemetery, any more than he had of the
+village. And we felt so sorry for her we took part of the Thirty Dollars
+we'd made at the rummage sale and bought him a nice cement stone, and
+put the verse on to attract attention that he'd wrote himself:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p class="center">"'<span class="smaller">STOP. LOOK. LISTEN.</span><br /><br />
+<span class="smaller">HERE LAYS ME.</span><br /><br />
+<span class="smaller">MY GRAVE IS JUST AS BIG</span><br /><br />
+<span class="smaller">AS YOURS WILL BE.</span>'</p>
+
+<p>"Some was inclined to criticise Jeb for being so ambitious in death, and
+stopping to think how good a showing he could make. But I donno, I
+always sort of understood him. He wanted to be somebody. He'd used to
+try to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> have a voice in public affairs, but somehow what he proposed
+wasn't ever practical and never could get itself adopted. His judgment
+wasn't much, and time and again he'd voted against the town's good, and
+he see it afterward. He missed being a real citizen of his town, and he
+knew it, and he hankered to be a citizen of his Cemetery. And wherever
+he is now, I bet that healthy hankering is strained and purified and
+helping him ahead.</p>
+
+<p>"But our buying that stone for Jeb's widow's husband's grave let us in
+for perpetual applications for monuments; and so when we had any money
+we always went right to work and voted it for general Cemetery
+improvement, so there wasn't ever any money in the treasury for the
+applications. Anyway, we felt we'd ought to encourage self-made graves
+and not pauperize our corpses.</p>
+
+<p>"So the very next afternoon after we got our paper out, we met at Mis'
+Sykes's; and the day being mild and gold, almost all of Sodality turned
+out, and Mis' Sykes used both her parlours. It was funny; but such times
+there fell on them that sat Front Parlour a sort of
+what-you-might-call-distinction over them that sat Back Parlour. It's
+the same to our parties. Them that are set down to the dining-room table
+always seem a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span> little more company than them that are served to the
+little sewing tables around in the open rooms, and we all feel it,
+though we all pretend not, as well-bred as we know how. I donno but
+there's something to it, too. Mis' Sykes, for instance, she always gets
+put to a dining table. Nobody would ever think of setting her down to a
+small one, no more than they would a Proudfit. But me, I generally get
+tucked down to a sewing table and in a rocking-chair, if there ain't
+enough cane seats to go around. Things often divide themselves true to
+themselves in this life, after all.</p>
+
+<p>"This was the last regular meeting before our Annual. The Annual, at
+Insley's suggestion, was going to be in the schoolhouse, and it was
+going to be an open evening meeting, with the whole town invited in and
+ice-cream served after. Regular meetings Sodality gives just tea;
+special meetings we give hot chocolate or ice-lemonade, or both if the
+weather is unsettled; for entertainments we have cut-up fruit and little
+bakery cakes; but to our Annual we mount up to ice-cream and some of our
+best cake makers' layer cake. And us ladies always dress according:
+afternoon home dresses to regular meetings; second best to specials;
+Sunday silks to entertainments; and straight going-out<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span> clothes for the
+Annual. It makes it real nice. Nobody need to come dressed wrong, and
+nobody can go away disappointed at what they've been fed.</p>
+
+<p>"The meeting that day all ought to have gone smooth enough, it being so
+nice that our paper had sold well and all, but I guess the most of us
+was too tired out to have tried to have a meeting so soon. Anyhow, we
+didn't seem to come together slippery and light-running, like we do some
+days; but instead I see the minute we begun to collect that we was all
+inclined to be heavy and, though not cross, yet frictionish.</p>
+
+<p>"For instance: Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss had come in a new red
+waist with black raspberry buttons. And it was too much for Mis' Fire
+Chief Merriman that's been turning her black poplin ever since the Fire
+Chief died.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dear me, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'I never see anybody have more
+dressy clothes. Did you put that on just for us?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Holcomb shut her lips tight.</p>
+
+<p>"'This is for home wear,' she says short, when she opened them.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mean to say you get a cooked supper in that rig?' says Mis' Merriman.
+'Fry meat in it, do you?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span></p><p>"'We don't eat as hearty as some,' says Mame. 'We don't insist on warm
+suppers. We feel at our house we have to keep our bills down.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Merriman straightened up, real brittle.</p>
+
+<p>"'My gracious,' she says, 'I guess I live as cheap as the best does.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I see you buying <i>shelled</i> nuts, just the same,' says Mis' Holcomb,
+'when shellin' 'em with your fingers cost twenty cents off.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I ain't never had my store-buyin' criticised before,' says Mis'
+Merriman, elbows back.</p>
+
+<p>"'Nor,' says Mis' Holcomb, bitter, 'have I ever before, in my twenty-six
+years of married life, ever been called <i>dressy</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Mis' Toplady, she sort of shouldered into the minute, big and
+placid and nice-feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mame,' she says, 'set over here where you can use the lead-pencil on
+my watch chain, and put down that crochet pattern I wanted, will you?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mame come over by her and took the pencil, Mis' Toplady leaning over
+so's she could use it; but before she put the crochet pattern down, Mame
+made one, experimental, on the stiff bottom of her work-bag, and Libby
+Liberty thought she'd make a little joking.</p>
+
+<p>"'S-sh-h,' says Libby, 'the authoress is takin' down notes.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Holcomb has had two-three poems in the <i>Friendship Daily</i>, and
+she's real sensitive over it.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd be polite if I couldn't be pleasant, Libby,' says Mame, acid.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm pleasant enough to pleasant folks,' snaps Libby, up in arms in a
+minute. Nothing whatever makes anybody so mad as to have what was meant
+playful took plain.</p>
+
+<p>"'I,' says Mis' Holcomb, majestic, 'would pay some attention to my
+company manners, no matter what I was in the home.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That makes me think,' puts in Mis' Toplady, hasty, 'speaking of
+company so, who's heard anything about the evenin' company up to
+Proudfits'?'</p>
+
+<p>"It was something all our heads was full of, being half the village had
+just been invited in to the big evening affair that was to end up the
+house party, and we'd all of pitched in and talked fast anyhow to take
+our minds off the spat.</p>
+
+<p>"'Elbert's comin' home to go to it an' to stay Sunday an' as much as he
+can spare,' says Mis' Sykes. Elbert is her son and all Silas Sykes ought
+to of been, Elbert is.</p>
+
+<p>"'Letty Ames is home for the party, too,' says Libby Liberty, speaking
+up in defence of their block, that Letty lives in. She's just <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span>graduated
+at Indian Mound and has been visiting up the state.</p>
+
+<p>"My niece that had come on for a few days would be gone before the party
+come off, so she didn't seem worth mentioning for real news value at a
+time when everything was centring in an evening company at Proudfit
+House. No doubt about it, Proudfit House does give distinction to
+Friendship Village, kind of like a finishing school would, or a circus
+wintering in us.</p>
+
+<p>"'I heard,' says Mis' Jimmy Sturgis, 'that the hired help set up all
+night long cleanin' the silver. I shouldn't think <i>that</i> would of been
+necessary, with any kind of management behind 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You don't get much management now'-days,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait,
+sighing. 'Things slap along awful haphazard.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know I ain't the system to myself that I use' to have,' says Abagail
+Arnold. 'Why, the other day I found my soda in one butt'ry an' my bakin'
+powder in the other.'</p>
+
+<p>"'An' I heard,' says Mame Holcomb&mdash;that's one thing about Mame, you
+can't keep her mad. She'll flare up and be a tongue of flame one minute,
+and the next she's actin' like a friendly open fire on a family hearth.
+And I always trust that kind&mdash;I can't help it&mdash;'I heard,' she said,
+'that for the party that night the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>ice-cream is coming in forms,
+calla-lilies an' dogs an' like that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I heard,' says Mis' Uppers, 'that Emerel Daniel was invited up to help
+an' she set up nights and got her a new dress for helpin' in, and now
+little Otie's sick and she likely can't go near.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady looks over her glasses.</p>
+
+<p>"'Is Otie sick again?' says she. 'Well, if Emerel don't move out of
+Black Hollow, she'll lose him just like she done Abe. Can't she sell?'</p>
+
+<p>"Black Hollow is the town's pet breeding place for typhoid, that the
+ladies has been at the council to clean up for a year now. And nobody
+will buy there, so Emerel's had to live in her house to save rent.</p>
+
+<p>"'She's made her a nice dress an' she was so excited and pleased,' says
+Mis' Uppers, grieving. 'I do hope it was a dark shade so if bereavement
+follows&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'I suppose you'll have a new cloth, Mis' Sykes,' says Mis'
+Hubbelthwait, 'you're so up-to-date.' It's always one trouble with Mis'
+Hubbelthwait: she will flatter the flatterable. But that time it didn't
+work. Mis' Sykes was up on a chair fixing a window-shade that had flew
+up, and I guess she must have pinched her finger, she was so crispy.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span></p><p>"'I thought I <i>had</i> things that was full stylish enough to wear,' she
+says stiff.</p>
+
+<p>"'I didn't mean harm,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, humble.</p>
+
+<p>"Just then we all got up to see out the window, for the Proudfit
+automobile drew up to Mis' Sykes's gate. They was several folks in it,
+like they had been most of the time during the house party, with
+everybody flying hither and yon; and they was letting Mis' Emmons out.
+It was just exactly like her to remember to come right out of the midst
+of a house party to a meeting of Sodality. That woman was pure gold.
+When they was a lot of things to choose about, she always seemed to let
+the pleasant and the light and the easy-to-do slip right through her
+fingers, that would close up by and by on the big real thing that most
+folks would pretend to try to catch <i>after</i> it had slipped through, and
+yet would be awful glad to see disappearing.</p>
+
+<p>"We didn't talk clothes any more after Mis' Emmons come in. Some way her
+clothes was so professional seeming, in colour and cut, that beside of
+her the rest of us never said much about ours; though I will say Mis'
+Emmons always wore her clothes like she was no more thinking about them
+than she would be thinking about morning housework togs.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span></p><p>"'Well-said, how's the little boy, Mis' Emmons?' asks Mis' Toplady,
+hearty. 'I declare I couldn't go to sleep a night or two ago for
+thinkin' about the little soul. Heard any sound out of his folks?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm going to tell you about that pretty soon,' Mis' Emmons
+answered&mdash;and it made my heart beat a little with wondering if she'd got
+her plans thought out, not only four-square, but tower-high. 'He is
+well&mdash;he wanted to come to the meeting. "I like ladies," he said, "when
+they look at me like loving, but not when they touch me much." Mr.
+Insley has him out walking.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Little soul,' says Mis' Toplady, again.</p>
+
+<p>"Out in the back parlour, some of us had been talking about Christopher
+already.</p>
+
+<p>"'I heard,' Mis' Merriman says, that wasn't to the church the night
+Christopher come, 'I heard that he didn't have much of any clothes on.
+An' that nobody could understand what he said. An' that nobody could get
+him to speak a word.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Pshaw,' Mis' Sturgis puts in, 'he was a nice-dressed little boy,
+though wet; an' quite conversational.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I think it's a great problem,' says Mis' Uppers. 'He's too young
+for the poorhouse and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span> too old for the babies' home. Seems like they
+wasn't anything <i>to</i> do with him.'</p>
+
+<p>"There come a lull when Mis' Postmaster Sykes, in a ruffled lawn that
+had shrunk too short for anything but house wear, stood up by the piano
+and called the meeting to order. And when we'd got on down to new
+business, the purpose of the meeting and a hint of the pleasure was
+stated formal by Mis' Sykes herself. 'One thing why I like to preside at
+Sodality,' I heard her tell once, 'is, you do get your say whenever you
+want it, and nobody can interrupt you when you're in the chair.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ladies,' she says, 'we've seen from the treasurer's report we've got
+some Sixty-odd Dollars on hand. The question is, where shall we vote it
+to. Let the discussion be free.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke first, with a kind of a bright
+manner of having thought it all out over her dish pan and her bread pan.
+There is this about belonging to Sodality: We just live Sodality every
+day, around our work. We don't forget it except to meetings, same as
+some.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I just tell you what,' Mame says, 'I think now is our time to
+get a big monument for the middle of Cemetery that'll do some credit to
+the Dead. All our little local <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>headstones is quite tasty and shows our
+interest in them that's gone before; but not one of them is real
+up-to-date. Let's buy a nice monument that'll show from the railroad
+track.'</p>
+
+<p>"I spoke up short off from the back parlour, where I set 'scallopin' a
+bedspread about as big as the carpet.</p>
+
+<p>"'Who to?' I says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I donno's it makes much differ'nce,' Mis' Holcomb says, warming to
+her theme, 'so's it was some leadin' citizen. We might take a town vote
+on it.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sturgis set up straight, eyebrows up. I donno how it is, but Mis'
+Sturgis's pompadour always seems so much higher as soon as she gets
+interested.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, my gracious,' she says, 'we might earn quite a lot o' money that
+way. We might have a regular votin' contest on who that's dead should
+get the monument&mdash;so much a vote an' the names of the successful ones
+run every night in the <i>Daily</i>&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a, why do it for anybody dead?' says Libby Liberty. 'Why not get
+the monument here and have it on view an' then have folks kind of bid on
+it for their own, real votin' style. In the cities now everybody picks
+out their own monuments ahead of time. That would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span> be doing for the
+Living, the way Mr. Insley said.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, there'd be hard feelin' that way,' spoke up Mis' Uppers, decided.
+'Whoever got it, an' got buried under it, never could feel it was his
+own stone. Everybody that had bought votes for themselves could come out
+walking in the Cemetery Sunday afternoons and could point out the
+monument and tell how much of a money interest they had in it. Oh, no, I
+don't think that'd do at all.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, stick to havin' it for the Dead, then,' Libby gives in. 'We've
+got to remember our constitution.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Amanda Toplady was always going down after something in the bottom
+of her pocket, set low in her full black skirt. She done this now, for a
+spool or a lozenger. And she says, meantime: 'Seems like that'd be awful
+irreverent, connectin' up the Dead with votes that way.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>My</i> notion,' says Mis' Sykes, with her way of throwin' up one corner
+of her head, 'it ain't one-tenth part as irreverent as forgettin' all
+about 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course it ain't,' agreed Mis' Hubbelthwait. 'Real, true irreverence
+is made up of buryin' folks and leavin' 'em go their way.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> Why, I bet
+you there ain't any one of 'em that wouldn't be cheered up by bein'
+voted for.'</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't help piping up again from the back parlour. 'What about them
+that don't get no votes?' I asks. 'What about them that is beat in death
+like they may of been in life? What's there to cheer them up? If I was
+them,' says I, 'I'd ha'nt the whole Sodality.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No need to be so sacrilegious in speakin' of the Dead as I know of,
+Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes that was in the chair and could rebuke at
+will.</p>
+
+<p>"That made me kind o' mad, and I answered back, chair or no chair: 'A
+thing is sacrilegious,' says I, 'according to which side of the fence
+you're on. But the fence it don't change none.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady looked over her glasses and out the window and like she
+see far away.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, land,' she says, 'I'd like to take that Sixty Dollars and hire
+some place to invite the young folks into evenings, that don't have no
+place to go on earth for fun. Friendship Village,' says she, 'is about
+as lively as Cemetery is for the young folks.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, but, Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes, reprovin', 'the young folks
+is alive and able to see to themselves. They don't come in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span> Sodality's
+scope. Everything we do has got to be connect' with Cemetery.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I can't help it,' Mis' Toplady answers, 'if it is. I'd like to invite
+'em in for some good safe evenin's somewheres instead of leaving 'em
+trapse the streets. And if I had to have Cemetery in it somehow, I donno
+but I'd make it a lawn party and give it in Cemetery and have done with
+it.'</p>
+
+<p>"We all laughed, but I knew that underneath, Mis' Toplady was kind of
+half-and-half in earnest.</p>
+
+<p>"'The young folks,' says Mis' Sykes, mysterious, 'is going to be took
+care of by the proper means, very, very soon.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I donno,' says Mis' Holcomb, obstinate. 'I think the monument is a
+real nice idea. Grandfather Holcomb, now, him that helped draft the
+town, or whatever it is they do, I bet he'd be real pleased to be voted
+for.'</p>
+
+<p>"But Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, seems she couldn't forget the little way
+Mame had spoke to her before, and she leaned forward and cut her way
+into the talking.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'of course your Grandfather Holcomb can
+be voted on if he wants to and if he thinks he could get it. But dead
+though he is, what he done can't<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span> hold a candle to what Grandfather
+Merriman done. That man just about run this town for years on end.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I heard he did,' said Mame, short. 'Those was the days before things
+was called by their true names in politics and in graft and like that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm sure,' says Mis' Merriman, her voice slipping, 'Grandfather
+Merriman was an angel in heaven to his family. And he started the very
+Cemetery by bein' buried in it first himself, and he took a front lot&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ladies, ladies,' says Mis' Sykes, stern, 'we ain't votin' <i>yet</i>. Has
+anybody got anything else to offer? Let the discussion be free.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What do we get a monument for, anyway?' says Mis' Toplady, hemming
+peaceful. 'Why don't we stick the money onto the new iron fence for
+Cemetery, same as we've been trying to do for years?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's what I was thinking,' says Abagail Arnold, smiling. 'Whenever I
+make one of my layer cakes for Sodality Annual, and frost it white and
+make mounds of frosted nuts on top, I always wish Cemetery had a fence
+around so's I could make a frosting one on the edge of the cake,
+appropriate.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, but my land, Abagail,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'can't you see the
+differ'nce between<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span> workin' for a dead iron fence and working for the
+real, right down Dead that once was the living? Where's your humanity,
+I'd like to know, and your loyalty to Friendship Village inhabitants
+that was, that you set the old iron fence over against 'em. What's a
+fence beside folks?'</p>
+
+<p>"All this time Mis' Emmons, there in the front parlour, had just sat
+still, stitching away on some little garment or other, but now she
+looked up quick, as if she was going to speak. She even begun to speak
+with a 'Madame President' that covered up several excited beginnings.
+But as she done so, I looked through the folding doors and see her catch
+sight of somebody out in the street. And I looked out the bay-window in
+the back parlour and I see who it was: it was a man, carefully guiding a
+little bit of a man who was walking on the flat board top of the Sykes's
+fence. So, instead of speaking formal, all Mis' Emmons done was to make
+a little motion towards the window, so that her contribution to the
+debating was nothing but&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Madame President&mdash;look.'</p>
+
+<p>"We all looked, them in the out-of-range corners of the room getting up
+and holding their work in their aprons, and peering past;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span> and us in the
+back parlour tried for glimpses out the side bay-window, past Mis'
+Sykes's big sword fern. And so the most of us see Insley walking with
+Christopher, who was footing it very delicate and grave, picking out his
+places to step as if a real lot depended on it.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's Chris,' says Mis' Emmons, simple, 'that's come to us.' And
+you'd of said she hardly spoke the 'us' real conscious of herself. She
+looked round at us all. 'Let's have him in for a minute,' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"'The little soul! Let's so do,' Mis' Amanda Toplady says, hearty.</p>
+
+<p>"It was Mis' Emmons that went to the door and called them, and I guess
+Insley, when he see her, must of wondered what made her face seem like
+that. He went on up town, and the little chap come trotting up the walk.</p>
+
+<p>"When Chris come in Mis' Sykes's front parlour among all the women,
+there run round that little murmuring sound that a crowd of women uses
+to greet the coming in their midst of any child. And I s'pose it was a
+little more so than ever for Chris, that they hadn't all seen
+yet&mdash;'count of so few being out the night he come and 'count of his
+having been up to Proudfit House 'most ever since. Us in the back
+parlour went crowding in the front, and some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span> come down to the hall door
+to be the nearer. Mis' Amanda Toplady, hunting in her deep pocket, this
+time for a lozenger, says fervent above the rest:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'The little soul.'</p>
+
+<p>"And he did resemble one, standing there so shy and manly in his new
+little brown clothes.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Emmons's eyes was bright, and I thought I see a kind of challenge
+in her way of drawing the child towards her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Chris,' she says, 'tell them what you had in your paper bag when you
+came to the church the other night.'</p>
+
+<p>"Chris remembered: Sugar rolls and cream-puffs and fruit-cake, he
+recites it grand. 'My supper,' he adds, no less grand. 'But that was
+'cause I didn't have my dinner nor my breakfast,' he explains, so's we
+wouldn't think he'd had too much at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'What was the matter with your foot?' Mis' Emmons goes on.</p>
+
+<p>"Christopher had a little smile that just about won you&mdash;a sort of
+abashed little smile, that begun over by one side of his mouth, and when
+he was going to smile that way he always started in by turning away his
+head. He done this now; but we could all hear what he said. It was:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p><p>"'My biggest toe went right through a hole, an' it choked me awful.'</p>
+
+<p>"About a child's foot hurting, or a little sore heel, there is something
+that makes mothers out of everybody, for a minute or two. The women all
+twittered into a little ripple of understanding. Probably to every woman
+there come the picture of the little cold, wet foot and the choked toe.
+I know I could see it, and I can see it yet.</p>
+
+<p>"'Lambin',' says Mis' Toplady, in more than two syllables, 'come here
+for a peppermint.'</p>
+
+<p>"Chris went right over to her. 'I been thirsty for a drink of water
+since all day,' he says confidential. 'Have you got one?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady went with the child, and then Mis' Emmons took something
+from her bag and held it up. It was Christopher's father's letter that
+he'd brought with him that night.</p>
+
+<p>"She read the letter out loud, in everybody's perfectly breathless
+silence that was broken only by Christopher laughing out in the kitchen.
+'My friends,' Mis' Emmons says when she'd got through, 'doesn't it seem
+to you as if our work had come to us? And that if it isn't Chris
+himself, at least it ought to be people, live people&mdash;and not an iron
+fence or even a monument that will show from the railroad track?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span></p><p>"And with that, standing in the doorway with my arms full of bedspread,
+I piped right up, just like I'd been longing to pipe up ever since that
+night at Mis' Emmons's when I'd talked with Insley:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir,' I says emphatic, 'it does. Without meaning to be
+sacrilegious in the least,' I says toward Mis' Sykes, 'I believe that
+the Dead is a lot better prepared to take care of themselves than a good
+many of the Living is.'</p>
+
+<p>"There was a kind of a little pause at this, all but Mis' Sykes. Mis'
+Sykes don't pause easy. She spoke right back, sort of elevating one
+temple:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'The object of this meeting as the chair understands it,' says she, 'is
+to discuss money spending, <i>not</i> idees.'</p>
+
+<p>"But I didn't pay no more attention than as if I'd been a speaker in
+public life. And Mis' Toplady and Christopher, coming back to the room
+just then, I spoke to him and took a-hold of his little shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"'Chris,' I says, 'tell 'em what you're going to be when you grow up.'</p>
+
+<p>"The little boy stood up with his back against the door-casing, and he
+spoke back between peppermints:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span></p><p>"'I'm going to drive the loads of hay,' he declares himself.</p>
+
+<p>"'A little bit ago,' I says to 'em, 'he was going to be a cream-puff
+man, and keep a church and manufacture black velvet for people's
+coffins. Think of all them futures&mdash;not to spend time on other
+possibilities. Don't it seem like we'd ought to keep him around here
+somewheres and help him decide? Don't it seem like what he's going to be
+is resting with us?'</p>
+
+<p>"But now Mis' Sykes spoke out in her most presidential tone.</p>
+
+<p>"'It would be perfectly impossible,' she says, 'for Sodality to spend
+its money on the child or on anybody else that's living. Our
+constitution says we shall work for Cemetery.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says I, rebellish, 'then let's rip up our old constitution and
+buy ourselves a new pattern.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes was getting to verge on mad.</p>
+
+<p>"'But Sodality ain't an orphan asylum, Calliope,' says she, 'nor none of
+us is that.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't we&mdash;ain't we, Mis' Sykes?' I says. 'Sometimes I donno what we're
+for if we ain't that.'</p>
+
+<p>"And then I just clear forgot myself, in one of them times that don't
+let you get to sleep<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span> that night for thinking about, and that when you
+wake up is right there by the bed waiting for you, and that makes you
+feel sore when you think of afterwards&mdash;sore, but glad, too.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's it,' I says, 'that's it. I've been thinking about that a good
+deal lately. I s'pose it's because I ain't any children of my own to be
+so busy for that I can't think about their real good. Seems to me there
+ain't a child living no matter how saucy or soiled or similar, but could
+look us each one in the face and say, "What you doing for me and the
+rest of us?" And what could we say to them? We could say: "I'm buying
+some of you ginghams that won't shrink nor fade. Some of you I'm cooking
+food for, and some of you I'm letting go without it. And some of you I'm
+buying school books and playthings and some of you I'm leaving without
+'em. I'm making up some of your beds and teaching you your manners and
+I'm loving you&mdash;some of you. And the rest of you I'm leaving walk in
+town after dark with a hole in your stocking." <i>Where's the
+line&mdash;where's the line?</i> How do we know which is the ones to do for? I
+tell you I'm the orphan asylum to the whole lot of 'em. And so are you.
+And I move the Cemetery Improvement Sodality do something for this<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>
+little boy. We'd adopt him if he was dead&mdash;an' keep his grave as nice
+and neat as wax. Let's us adopt him instead of his grave!'</p>
+
+<p>"My bedspread had slipped down onto the floor, but I never knew when nor
+did I see it go. All I see was that some of them agreed with me&mdash;Mis'
+Emmons and Mis' Toplady and Mis' Hubbelthwait and Libby and even Mame
+that had proposed the monument. But some of the others was waiting as
+usual to see how Mis' Sykes was going to believe, and Mis' Sykes she was
+just standing there by the piano, her cheeks getting pinker and pinker
+up high on her face.</p>
+
+<p>"'Calliope,' she said, making a gesture. 'Ladies! this is every bit of
+it out of order. This ain't the subject that we come together to
+discuss.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It kind of seems to me,' says I, 'that it's a subject we was born to
+discuss.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady sort of rolled over in her chair and looked across her
+glasses to Mis' Sykes.</p>
+
+<p>"'Madame President,' says she, 'as I understand it this fits in all
+right. What we're proposing is to spend Sodality's money on this little
+boy just the same as though he was dead. I move we do so.'</p>
+
+<p>"Two-three of 'em seconded it, but scairt and scattering.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span></p><p>"'Mis' Toplady,' says Mis' Sykes. 'Ladies! This is a good deal too
+headlong. A committee'd ought&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Question&mdash;question,' demands Mis' Emmons, serene, and she met my eye
+and smiled some, in that little <i>we</i>-understand look that can pierce
+through a roomful of people like the wind.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mis' Emmons,' says Mis' Sykes, wildish. 'Ladies! Sodality has been
+organized over twenty years, doing the same thing. You can't change so
+offhand&mdash;' You can't help admiring Mis' Sykes, for she simply don't know
+when she's beat. But this time she had a point with her, too. 'If we
+want to vote to amend the constitution,' she said, 'you've got to lay
+down your wishes on the table for one week.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I daresay you have,' says Mis' Emmons, looking grave. 'Well, I move
+that we amend the constitution of this society, and I move that we do it
+next week at the open annual meeting of the Sodality.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Second the motion,' says I, with my feet on my white bedspread.</p>
+
+<p>"And somehow the phrase caught Christopher's ear, like a tune might to
+march by.</p>
+
+<p>"'Second a motion&mdash;second a motion!' he chants to himself, standing by
+Mis' Toplady's knee.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>VIII</h2>
+
+<p>"I had promised Insley to run in the Cadozas' after the meeting, and see
+the little boy; and Mis' Emmons having to go home before she started
+back to the Proudfits', Christopher walked along with me. When we got
+out to the end of Daphne Street, Insley overtook us on his way out to
+the Cadozas', too.</p>
+
+<p>"His shoes were some muddy, and I guessed that he had been where of late
+he'd spent as much time as he could spare, both when he was in the
+village and when he was over to Indian Mound. Without digging down into
+his eyes, the same as some do to folks that's in trouble, I had sensed
+that there had come down on him everybody's hour of cutting something
+out of life, which is as elemental a thing to do as dying is, and I
+donno but it's the same kind as dying is besides. And he had been taking
+his hour in the elemental way, wanting to be alone and to kind of get
+near to the earth. I mean tramping the hills, ploughing along the narrow
+paths close to the barb' wire fences, plunging into the little groves.
+The little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> groves have such an' I-know look of understanding all about
+any difficulty till you walk inside of them, when all to once they stop
+seeming to know about your special trouble and begin another kind of
+slow soothing, same as summing things up will soothe you, now and then.</p>
+
+<p>"Chris chattered to him, lovable.</p>
+
+<p>"'I had some peppermenges,' he says, 'and I like hot ice-cream, too.
+Don't you? Can you make that?' he inquires, slipping his hand in
+Insley's.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course this made a pang&mdash;when you're hurt, 'most everything makes a
+pang. And this must of brought back that one evening with Robin that he
+would have to remember, and all the little stupid jokes they'd had that
+night must of rose up and hit at him, with the awful power of the little
+things that don't matter one bit and yet that matter everything.</p>
+
+<p>"'What can <i>you</i> make, Chris?' Insley says to him. 'Can you make candy?
+And pull it&mdash;like this?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Once a lady stirred me some an' cut it up in squares,' Chris
+explained, 'but I never did make any. My mama couldn't make candy, I
+guess, but she could make all other things&mdash;pancakes an' mittens an'
+nice stove fires my mama could make. The bag we got the salt<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span> in&mdash;she
+made me two handkerchiefs out of that bag,' he ended proudly.</p>
+
+<p>"'Did she&mdash;did she?' Insley tempted him on.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' Chris went on, hopping beside him, 'but now I've got to hurry
+an' be a man, 'cause litty boys ain't very good things. Can you make
+po'try?' he wound up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Chris&mdash;can you?' Insley asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, when I was comin' along with my daddy that night I made one,'
+the child says. And when Insley questions him a little he got this much
+more out of him. 'It started, "Look at the trees so green an' fair,"' he
+says, 'but I forget the rest.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you want to be a poet when you grow up?' Insley ask' him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, I do,' the child says ready. 'I think I'll be that first an' then
+I'll be the President, too. But what I'd rather be is the sprinkler-cart
+man, wouldn't you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Conceivably,' Insley says, and by the look on his face I bet his hand
+tightened up on the child's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'At Sodality,' I says, 'he just told them he was going to drive loads
+of hay. He's made several selections.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at me over the child's head, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> I guess we was both
+thinking the same thing: Trust nature to work this out alone?
+'Conceivably,' again. But all of a sudden I know we both burned to help
+to do it. And as Insley talked to the child, I think some touch of his
+enterprise come back and breathed on him. In them few last days I
+shouldn't wonder if his work hadn't stopped soaring to the meaning of
+spirit and sunk down again to be just body drudgery. He couldn't ever
+help having his old possessing love of men, and his man's strong
+resolution to keep a-going, but I shouldn't wonder if the wings of the
+thing he meant to do had got folded up. And Christopher, here, was sort
+of releasing them out again.</p>
+
+<p>"'How's the little Cadoza boy?' I ask' him pretty soon.</p>
+
+<p>"'He's getting on,' he says. 'Dr. Barrows was down yesterday&mdash;he wants
+him for a fortnight or so at the hospital in town, where he can have
+good care and food. His mother doesn't want him to go. I hoped you'd
+talk with her.'</p>
+
+<p>"Before we got to the Cadoza house Insley looked over to me, enigmatish.
+'Want to see something?' he says, and he handed me a letter. I read it,
+and some of it I knew what it meant and some of it I didn't. It was
+from<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> Alex Proudfit, asking him up to Proudfit House to the house party.</p>
+
+<p>" ... Ain't it astonishing how awful festive the word 'house party'
+sounds. 'Party' sounds festive, though not much more so than 'company'
+or 'gathering' that we use more common. 'Ball,' of course, is real
+glittering, and paints the inside of your head into pictures,
+instantaneous. But a house party&mdash;maybe it's because I never was to one;
+maybe it's because I never heard of one till late in life; maybe it's
+because nobody ever had one before in Friendship Village&mdash;but that word
+give me all the sensation that 'her golden coach' and 'his silver
+armour' and 'good fairy' used to have for me when I was a little girl.
+'House party!' Anything shiny might happen to one of them. It's like
+you'd took something vanishin', like a party, and just seized onto it
+and made it stay longer than Time and the World ever intended. It's like
+making a business of the short-lived.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, some of Alex's letter went about like this:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Join us for the whole time, do,' it says, and it went on about there
+being rather an interesting group,&mdash;'a jolly individualist,' I recollect
+he says, 'for your special benefit.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> He'll convert you where I couldn't,
+because he's kept his love for men and I haven't. And of course I've
+some women&mdash;pretty, bless them, and thank the Lord not one of them
+troubling whether she loves mankind or not, so long as men love her. And
+there you have Nature uncovered at her task! I shall expect you for
+every moment that you can spare....' I remember the wording because it
+struck me it was all so like Alex that I could pretty near talk to it
+and have it answer back.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell me,' Insley says, when I handed the letter back to him, 'you
+know&mdash;him. Alex Proudfit. Does he put all that on? Is it his mask? Does
+he feel differently and do differently when folks don't know?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' I says, slow, 'I donno. He gives the Cadozas their rent, but
+when Mis' Cadoza went to thank him, once, he sent down word for her to
+go and see his agent.'</p>
+
+<p>"He nodded, and I'd never heard him speak bitter before. 'That's it,' he
+says, 'that's it. That's the way we bungle things....'</p>
+
+<p>"We'd got almost to the Cadozas' when we heard an automobile coming
+behind us, and as we stood aside to let it go by, Robin's face flashed
+past us at the window. Mis' Emmons<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span> was with her, that Robin had come
+down after. Right off the car stopped and Robin jumped out and come
+hurrying back towards us. I'll never forget the minute. We met right in
+front of the old tumble-down Cadoza house with the lilacs so high in the
+front yard that the place looked pretty near nice, like the rest of the
+world. It was a splendid afternoon, one that had got it's gold persuaded
+to burst through a gray morning, like colour from a bunch of silver
+buds; and now the air was all full of lovely things, light and little
+wind and late sun and I donno but things we didn't know about. And
+everyone of them seemed in Robin's face as she came towards us, and
+more, too, that we couldn't name or place.</p>
+
+<p>"I think the mere exquisite girlishness of her come home to Insley as
+even her strength and her womanliness, that night he talked with her,
+had not moved him. I donno but in the big field of his man's dream, he
+had pretty near forgot how obvious her charm was. I'm pretty sure that
+in those days when he was tramping the hills alone, the thing that he
+was fighting with was that he was going to lose her companioning in the
+life they both dreamed. But now her hurrying so and her little faint
+agitation made her appeal a new thing, fifty times as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> lovely, fifty
+times as feminine, and sort of filling in the picture of herself with
+all the different kinds of women she was in one.</p>
+
+<p>"So now, as he stood there with her, looking down in her face, touching
+her friendly hand, I think that was the first real, overhauling minute
+when he was just swept by the understanding that his loss was so many
+times what he'd thought it was going to be. For it was her that he
+wanted, it was her that he would miss for herself and not for any dear
+plans of work-fellowship alone. She understood his dream, but there was
+other things she understood about, too. A man can love a woman for a
+whole collection of little dear things&mdash;and he can lose her and grieve;
+he can love her for her big way of looking at things, and he can lose
+her and grieve; he can love her because she is his work-fellow, and he
+can lose her and grieve. But if, on top of one of these, he loves her
+because she is she, the woman that knows about life and is capable of
+sharing all of life with him and of being tender about it, why then if
+he loses her, his grieving is going to be something that there ain't
+rightly no name for. And I think it was that minute there in the road
+that it first come to Insley that Robin was Robin, that of all the many
+women that she<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> was, first and most she was the woman that was capable
+of sharing with him all sides of living.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wanted ...' she says to him, uncertain. 'Oh, I wish very much that
+you would accept the invitation to some of the house party. I wanted to
+tell you.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I can't do that,' he answers, short and almost gruff. 'Really I can't
+do that.'</p>
+
+<p>"But it seemed there was even a sort of nice childishness about her that
+you wouldn't have guessed. I always think it's a wonderful moment when a
+woman knows a man well enough to show some of her childishness to him.
+But a woman that shows right off, close on the heels of an introduction,
+how childish she can be, it always sort o' makes me mad&mdash;like she'd told
+her first name without being asked about it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Please,' Robin says, 'I'm asking it because I wish it very much. I
+want those people up there to know you. I want&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"He shook his head, looking at her, eyes, mouth, and fresh cheeks, like
+he wished he was able to look at her face <i>all at once</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"'At least, at least,' she says to him rapid, then, 'you must come to
+the party at the end. You know I want to keep you for my friend<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span>&mdash;I want
+to make you our friend. That night Aunt Eleanor is going to announce my
+engagement, and I want my friends to be there.'</p>
+
+<p>"That surprised me as much as it did him. Nobody in the village knew
+about the engagement yet except us two that knew it from that night at
+Mis' Emmons's. I wondered what on earth Insley was going to say and I
+remember how I hoped, pretty near fierce, that he wasn't going to smile
+and bow and wish her happiness and do the thing the world would have
+wanted of him. It may make things run smoother to do that way, but
+smoothness isn't the only thing the love of folks for folks knows about.
+I do like a man that now and then speaks out with the breath in his
+lungs and not just with the breath of his nostrils. And that's what
+Insley done&mdash;that's what he done, only I'm bound to say that I do think
+he spoke out before he knew he was going to.</p>
+
+<p>"'That would be precisely why I couldn't come,' he said. 'Thank you, you
+know&mdash;but please don't ask me.'</p>
+
+<p>"As for Robin, at this her eyes widened, and beautiful colour swept her
+face. And she didn't at once turn away from him, but I see how she stood
+looking at him with a kind of a sharp intentness, less of wonder than of
+stopping short.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span></p><p>"Christopher had run to the automobile and now he come a-hopping back.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin!' he called. 'Aunt Eleanor says you haf to be in a dress by
+dinner, and it's <i>now</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do come for dinner, Mr. Insley,' Mis' Emmons calls, as Robin and
+Christopher went to join him. 'We've got up a tableau or two for
+afterward. Come and help me be a tableau.'</p>
+
+<p>"He smiled and shook his head and answered her. And that reminded me
+that I'd got to hurry like wild, as usual. It was most six o'clock
+then,&mdash;it always <i>is</i> either most six o'clock or most noon when I get
+nearest to being interested,&mdash;and that night great things was going to
+be going on. Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and the School Board and I was
+going to have a tableau of our own.</p>
+
+<p>"But for all that I couldn't help standing still a minute and looking
+after the automobile. It seemed as bad as some kind of a planet,
+carrying Robin off for forever and ever. And I wasn't so clear that I
+fancied its orbit.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've got a whole string of minds not to go to that party myself,' I
+says, meditative.</p>
+
+<p>"But Insley never answered. He just come on around the Cadozas' house.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>IX</h2>
+
+<p>"I never speak much about my relations, because I haven't got many. If I
+did have, I suppose I should be telling about how peculiar they take
+their tea and coffee, and what they died of, and showing samples of
+their clothes and acting like my own immediate family made up life, just
+like most folks does. But I haven't got much of any relatives, nor no
+ancestors to brag about. 'Nothing for kin but the world,' I always say.</p>
+
+<p>"But back in the middle of June I had got a letter from a cousin, like a
+bow from the blue. And the morning I got it, and with it yet unopened in
+my hand, Silas Sykes come out from behind the post-office window and
+tapped me on the arm.</p>
+
+<p>"'Calliope,' he says, 'we've about made up our minds&mdash;the School Board
+an' some o' the leadin' citizens has&mdash;to appoint a Women's Evenin'
+Vigilance Committee, secret. An' we want you an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis'
+Sykes should be it.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p><p>"'Vigilance,' I says, thoughtful. 'I recollect missin' on the meanin'
+of that word in school. I recollect I called it "viligance" an' said it
+meant a 'bus. I donno if I rightly know what it means now, Silas.'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas cleared his throat an' whispered hoarse, in a way he's got:
+'Women don't have no call, much for the word,' he says. 'It means when
+you sic your notice onto some one thing. We want a committee of you
+women should do it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Notice <i>what</i>?' I says, some mystified. 'What the men had ought to be
+up to an' ain't?'</p>
+
+<p>"But customers come streaming into the post-office store then, and some
+folks for their mail, and Silas set a time a couple o' days later in the
+afternoon for Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and me to come down to the
+store and talk it over.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' you be here,' says Silas, beatin' it off with his finger. 'It's
+somethin' we got to do to protect our own public decency.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Public</i> decency,' I says over, thoughtful, and went out fingerin' my
+letter that was in a strange handwriting and that I was dying to read.</p>
+
+<p>"It was a couple of days later that I what-you-might-say finished that
+letter, and between times I had it on the clock-shelf and give every<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span>
+spare minute to making it out. Minerva Beach the letter was from&mdash;my
+cousin Minnie Beach's girl. Minnie had died awhile before, and Minerva,
+her daughter, was on her way West to look for a position, and should she
+spend a few days with me? That was what I made out, though I donno how I
+done it, for her writing was so big and so up-and-down that every letter
+looked like it had on corsets and high heels. I never see such a mess!
+It was like picking out a crochet pattern to try to read it.</p>
+
+<p>"I recollect that I was just finishing composing my letter telling her
+to come along, and hurrying so's to take it to mail as I went down to
+the Vigilance Committee meeting, when the new photographer in town come
+to my door, with his horse and buggy tied to the gate. J. Horace Myers
+was his name, and he said he was a friend of the Topladys, and he was
+staying with them while he made choice art photographs of the whole
+section; and he wanted to take a picture of my house. He was a dapper
+little man, but awful tired-seeming, so I told him to take the picture
+and welcome, and I put the stone dog on the front porch and looped the
+parlour curtains over again and started off for the meeting.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span></p><p>"'I'll be up to show you the proofs in a few days,' he says as I was
+leaving. He was fixing the black cloth over his head, kind of listless
+and patient.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land!' I says, before I knew it, 'don't you get awful sick of takin'
+pictures of humbly houses you don't care nothin' about?'</p>
+
+<p>"He peeked out from under the black cloth sort of grateful. 'I do,' he
+says, simple,&mdash;'sick enough to bust the camera.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, I should think you would,' I says hearty; and I went down Daphne
+Street with the afternoon kind of feeling tarnished. I was wondering how
+on earth folks go on at all that dislikes their work like that. There
+was Abe Luck, just fixing the Sykes's eaves-trough&mdash;what was there to
+<i>like</i> about fixing eaves-troughs and about the whole hardware business?
+Jimmy Sturgis coming driving the 'bus, Eppleby Holcomb over there
+registering deeds, Mis' Sykes's girl Em'ly washing windows,&mdash;what was
+there about any of it to <i>like</i> doing? I looked at Mis' Sykes's Em'ly
+real pitying, polishing panes outside, when Abe Luck come climbing down
+the ladder from the roof; and all of a sudden I see Abe stick his head
+through the rungs, and quick as a flash kiss Mis' Sykes's Em'ly.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span></p><p>"'My land!' I started to think, 'Mis' Sykes had ought to discharge&mdash;'
+and then I just stopped short off, sudden. Her hating windows, and him
+hating eaves-troughs, and what else did either of them have? Nothing. I
+could sense their lives like I could sense my own&mdash;level and even and
+<i>darn</i>. And all at once I had all I could do to keep from being glad
+that Abe Luck had kissed Em'ly. And I walked like lightning to keep back
+the feeling.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady was to the post-office store before me. It
+was a slack time of day, and Silas set down on a mail-bag and begun
+outlining the situation that he meant about.</p>
+
+<p>"'The School Board,' says Silas, important, 'has got some women's work
+they want done. It's a thing,' s'he, 'that women can do the best&mdash;I mean
+it's the girls an' boys, hangin' round evenin's&mdash;you know we've all
+talked about it. But somebody's got to get after 'em in earnest, an' see
+they don't disgrace us with their carryin' on in the streets, evenin's.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why don't the men do it?' I ask' him, wonderin', 'or is it 'count of
+offending some?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No such thing!' says Silas, touchy. 'Where's your delicate feelin's,
+Calliope? Women can do these things better than men.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span> This is somethin'
+delicate, that had ought to be seen to quiet. It ain't a matter for the
+authorities. It's women's work,' says he. 'It's women that's the
+mothers&mdash;it ain't the men,' says Silas, convincing.</p>
+
+<p>"But still I looked at him, real meditative. 'What started you men off
+on that tack at this time?' I ask' him, blunt&mdash;because young folks had
+been flooding the streets evenings since I could remember, and no
+Friendship Village man had ever acted like this about it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Silas, 'don't you women tell it out around. But the thing
+that's got us desperate is the schoolhouse. The entry to it&mdash;they've
+used it shameful. Peanut shucks, down-trod popcorn, paper bags, fruit
+peelin's&mdash;every mornin' the stone to the top o' the steps, under the
+archway, is full of 'em. An' last week the Board went up there early
+mornin' to do a little tinkerin', an' there set three beer bottles, all
+empty. So we've figgered on puttin' some iron gates up to the
+schoolhouse entry an' appointin' you women a Vigilance Committee to help
+us out.'</p>
+
+<p>"We felt real indignant about the schoolhouse. It stands up a little
+slope, and you can see it from 'most anywheres daytimes, and we all felt
+kind of an interest&mdash;though<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span> of course the School Board seemed to own it
+special.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady looked warm and worried. 'But what is it you want we
+should do, Silas?' she ask', some irritable. 'I've got my hands so full
+o' my own family it don't seem as if I could vigilance for nobody.'</p>
+
+<p>"'S-h-h, Mis' Toplady. <i>I</i> think it's a great trust,' says Mis' Silas
+Sykes.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is a great trust,' says Silas, warm, 'to get these young folks to
+stop gallivantin' an' set home where they belong.'</p>
+
+<p>"'How you going to get them to set home, Silas?' I ask', some puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Silas, 'that's where they ought to be, ain't it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why,' I says thoughtful, 'I donno's they had.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>What?</i>' says Silas, with horns on the word. 'What say, Calliope?'</p>
+
+<p>"'How much settin' home evenings did you do when you was young, Silas?'
+I says.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd 'a' been a long sight better off if I'd 'a' done more of it,' says
+Silas.</p>
+
+<p>"'However that is, you <i>didn't</i> set home,' I says back at him. 'Neither
+will young folks set there now, I don't believe.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Silas, '<i>anyhow</i>, they've got to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> get off'n the streets.
+We've made up our minds to that. They can't set on steps nor in
+stairways down town, nor in entries, nor to the schoolhouse. We've got
+to look out for public decency.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Public</i> decency,' says I, again. 'They can do what they like, so's
+public decency ain't injured, I s'pose, Silas?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No such thing!' shouts Silas. 'Calliope, take shame! Ain't we doin'
+our best to start 'em right?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That's what I donno,' I answers him, troubled. 'Driving folks around
+don't never seem to me to be a real good start towards nowheres.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Amanda Toplady hitched forward in her chair and spoke for the
+first time&mdash;ponderous and decided, but real sweet, too. 'What I think is
+this,' she says. 'They won't set home, as Calliope says. And when we've
+vigilanced 'em off the streets, where are we goin' to vigilance 'em
+<i>to</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>"'That ain't our lookout,' says Silas.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't it?' says Mis' Toplady. '<i>Ain't it?</i>' She set thinking for a
+minute and then her face smoothed. 'Anyhow,' she says, comfortable, 'us
+ladies'll vigilance awhile. It ain't clear in my mind yet what to do.
+But we'll do it, I guess.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span></p><p>"We made up that we three should come down town one night that week and
+look around and see what we see. We all knew&mdash;every woman in Friendship
+Village knew&mdash;how evenings, the streets was full of young folks, loud
+talking and loud laughing and carrying on. We'd all said to each other,
+helpless, that we <i>wisht</i> something could be done, but that was as far
+as anybody'd got. So we made it up that we three should be down town in
+a night or two, so's to get our ideas started, and Silas was to have
+Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb, that's on the School Board, down to
+the store so we could all talk it over together afterwards. But still I
+guess we all felt sort of vague as to what we was to drive <i>at</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"'It seems like Silas wanted us to unwind a ball o' string from the
+middle out,' says Mis' Toplady, uneasy, when we'd left the store.</p>
+
+<p>"A few days after that Minerva come. I went down to the depot to meet
+her, and I would of reco'nized her anywheres, she looked so much like
+her handwriting. She was dressed sort of tawdry swell. She had on a good
+deal. But out from under her big hat with its cheap plume that was goin'
+to shed itself all over the house, I see her face was little and young
+and some pretty and excited. Excited about life<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> and new things and
+moving around. I liked her right off. 'Land!' thinks I, 'you'll try me
+to death. But, you poor, nice little thing, you can if you want to.'</p>
+
+<p>"I took her home to supper. She talked along natural enough, and seemed
+to like everything she et, and then she wiped the dishes for me, and
+looked at herself in the clock looking-glass all the while she was doing
+it. Then, when I'd put out the milk bottles, we locked up the back part
+of the house and went and set in the parlour.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd always thought pretty well of my parlour. It hasn't anything but a
+plush four-piece set and an ingrain and Nottinghams, but it's the
+<i>parlour</i>, and I'd liked it. But when we'd been setting there a little
+while, and I'd asked her about everybody, and showed her their pictures
+in the album, all of a sudden it seemed as if they wasn't anything to
+<i>do</i> in the parlour. Setting there and talking was nice, but I missed
+something. And I thought of this first when Minerva got up and walked
+kind of aimless to the window.</p>
+
+<p>"'How big is Friendship Village?' she ask'.</p>
+
+<p>"I told her, real proud.</p>
+
+<p>"'They can't be a great deal goin' on here, is they?' she says.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span></p><p>"'Land, yes!' I says. 'We're so busy we're nearly dead. Ladies' Aid,
+Ladies' Missionary, Cemetery Improvement Sodality, the rummage sale
+coming on, the bazaar, and I donno what all.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' she says, vague. 'Well&mdash;is they many young people?'</p>
+
+<p>"And when I'd told her, 'Quite a few,' she didn't say anything more&mdash;but
+just stood looking down the street. And pretty soon I says, 'Land! the
+parlour's kind o' stuffy to-night. Let's go out in the yard.' And when
+we'd walked around out there a minute, smelling in my pinks, I thought,
+'Land! it's kind o' dreary doin' this,' an' I says to her all of a
+sudden, 'Let's go in the house and make some candy.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, <i>let's</i>,' she says, like a little girl.</p>
+
+<p>"We went back in and lit the kitchen fire, and made butter-scotch&mdash;she
+done it, being real handy at it. She livened up and flew around and
+joked some, and the kitchen looked nice and messy and <i>used</i>, and we had
+a real good time. And right in the midst of it there come a rap at the
+side door and there stood the dapper, tired-looking little photograph
+man, J. Horace Myers, seeming as discouraged as he could.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span></p><p>"We spread out the proofs of the pictures of my house and spent some
+time deciding. And while we was deciding, he showed us some more
+pictures that he'd made of the town, and talked a little about them. He
+was a real pleasant, soft-spoken man, and he knew how to laugh and when
+to do it. He see the funny in things&mdash;he see that the post-office looked
+like a rabbit with its ears up; he see that the engine-house looked like
+it was lifting its eyebrows; and he see the pretty in things, too&mdash;he
+showed us a view or two he'd took around Friendship Village just for the
+fun of it. One was Daphne Street, by the turn, and he says: 'It looks
+like a deep tunnel, don't it? An' like you wanted to go down it?' He was
+a wonderful nice, neutral little man, and I enjoyed looking at his
+pictures.</p>
+
+<p>"But Minerva&mdash;I couldn't help watching her. She wasn't so interested in
+the pictures, and she wasn't so quick at seeing the funny in things, nor
+the pretty, either; but even the candy making hadn't livened her up the
+way that little talking done. She acted real easy and told some little
+jokes; and when the candy was cool, she passed him some; and I thought
+it was all right to do. And he sort of spruced up and took notice and
+quit being so down-in-the-mouth. And I thought, 'Land! ain't it funny
+how just<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span> being together makes human beings, be they agent or be they
+cousin, more themselves than they was before!'</p>
+
+<p>"Her liking company made me all the more sorry to leave Minerva alone
+that next evening, that was the night Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I
+was due to a tableau of our own in the post-office store. It was the
+night when the Vigilance Committee was to have its first real meeting
+with the School Board. But I lit the lamp for Minerva in the parlour,
+and give her the day's paper, and she had her sewing, and when Mis'
+Toplady and Mis' Sykes come for me, I went off and left her setting by
+the table. My parlour had been swept that day, and it was real tidy and
+quiet and lamp-lit; and yet when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and I
+stepped out into the night, all smelling of pinks and a new moon
+happening, and us going on that mission we wasn't none of us sure what
+it was, the dark and the excitement sort of picked me up and I felt like
+I never felt in my parlour in my life&mdash;all kind of young and free and
+springy.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's us walk right down through town first,' says Mis' Toplady.
+'That's where the young folks gets to, seems though.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a, I don't see the necessity of that,' says Mis' Sykes. 'We've
+all three done that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span> again and again. We know how it is down there
+evenings.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But,' says Mis' Toplady, in her nice, stubborn way, 'let's us, anyway.
+I know, when I walk through town nights, I'm 'most always hurrying to
+get my yeast before the store shuts, an' I never half look around.
+To-night let's <i>look</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, we looked. Along by the library windows in some low stone ledges.
+In front of a store or two they was some more. Around the corner was a
+place where they was some new tombstones piled up, waiting for their
+folks. And half a block down was the canal bridge. And ledges and bridge
+and tombstones and streets was alive with girls and boys&mdash;little young
+things, the girls with their heads tied in bright veils and pretty
+ribbons on them, and their laughs just shrilling and thrilling with the
+sheer fun of <i>hanging around</i> on a spring night.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, '<i>what</i> is their mothers thinkin' of?'</p>
+
+<p>"But something else was coming home to me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I dunno,' I says, kind of scairt at the way I felt, 'if I had the
+invite, this spring night, all pinks and new moons, I donno but I'd go
+and hang over a tombstone with 'em!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Calliope!' says Mis' Sykes, sharp. But Mis'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> Toplady, she kind of
+chuckled. And the crowd jostled us&mdash;more young folks, talking and
+laughing and calling each other by nicknames, and we didn't say no more
+till we got up in the next block.</p>
+
+<p>"There's a vacant store there up towards the wagon shop, and a house or
+two, and that's where the open stairways was that Silas meant about.
+Everything had been shut up at six o'clock, and there, sure as the
+world, 'most every set of steps and every stairway had its couple,
+sitting and laughing and talking, like the place was differ'nt sofas in
+a big drawing-room, or rocks on a seashore, or like that.</p>
+
+<p>"'Mercy!' says Mis' Sykes. 'Such goin'-ons! Such bringin'-ups!'</p>
+
+<p>"Just then I recollect I heard a girl laugh out, pretty and pleased, and
+I thought I recognized Mis' Sykes's Em'ly's voice, and I thought I knew
+Abe Luck's answering&mdash;but I never said a word to Mis' Sykes, because I
+betted she wouldn't get a step farther than discharging Em'ly, and I was
+after more steps than that. And besides, same minute, I got the scent of
+the Bouncing Bet growing by the wagon shop; and right out of thin air,
+and acrost more years than I like to talk about, come the quick little
+feeling that made me know the fun, the sheer <i>fun</i>, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> Em'ly thought
+she was having and that she had the right to.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, well, whoever it is, maybe they're engaged,' says Mis' Toplady,
+soothin'.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, but the bad taste!' says Mis' Sykes, shuddering. Mis' Sykes is a
+good cook and a good enough mother, and a fair-to-middling housekeeper,
+but she looks hard on the fringes and the borders of this life, and to
+her 'good taste' is both of them.</p>
+
+<p>"They wasn't nobody on the wagon shop steps, for a wonder, and we set
+down there for a minute to talk it over. And while Mis' Toplady and Mis'
+Sykes was having it out between them, I set there a-thinking. And all of
+a sudden the night sort of stretched out and up, and I almost felt us
+little humans crawling around on the bottom of it. And one little bunch
+of us was Friendship Village, and in Friendship Village some of us was
+young. I kind of saw the whole throng of them&mdash;the <i>young</i> humans that
+would some day be the village. There they was, bottled up in school all
+day, or else boxed in a store or a factory or somebody's kitchen, and
+when night come, and summer come, and the moon come&mdash;land, land! they
+<i>wanted</i> something, all of them, and they didn't know what they wanted.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p><p>"And what had they got? There was the streets stretching out in every
+direction, each house with its parlour&mdash;four-piece plush set, mebbe, and
+ingrain and Nottinghams, and mebbe not even that, and mebbe the rest of
+the family flooding the room, anyway. And what was the parlour, even
+with somebody to set and talk to them&mdash;what was the parlour, compared to
+the <i>magic</i> they was craving and couldn't name? The feeling young and
+free and springy, and the wanting somehow to express it? Something to
+do, somewheres to go, something to see, somebody to be with and laugh
+with&mdash;no wonder they swept out into the dark in numbers, no wonder they
+took the night as they could find it. They didn't have no hotel piazza
+of their own, no boat-rides, no seashore, no fine parties, no
+automobiles&mdash;no nothing but the big, exciting dark that belongs to us
+all together. No wonder they took it for their own.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, Friendship Village was no more than a great big ball-room with
+these young folks leaving the main floor and setting in the alcoves, to
+unseen music. If the alcoves had been all palms and expense and
+dressed-up chaperons on the edges, everything would of seemed right. As
+it was, it was all a danger that made my heart ache for them, and for us
+all. And yet it come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span> from their same longing for fun, for joy&mdash;and
+where was they to get it?</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, ladies!' I says, out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, 'if
+only we had some place to invite 'em to!'</p>
+
+<p>"'They wouldn't come if we had,' says Mis' Sykes, final.</p>
+
+<p>"'Not come!' I says. 'With candy making and pictures and music and mebbe
+dancin'? Not come!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Dancin'!' says Mis' Toplady, low. 'Oh, Calliope, I donno as I'd go
+that far.'</p>
+
+<p>"'We've went farther than that long ago,' I says, reckless. 'We've went
+so far that the dangers of dancin' would be safe beside the dangers of
+what is.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But we ain't responsible for that,' says Mis' Sykes.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't we&mdash;<i>ain't we?</i>' I says, like Mis' Toplady had. 'Mis' Sykes, how
+much does Silas rent the post-office hall for, a night?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ten dollars, if he makes something; and five dollars at cost,' she
+says.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's it,' I says, groaning. 'We never could afford that, even to ask
+them in once a week. Oh, we'd ought to have some place open every night
+for them, and us ladies take turns doing the refreshments; but they
+ain't no place in town that belongs to young folks&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span></p><p>"And all of a sudden I stopped, like an idee had took me from all four
+sides of my head at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, ladies,' I says, 'look at the schoolhouse, doing nothing every
+night out of the year and <i>built</i> for the young folks!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, well,' says Mis' Sykes, superior, 'you know the Board'd never
+allow 'em to use the schoolhouse <i>that</i> way. The Board wouldn't think of
+it!'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Whose</i> Board?' says I, stern. 'Ain't they our Board? Yours and mine
+and Friendship Village's? Come on&mdash;come on and put it to 'em,' I says,
+kind o' wild.</p>
+
+<p>"I was climbing down the steps while I spoke. And we all went down, me
+talking on, and Mis' Toplady catching fire on the minute, an' Mis' Sykes
+holding out like she does unless so be she's thought of an idea herself.
+But oh, Mis' Toplady, she's differ'nt.</p>
+
+<p>"'Goodness alive!' she said, 'why ain't some of us thought o' that
+before? Ain't it the funniest thing, the way folks can have a way out
+right under their noses, an' not sense it?'</p>
+
+<p>"I had never had a new-born notion come into my head so ready-made. I
+could hardly talk it fast enough, and Mis' Toplady same way, and we
+hurried back to the post-office store, Mis' Sykes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span> not convinced but
+keeping still because us two talked it so hard.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas and Timothy and Eppleby Holcomb was setting in the back part of
+the post-office store waiting for us, and Mis' Toplady and I hurried
+right up to them.</p>
+
+<p>"'You tell, Calliope,' says Mis' Toplady. 'It's your idee.'</p>
+
+<p>"But first we both told, even Mis' Sykes joining in, shocked, about the
+doorway carryin' ons and all the rest. 'Land, land!' Mis' Toplady says,
+'I never had a little girl. I lost my little girl baby when she was
+eleven months. But I ain't never felt so like <i>shieldin'</i> her from
+somethin' as I feel to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>"'It's awful, awful!' says Timothy Toplady, decided. 'We've just got to
+get some law goin', that's all.'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas agreed, scowling judicial. 'We been talkin' curfew,' he says. 'I
+donno but we'll hev to get the curfew on 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Curfew!' says I. 'So you're thinking of curfewin' 'em off the streets.
+Will you tell me, Silas Sykes, where you're going to curfew 'em <i>to</i>?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that's what I meant about vigilancin' 'em
+off somewheres. <i>Where to?</i> What say, Silas?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span></p><p>"'That ain't our concern, woman!' shouts Silas, exasperated by us
+harping on the one string. 'Them young folks has all got one or more
+parents. Leave 'em use 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, indeed,' says Mis' Sykes, nodding once, with her eyes shut brief.
+'An' young people had ought to be encouraged to do evening studyin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady jerked her head sideways. 'Evenin' fiddlestick!' she
+snaps, direct. 'If you've got a young bone left in your body, Mis'
+Sykes,' says she, 'you know you're talkin' nonsense.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't you no idees about how well-bred young ladies should conduct
+themselves?' says Mis' Sykes, in her most society way.</p>
+
+<p>"'I donno so much about well-bred young ladies,' says Mis' Toplady,
+frank. 'I was thinkin' about just girls. Human girls. An' boys the
+same.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Me, too,' I says, fervent.</p>
+
+<p>"'What you goin' to <i>do</i>?' says Silas, spreading out his hands stiff and
+bowing his knees. 'What's your idee? You've got to have a workin' idee
+for this thing, same as the curfew is.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Silas,' I says then, 'that's what we've got&mdash;that's what we've
+got. Them poor young things wants a good time&mdash;same as you and all<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span> of
+us did, and same as we do yet. Why not give 'em a place to meet and be
+together, normal and nice, and some of us there to make it pleasant for
+'em?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Heh!' says Silas. 'You talk like a dook. Where you goin' to <i>get</i> a
+place for 'em? Hire the opery-house, air ye?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, sir,' I says to him. 'Give 'em the place that's theirs. Give 'em
+the schoolhouse, open evenings, an' all lit up an' music an' things
+doin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My Lord heavens!' says Silas, that's an elder in the church and ain't
+no more control of his tongue than a hen. 'Air you crazy, Calliope
+Marsh? Plump, stark, starin' ravin'&mdash;why, woman alive, who's goin' to
+donate the light an' the coal? <i>You?</i>'</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought mebbe the building and the School Board, too, was <i>for</i> the
+good o' the young folks,' I says to him, sharp.</p>
+
+<p>"'So it is,' says Silas, 'it's for their <i>good</i>. It ain't for their
+foolishness. Can't you see daylight, Calliope?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Is arithmetic good an' morals <i>not</i>, Silas Sykes?' I says.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Timothy Toplady let loose: 'A school-buildin', Calliope',
+s'he,&mdash;'why, it's a dignified place. They must respect it, same as they
+would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_228" id="Page_228">[Pg 228]</a></span> a church. Could you learn youngsters the Constitution of the
+United States in a room where they'd just been cookin' up cough drops
+an' hearin' dance tunes?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says I, calm, 'if you can't, I'd leave the Constitution of the
+United States <i>go</i>. If it's that delicate,' I says back at him, 'gimme
+the cough drops.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You're talkin' treason,' says Silas, hoarse.</p>
+
+<p>"Timothy groans. '<i>Dancin!</i>' he says. 'Amanda,' he says, 'I hope you
+ain't sunk so low as Calliope?'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady wavered a little. She's kind of down on dancing herself.
+'Well,' she says, 'anyhow, I'd fling some place open and invite 'em in
+for <i>somethin'</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>I</i> ain't for this, Silas,' says Mis' Sykes, righteous. '<i>I</i> believe
+the law is the law, and we'd best use it. Nothin' we can do is as good
+as enforcin' the dignity of the law.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, <i>rot</i>!' says Eppleby Holcomb, abrupt. Eppleby hadn't been saying a
+word. But he looked up from the wood-box where he was setting, and he
+wrinkled up his eyes at the corners the way he does&mdash;it wasn't a real
+elegant word he picked, but I loved Eppleby for that 'rot.' 'Asking your
+pardon, Mis' Sykes,' he says, 'I ain't got so much confidence in
+enforcin' the law<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_229" id="Page_229">[Pg 229]</a></span> as I've got in edgin' round an' edgin' round
+accordin' to your cloth&mdash;an' your pattern. An' your pattern.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Lord heavens!' says Silas, looking glassy, 'if this was Roosia, you
+an' Calliope'd both be hoofin' it hot-foot for Siberia.'</p>
+
+<p>"Well, it was like arguing with two trees. They wasn't no use talking to
+either Silas or Timothy. I forget who said what last, but the meeting
+broke up, after a little, some strained, and we hadn't decided on
+anything. Us ladies had vigilanced one night to about as much purpose as
+mosquitoes humming. And I said good night to them and went on up street,
+wondering why God lets a beautiful, burning plan come waving its wings
+in your head and your heart if he don't intend you to make a way for
+yourself to use it.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, by the big evergreens a block or so from my house, I heard
+somebody laugh&mdash;a little, low, nice, soft, sort of foolish laugh, a
+woman's laugh, and a man's voice joined in with it, pleasant and sort of
+singing. I was right onto them before they see me.</p>
+
+<p>"'I thought it was a lonesome town,' says somebody, 'but I guess it
+ain't.'</p>
+
+<p>"And there, beside of me, sitting on the rail fence under the
+evergreens, was Minerva Beach,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230">[Pg 230]</a></span> my own cousin, and the little, tired
+photograph-taking man. I had just bare time to catch my breath and to
+sense where the minute really belonged&mdash;that's always a good thing to
+do, ain't it?&mdash;and then I says, cool as you please:</p>
+
+<p>"'Hello, Minerva! My! ain't the night grand? I don't wonder you couldn't
+stay in the house. How do, Mr. Myers? I was just remembering my
+lemon-pie that won't be good if it sets till to-morrow. Come on in and
+let's have it, and make a little lemonade.'</p>
+
+<p>"Ordinarily, I think it's next door to immoral to eat lemon-pie in the
+evening; but I had to think quick, and it was the only thing like a
+party that I had in the butt'ry. Anyhow, I was planning bigger morals
+than ordinary, too.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, sir, I'd been sure before, but that made me certain sure. There
+had been my parlour and my porch, and them two young people was welcome
+to them both; but they wanted to go somewheres, natural as a bird
+wanting to fly or a lamb to caper. And there I'd been living in
+Friendship Village for sixty years or so, and I'd reco'nized the laws of
+housekeeping and debt paying and grave digging and digestion, and I'd
+never once thought of this, that's as big as them all.</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it nice the way God has balanced<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_231" id="Page_231">[Pg 231]</a></span> towns! He never puts in a Silas
+Sykes that he don't drop in an Eppleby Holcomb somewheres to undo what
+the Silases does. It wasn't much after six o'clock the next morning, and
+I was out after kindling, when they come a shadow in the shed door, and
+there was Eppleby. He had a big key in his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm a-goin' to the City, Calliope,' says he. 'Silas an' Timothy an' I
+are a-goin' up to the City on the Dick Dasher' (that's our daily
+accommodation train, named for the engineer). 'Silas and Timothy is set
+on buying the iron gates for the schoolhouse entry, an' I'm goin' along.
+He put the key in my hand, meditative. 'We won't be back till the ten
+o'clock Through,' he says, 'an' I didn't know but you might want to get
+in the schoolhouse for somethin' to-night&mdash;you an' Mis' Toplady.'</p>
+
+<p>"I must of stood staring at him, but he never changed expression.</p>
+
+<p>"'The key had ought to be left with some one, you know,' he says. 'I'm
+leavin' it with you. You go ahead. I'll go snooks on the blame. Looks
+like it was goin' to be another nice day, don't it?' he says, casual,
+and went off down the path.</p>
+
+<p>"For a minute I just stood there, staring down at the key in my hand.
+And then, 'Eppleby,' I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_232" id="Page_232">[Pg 232]</a></span> sings after him, 'oh, Eppleby,' I says, 'I feel
+just like I was going to <i>crow</i>!'</p>
+
+<p>"I don't s'pose I hesitated above a minute. That is, my head may have
+hesitated some, like your head will, but my heart went right on ahead. I
+left my breakfast dishes standing&mdash;a thing I do for the very few&mdash;and I
+went straight for Mis' Toplady. And she whips off her big apron and left
+<i>her</i> dishes standing, an' off we went to the half a dozen that we knew
+we could depend on&mdash;Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that's going to
+be married again and has got real human towards other folks, like she
+wasn't in her mourning grief&mdash;we told 'em the whole thing. And we one
+and all got together and we see that here was something that could be
+done, right there and then, so be we was willing to make the effort, big
+enough and unafraid.</p>
+
+<p>"When I remember back, that day is all of a whirl to me. We got the
+notice in the daily paper bold as a lion, that there would be a party to
+the schoolhouse that night, free to everybody. We posted the notice
+everywheres, and sent it out around by word of mouth. And when we'd gone
+too far to go back, we walked in on Mis' Sykes&mdash;all but Abagail, that
+had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_233" id="Page_233">[Pg 233]</a></span> pitched in to making the cakes&mdash;and we told her what we'd done, so
+she shouldn't have any of the blame.</p>
+
+<p>"She took it calm, not because calm is Christian, I bet, but because
+calm is grand lady.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's what I always said,' says she, 'would be the way, if the women
+run things.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Women don't run things,' says Mis' Toplady, placid, 'an' I hope to the
+land they never will. But I believe the time'll come when men an'
+women'll run 'em together, like the Lord meant, an' when women can see
+that they're mothers to all men an' not just to their little two-by-four
+families.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My duty to men is in my own home,' says Mis' Sykes, regal.</p>
+
+<p>"'So is mine,' says Mis' Toplady, 'for a beginning. But it don't stop in
+my wood box nor my clothes-basket nor yet in my mixin'-bowl.'</p>
+
+<p>"We went off and left her&mdash;it's almost impossible to federate Mis' Sykes
+into anything. And we went up to the building and made our preparations.
+And then we laid low for the evening, to see what it would bring.</p>
+
+<p>"I was putting on my hat that night in front of the hall-tree
+looking-glass when J. Horace Myers come up on the front porch to call
+for Minerva. He was all dressed up, and she come<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234">[Pg 234]</a></span> downstairs in a little
+white dimity she had, trimmed with lace that didn't cost much of
+anything, and looking like a picture. They sat down on the porch for a
+little, and I heard them talking while I was hunting one o' my gloves.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't it the dandiest night!' says J. Horace Myers.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't it!' says Minerva. 'I should say. My! I'm glad I come to this
+town!'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm awful glad you did, too,' says J. Horace. 'I thought first it was
+awful lonesome here, but I guess&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'They're goin' to have music to-night,' says Minerva, irrelevant.</p>
+
+<p>"'Cricky!' says the little photograph man.</p>
+
+<p>"Minerva had her arm around a porch post and she sort of swung back and
+forth careless, and&mdash;'My!' she said, 'I just do love to go. Have you
+ever travelled anywheres?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Texas an' through there,' he says. 'I'm goin' again some day, when&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm goin' West now,' says Minerva. 'I just can't stand it long in one
+place, unless,' she added, 'it's <i>awful</i> nice.'</p>
+
+<p>"I'd found my glove, but I recollect I stood still, staring out the
+door. I see it like I never see it before&mdash;<i>They was living</i>. Them two
+young things out there on my porch, and all the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_235" id="Page_235">[Pg 235]</a></span> young folks of
+Friendship Village, they was just living&mdash;trying to find a future and a
+life of their own. They didn't know it. They thought what they wanted
+was a good time, like the pioneers thought they wanted adventure. But
+here they were, young pioneers of new villages, flocking together
+wherever they could, seeking each other out, just living. And us that
+knew, us that had had life, too, or else had missed it, we was just
+letting them live, haphazard. And us that had ought to of been mothers
+to the town young, no less than to our own young, had been leaving them
+live alone, on the streets and stairways and school entries of
+Friendship Village.</p>
+
+<p>"I know I fair run along the street to the schoolhouse. It seemed as if
+I couldn't get there quick enough to begin the new way.</p>
+
+<p>"The schoolhouse was lit up from cellar to garret and it looked sort of
+different and surprised at itself, and like it was sticking its head up.
+Maybe it sounds funny, but it sort of seemed to me the old brick
+building looked <i>conscious</i>, and like it had just opened its eyes and
+turned its face to something. Inside, the music was tuning up, the desks
+that was only part screwed down had been moved back; in one of the
+recitation-rooms we'd got the gas plates<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_236" id="Page_236">[Pg 236]</a></span> for the candy making, and
+Abagail was in there stirring up lemonade in a big crock, and the other
+ladies, with white aprons on, was bustling round seeing to cutting the
+cakes.</p>
+
+<p>"It wasn't a good seven-thirty before they begun coming in, the girls
+nipping in pretty dresses, the boys awkward and grinning, school-girls,
+shop-girls, Mis' Sykes's Em'ly an' Abe Luck and everybody&mdash;they come
+from all directions that night, I guess, just to see what it was like.</p>
+
+<p>"And when they got set down, I realized for the first time that the law
+and some of the prophets of time to come hung on what kind of a time
+they had that first night.</p>
+
+<p>"While I was thinking that, the music struck into a tune, hurry-up time,
+and before anybody could think it, there they were on their feet, one
+couple after another. And when the lilty sound of the dance and the
+sliding of feet got to going, like magic and as if they had dropped out
+of the walls, in come them that had been waiting around outside to see
+what we was really going to do. They come in, and they joined in and in
+five minutes the floor was full of them. And after being boxed in the
+house all day, or bottled in shops or polishing windows or mending
+eaves-troughs or taking photographs of humbly<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_237" id="Page_237">[Pg 237]</a></span> houses or doing I donno
+what-all that they didn't like, here they were, come after their good
+time and having it&mdash;<i>and having it</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady was peeking through a crack in the recitation-room door.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Dancin'!</i>' she says, with a little groan. 'I donno what my
+conscience'll say to me about this when it gets me alone.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, seeing to the frosting
+on the ends of her fingers, 'I feel like they'd been pipin' to me for
+years an' I'd never let 'em dance. An' now they're dancin' up here safe
+an' light an' with us. An' I'm glad of it, to my marrow.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' says Mis' Toplady, wiping her eyes. 'I donno but <i>my</i> marrow
+might get use' to it.'</p>
+
+<p>"Long about ten o'clock, when we'd passed the refreshments and everybody
+had carried their own plates back and was taking the candy out of the
+tins, I nudged Mis' Toplady and we slipped out into the schoolhouse
+entry and set down on the steps. We'd just heard the Through whistle,
+and we knew the School Board Iron Gate Committee was on it, and that
+they must of seen the schoolhouse lit from 'way acrost the marsh.
+Besides, I was counting on Eppleby to march them straight up there.</p>
+
+<p>"And so he done. Almost before I knew it<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_238" id="Page_238">[Pg 238]</a></span> they stepped out onto us,
+setting there in the starlight. I stood up and faced them, not from
+being brave, but from intending to jump <i>first</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"'Silas and Timothy,' I says, 'what's done is done, but the consequences
+ain't. The Women's Evening Vigilance Committee that you appointed
+yourself has tried this thing, and now it's for us all to judge if it
+works.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Heh!' says Silas, showing his teeth. 'Hed a little party, did you?
+Thought you'd get up a little party an' charge it to the Board, did you?
+Be su'prised, won't you, when you women get a bill for rent an' light
+for this night's performance?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Real surprised,' I says, dry.</p>
+
+<p>"'Amanda,' pipes up Timothy, 'air you a fool party to this fool doin's?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, shucks!' says Mis' Toplady, tired. 'I been doin' too real things
+to row, Timothy.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Nev' mind,' says Silas, pacific. 'When the new iron gates gets here
+for this here entry, we won't have no more such doin's as this. They're
+ordered,' says Silas, like a bombshell, 'to keep out the hoodlums.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Eppleby, that had been peeking through the schoolhouse window,
+whirled around.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' says he. 'Let's put up the gates to keep out the hoodlums. But
+what you going<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239">[Pg 239]</a></span> to do for the girls and boys of Friendship Village that
+ain't hoodlums? What you goin' to do for them? I want to tell you that I
+knew all about what was goin' on here to-night, and I give over the
+schoolhouse key myself. And now you look down there.'</p>
+
+<p>"It was Friendship Village he pointed to, laying all around the
+schoolhouse slope, little lights shining for homes. And Eppleby went on
+before Silas and Timothy could get the breath to reply:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'The town's nothin' but <i>roots</i>, is it?' Eppleby says. 'Roots, sendin'
+up green shoots to the top o' this hill to be trained up here into some
+kind of shape to meet life. What you doin' to 'em? Buildin' 'em a great,
+expensive schoolhouse that they use a few hours a day, part o' the year,
+an' the rest of the time it might as well be a hole in the ground for
+all the good it does anybody. An' here's the young folks, that you built
+it <i>for</i> chasin' the streets to let off the mere flesh-an'-blood energy
+the Lord has give to 'em. Put up your iron gates if you want to, but
+don't put 'em up till the evenin's over an' till there's been some sort
+o' doin's here like this to give 'em what's their right. Put up your
+iron gates, but shame on the schoolhouse that puts 'em up an' stops
+there! Open the buildin' in the name<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_240" id="Page_240">[Pg 240]</a></span> of public decency, but in the name
+of public decency, don't shut it up!'</p>
+
+<p>"Timothy was starting to wave his arms when Mis' Toplady stood up,
+quiet, on the bottom step.</p>
+
+<p>"'Timothy,' she says, 'thirty-five years ago this winter you an' I was
+keepin' company. Do you remember how we done it? Do you remember singin'
+school? Do you remember spellin' school? Did our straw ridin' an' sleigh
+ridin' to the Caledonia district schoolhouse for our fun ever hurt the
+schoolhouse, or do you s'pose we ever learnt any the less in it? Well, I
+remember; an' we both remember; an' answer me this: Do you s'pose them
+young things in there is any differ'nt than we was? An' what's the sin
+an' the crime of what they're doin' now? Look at 'em!'</p>
+
+<p>"She pushed open the door. But just while we was looking, the music
+struck up the 'Home Sweet Home' waltz, and they all melted into dancing,
+the ladies in white aprons standing by the recitation-room doors looking
+on.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Dancin'!</i>' says Timothy, shuddering&mdash;but looking, too.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' says Amanda, brave as you please, 'ain't it pretty? Lots
+prettier than chasin' up an' down Daphne Street. What say, Timothy?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_241" id="Page_241">[Pg 241]</a></span></p><p>"Eppleby give Silas a little nudge. 'Le's give it a trial,' he says.
+'This is the Vigilance Committee's idee. Le's give it a trial.'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas stood bitin' the tail of his beard. 'Go on to destruction if you
+want to!' he says. 'I wash my hands of you!'</p>
+
+<p>"'So do I,' says Timothy, echoish, 'wash mine.'</p>
+
+<p>"Eppleby took them both by the shoulders. 'Well, then, go on inside a
+minute,' he says to 'em. 'Don't let's leave 'em all think we got stole a
+march on by the women!'</p>
+
+<p>"And though it was that argument that made them both let Eppleby push
+them inside, still, when the door shut behind them, I knew there wasn't
+anything more to worry over. But me&mdash;I waited out there in the entry
+till the waltz was through. And it was kind of like the village down
+there to the foot of the hill was listening, quiet, to great councils.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_242" id="Page_242">[Pg 242]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>X</h2>
+
+<p>"Up to Proudfit House the conservatory wasn't set aside from everyday
+living for just a place to be walked through and looked at and left
+behind for something better. It was a glass regular room, full of green,
+but not so full that it left you out of account. Willow chairs and a
+family of books and open windows into the other rooms made the
+conservatory all of a piece with the house, and at one end the tile was
+let go up in a big You-and-me looking fireplace, like a sort of shrine
+for fire, I use' to think, in the middle of a temple to flowers, and
+like both belonged to the household.</p>
+
+<p>"On the day of the evening company at Proudfit House Robin was sitting
+with a book in this room. I'd gone up that day to do what I could to
+help out, and to see to Christopher some. Him I'd put to taking his nap
+quite awhile before, and I was fussing with the plants like I love to
+do&mdash;it seems as if while I pick off dead leaves and give the roots a
+drink I was kind of doing their thinking for them. When I heard Alex
+Proudfit coming acrost the library, I started to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_243" id="Page_243">[Pg 243]</a></span> go, but Robin says to
+me, 'Don't go, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'stay here and do what you're
+doing&mdash;if you don't mind.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Land,' thinks I, turning back to the ferns, 'never tell me that young
+ladies are getting more up-to-date in love than they use' to be. My day,
+she would of liked that they should be alone, so be she could manage it
+without seeming to.'</p>
+
+<p>"I donno but I'm foolish, but it always seems to me that a minute like
+that had ought to catch fire and leap up, like a time by itself. In all
+the relationships of men and women, it seems like no little commonplace
+time is so vital as the minute when the man comes into a room where a
+woman is a-waiting for him. There is about it something of time to be
+when he'll come, not to gloat over his day's kill, or to forget his
+day's care, but to talk with her about their day of hardy work. Habitual
+arriving in a room again and again for ever can never quite take off,
+seems though, the edge of that coming back to where she is.... But
+somehow, that day, Alex Proudfit must have stepped through the door
+before the minute had quite caught fire, and Robin merely smiled up at
+him, calm and idle, from her low chair as he come to a chair beside her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tea, Robin Redbreast,' says he, 'is going to be here in a minute, with
+magnificent <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_244" id="Page_244">[Pg 244]</a></span>macaroons. But I think that you and I will have it by
+ourselves. Everybody is either asleep or pretending. I'm glad,' he tells
+her, 'you're the sort that can do things in the evening without resting
+up for from nine to ten hours preceding.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm resting now,' Robin said; 'this is quite heavenly&mdash;this green
+room.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at her, eager. 'Do you like it?' he asked. 'I mean the
+room&mdash;the house?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Enormously,' she told him. 'How could I help it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I wanted you to like it,' he says. 'We shall not be here much, you
+know, but we shall be here sometimes, and I'm glad if you feel the
+feeling of home, even with all these people about. It's all going very
+decently for to-night, thanks to Mrs. Emmons. Not a soul that we really
+wanted has failed us.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Except Mr. Insley,' Robin says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Except Insley,' Alex concedes, 'and I own I can't make him out. Not
+because he didn't come here. But because he seems so enthusiastic about
+throwing his life away. Very likely,' he goes on, placid, 'he didn't
+come simply because he wanted to come. Those people get some sort of
+medi&aelig;val renunciation mania, I believe. Robin,' he went on, 'where do
+you think you would like to live? Not to settle<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_245" id="Page_245">[Pg 245]</a></span> down, you know, but for
+the Eternal Place To Come Back To?'</p>
+
+<p>"'To come back to?' Robin repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"'The twentieth century home is merely that, you know,' Alex explained.
+'We're just beginning to solve the home problem. We've tried to make
+home mean one place, and then we were either always wanting to get away
+for a while, or else we stayed dreadfully put, which was worse. But I
+think now we begin to see the truth: Home is nowhere. Rather, it is
+everywhere. The thing to do is to live for two months, three months, in
+a place, and to get back to each place at not too long intervals. Home
+is where you like to be for the first two weeks. When that wears off,
+it's home no more. Then home is some other place where you think you'd
+like to be. We are becoming nomadic again&mdash;only this time we own the
+world instead of being at its feet for a bare living. You and I, Robin
+Redbreast, are going to be citizens of the whole world.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin looked over at him, reflective. And it seemed to me as if the
+whole race of women that have always liked one place to get in and be in
+and stay in spoke from her to Alex.</p>
+
+<p>"'But I've always had a little garden,' she says.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_246" id="Page_246">[Pg 246]</a></span></p><p>"'A little what?' Alex asks, blank.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, a garden,' she explains, 'to plant from year to year so that I
+know where things are going to come up.'</p>
+
+<p>"She was laughing, but I knew she meant what she said, too.</p>
+
+<p>"'My word,' Alex says, 'why, every place we take shall have a garden and
+somebody to grub about in it. Won't those and the conservatories do
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I like to get out and stick my hands in the spring-smelly ground,' she
+explains, 'and to remember where my bulbs are.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But I've no objection to bulbs,' Alex says. 'None in the world. We'll
+plant the bulbs and take a run round the world and come back to see them
+bloom. No?'</p>
+
+<p>"'And not watch them come up?' Robin says, so serious that they both
+laughed.</p>
+
+<p>"'We want more than a garden can give,' Alex says then, indulgent. 'We
+want what the whole world can give.'</p>
+
+<p>"She nodded. 'And what we can give back?' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"He leaned toward her, touched along her hair.</p>
+
+<p>"'My dear,' he said, 'we've got two of us to make the most of we can in
+this life: that's you<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247">[Pg 247]</a></span> and I. The world has got to teach us a number of
+things. Don't, in heaven's name, let's be trying to teach the wise old
+world.'</p>
+
+<p>"He leaned toward her and, elbow on his knee, he set looking at her. But
+she was looking a little by him, into the green of the room, and I guess
+past that, into the green of all outdoors. I got up and slipped out,
+without their noticing me, and I went through the house with one fact
+bulging out of the air and occupying my brain. And it was that sitting
+there beside him, with him owning her future like he owned his own,
+Robin's world was as different from Alex's as the world is from the
+Proudfits' conservatory.</p>
+
+<p>"I went up to Chris, in the pretty, pinky room next to Robin's and found
+him sitting up in bed and pulling the ties out of the down comforter, as
+hard as he could. I just stood still and looked at him, thinking how
+eating and drinking and creating and destroying seems to be the native
+instincts of everybody born. Destroying, as I look at it, was the weapon
+God give us so that we could eat and drink and create the world in
+peace, but we got some mixed up during getting born and we got to
+believing that destruction was a part of the process.</p>
+
+<p>"'Chris,' I says, 'what you pulling out?'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_248" id="Page_248">[Pg 248]</a></span></p><p>"'I donno those names of those,' he says. 'I call 'em little pulls.'</p>
+
+<p>"'What are they for?' I ask' him.</p>
+
+<p>"'I donno what those are for,' he says, 'but they come out <i>slickery</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it funny? And ain't it for all the world the way Nature works,
+destroying what comes out <i>slickery</i> and leaving that alone that resists
+her? I was so struck by it I didn't scold him none.</p>
+
+<p>"After a while I took him down for tea. On the way he picked up a sleepy
+puppy, and in the conservatory door we met the footman with the little
+tea wagon and the nice, drowsy quiet of the house went all to pieces
+with Chris in it:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Supper, supper&mdash;here comes supper on a wagon, runnin' on litty wheels
+goin' wound an a-w-o-u-n-d&mdash;' says he, some louder than saying and
+almost to shouting. He sat down on the floor and looked up expectant:
+'Five lumps,' he orders, not having belonged to the house party for
+nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell us about your day, Chris,' Robin asks. 'What did you do?'</p>
+
+<p>"'It isn't <i>by</i>, is it?' Chris says, anxious. 'To-day didn't stop yet,
+did it?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Not yet,' she reassures him. 'Now is still now.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_249" id="Page_249">[Pg 249]</a></span></p><p>"'I want to-day to keep being now,' Chris said, 'because when it stops,
+then the bed is right there. It don't be anywhere near to-night, is it?'
+he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Not very near,' Robin told him. 'Well, then, what are you doing
+to-day?' she asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm to the house's party,' he explained. 'The house is having its
+party. An' I'm to it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you like this house, dear?' Robin asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's nice,' he affirmed. 'In the night it&mdash;it talks wiv its lights. I
+saw it. With my daddy. When I was off on a big road.' Chris looked at
+her intent, from way in his eyes. 'I was thinkin' if my daddy would
+come,' he says, patient.</p>
+
+<p>"Robin stoops over to him, quick, and he let her. He'd took a most
+tremendous fancy to her, the little fellow had, and didn't want her long
+out of his sight. 'Is that Robin?' he always said, when he heard anybody
+coming from any direction. She give him a macaroon, now, for each hand,
+and he run away with the puppy. And then she turned to Alex, her face
+bright with whatever she was thinking about.</p>
+
+<p>"'Alex,' she says, 'he's a dear little fellow&mdash;a dear little fellow. And
+all alone. I've wanted so much to ask you: Can't we have him for ours?'</p>
+
+<p>"Alex looks at her, all bewildered up in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_250" id="Page_250">[Pg 250]</a></span> minute. 'How ours?' he asks.
+'Do you mean have him educated? That, of course, if you really want it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, no,' she says. '<i>Ours.</i> To keep with us, bring up, make. Let's let
+him be really ours.'</p>
+
+<p>"He just leaned back in the big chair, smiling at her, meditative.</p>
+
+<p>"'My dear Robin,' he says, 'it's a terrible responsibility to meddle
+that way with somebody's life.'</p>
+
+<p>"She looked at him, not understanding.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's such an almighty assumption,' he went on, 'this jumping blithely
+into the office of destiny&mdash;keeping, bringing-up, making, as you
+say&mdash;meddling with, I call it&mdash;anybody's life.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Isn't it really meddling to let him be in a bad way when we can put
+him in a better one?' she asked, puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>"'I love you, Robin,' says he, light, 'but not for your logic. No, my
+dear girl. Assuredly we will not take this child for ours. What leads
+you to suppose that Nature really wants him to live, anyway?'</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at him over my tea-cup, and for my life I couldn't make out
+whether he was speaking mocking or speaking plain.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_251" id="Page_251">[Pg 251]</a></span></p><p>"'If Chris is to be inebriate, criminal, vicious, even irresponsible,
+as his father must be,' Alex says, 'Nature wants nothing of the sort.
+She wants to be rid of him as quickly as possible. How do you know what
+you are saving?'</p>
+
+<p>"'How do you know,' Robin says, 'what you are letting go?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I can take the risk if Nature can,' he contends.</p>
+
+<p>"She sat up in her chair, her eyes bright as the daylight, and I thought
+her eagerness and earnestness was on her like a garment.</p>
+
+<p>"'You have nobody to refer the risk to,' Robin says, 'Nature has us. And
+for one, I take it. So far as Chris is concerned, Alex, if no one claims
+him, I want him never to be out of touch with me.'</p>
+
+<p>"But when a woman begins to wear that garment, the man that's in love
+with her&mdash;unless he is the special kind&mdash;he begins thinking how much
+sweeter and softer and <i>womaner</i> she is when she's just plain gentle.
+And he always gets uneasy and wants her to be the gentle way he
+remembers her being&mdash;that is, unless he's special, unless he's special.
+Like Alex got uneasy now.</p>
+
+<p>"'My heavens, dear,' he says&mdash;and I judged Alex had got to be one of
+them men that lays a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_252" id="Page_252">[Pg 252]</a></span> lace 'dear' over a haircloth tone of voice, and so
+solemnly believes they're keeping their temper&mdash;'My heavens, dear, don't
+misunderstand me. Experiment as much as you like. Material is cheap and
+abundant. If you don't feel the responsibility, have him educated
+wherever you want to. But don't expect me to play father to him. The
+personal contact is going it a little too strong.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That is exactly what he most needs,' says Robin.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come, dear,' says Alex, 'that's elemental&mdash;in an age when everybody
+can do things better than one can do them oneself.'</p>
+
+<p>"She didn't say nothing, and just set there, with her tea. Alex was
+watching her, and I knew just about as sure what he was thinking as
+though I had been his own thought, oozing out of his mind. He was
+watching her with satisfaction, patterned off with a kind of quiet
+amusement and jabbed into by a kind of worryin' wonder. How exactly, he
+was thinking, she was the type everlasting of Wife. She was girlish, and
+in little things she was all I'll-do-as-you-say, and she was even shy;
+he believed that he was marrying a girl whose experience of the world
+was commendably slight, whose ideas about it was kind of
+vague&mdash;commendably again;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253">[Pg 253]</a></span> and whose ways was easy-handled, like skein
+silk. By her little firmnesses, he see that she had it in her to be
+firm, but what he meant was that she should adopt his ideas and turn
+firm about them. He had it all planned out that he was going to
+embroider her brain with his notions of what was what. But all of a
+sudden, now and then, there she was confronting him as she had just done
+then with a serious, settled look of Woman&mdash;the Woman everlasting,
+wanting a garden, wanting to work, wanting a child....</p>
+
+<p>"In the doorway back of Alex, Bayless come in, carrying a tray, but it
+didn't have no card.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's somebody to speak with you a minute, Mr. Proudfit,' says Bayless.
+'It's Mr. Insley.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Have him come here,' Alex says. 'I hope,' he says, when the man was
+gone, 'that the poor fellow has changed his mind about our little
+festivities.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin sort of tipped up her forehead. 'Why <i>poor</i>?' she asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Poor,' says Alex, absent, 'because he lives in a pocket of the world,
+instead of wearing the world like a garment&mdash;when it would fit him.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was just setting my tea-cup down when she answered, and I recollect I
+almost jumped:</p>
+
+<p>"'He knows something better to do with the world than to wear it at
+all,' was what she said.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_254" id="Page_254">[Pg 254]</a></span></p><p>"I looked over at her. And maybe it was because she was sort of
+indignant, and maybe it was because she thought she had dared quite a
+good deal, but all of a sudden something sort of seemed to me to set
+fire to the minute, and it leaped up like a time by itself as we heard
+Insley's step crossing the library and coming towards us....</p>
+
+<p>"When he come out where we were, I see right off how pale he looked.
+Almost with his greeting, he turned to Alex with what he had come for,
+and he put it blunt.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was leaving the Cadozas' cottage on the Plank Road half an hour
+ago,' he said. 'A little way along I saw a man, who had been walking
+ahead of me, stagger and sprawl in the mud. He wasn't conscious when I
+got to him. He was little&mdash;I picked him up quite easily and got him back
+into the Cadozas' cottage. He still wasn't conscious when the doctor
+came. He gave him things. We got him in bed there. And then he spoke. He
+asked us to hunt up a little boy somewhere in Friendship Village, who
+belonged to him. And he said the boy's name was Chris.'</p>
+
+<p>"It seemed like it was to Alex Proudfit's interested lifting of eyebrows
+rather than to Robin's exclamation of pity that Insley answered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_255" id="Page_255">[Pg 255]</a></span></p><p>"'I'm sorry it was necessary to trouble you,' he says, 'but Chris ought
+to go at once. I'll take him down now.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That man,' Robin says, 'the father&mdash;is he ill? Is he hurt? How badly
+is he off?'</p>
+
+<p>"'He's very badly off,' says Insley, 'done for, I'm afraid. It was in a
+street brawl in the City&mdash;it's his side, and he's lost a good deal of
+blood. He walked all the way back here. A few hours, the doctor thought
+it would be, at most.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin stood up and spoke like what she was saying was a
+take-for-granted thing.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' she says, 'poor, poor little Chris. Alex, I must go down there
+with him.'</p>
+
+<p>"Alex looks over at her, incredulous, and spoke so: 'You?' says he.
+'Impossible.'</p>
+
+<p>"I was just getting ready to say that of course I'd go with him, if that
+was anything, when from somewheres that he'd gone with the puppy, Chris
+spied Insley, and come running to him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, you are to the house's party, too!' Chris cried, and threw himself
+all over him.</p>
+
+<p>"Robin knelt down beside the child, and the way she was with him made me
+think of that first night when she see him at the church, and when her
+way with him made him turn to her and talk with her and love her ever
+since.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_256" id="Page_256">[Pg 256]</a></span></p><p>"'Listen, dear,' she said. 'Mr. Insley came here to tell you something.
+Something about daddy&mdash;your daddy. Mr. Insley knows where he is, and
+he's going to take you to him. But he's very, very sick, dear
+heart&mdash;will you remember that when you see him? Remember Robin told you
+that?'</p>
+
+<p>"There come on his little face a look of being afraid that give it a
+sudden, terrible grown-up-ness.</p>
+
+<p>"'Sick like my mama was?' he asked in a whisper. 'And will he <i>go out</i>,
+like my mama?'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin put her arm about him, and he turned to her, clung to her.</p>
+
+<p>"'You come, too, Robin,' he said. 'You come, too!'</p>
+
+<p>"She got up, meeting Alex's eyes with her straight look.</p>
+
+<p>"'I must go, Alex,' she said. 'He wants me&mdash;needs me. Why, how could I
+do anything else?'</p>
+
+<p>"Alex smiles down at her, with his way that always seemed to me so much
+less that of living every minute than of watching it live itself about
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"'May I venture to remind you,' he says&mdash;like a little thin edge of
+something, paper, maybe, that's smooth as silk, but that'll cut neat and
+deep if you let it&mdash;'May I venture to remind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_257" id="Page_257">[Pg 257]</a></span> you that your aunt is
+announcing our engagement to-night? I think that will have escaped your
+mind.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' Robin says, simple, 'it had. Everything had escaped my mind
+except this poor little thing here. Alex&mdash;it's early. He'll sleep after
+a little. But I must go down with him. What did you come in?' she asked
+Insley, quiet.</p>
+
+<p>"I told her I'd go down, and she nodded that I was to go, but Chris
+clung to her hand and it was her that he wanted, poor little soul, and
+only her. Insley had come up in the doctor's rig. She and I would join
+him with the child, she told him, at the side entrance and almost at
+once. There was voices in the house by then, and some of the young folks
+was coming downstairs and up from the tennis-court for tea. She went
+into the house with Chris. And I wondered if she thought of the thing I
+thought of and that made me glad and glad that there are such men in the
+world: Not once, not once, out of some felt-he-must courtesy, had Insley
+begged her not to go with him. He knew that she was needed down there
+with Chris and him and me&mdash;he knew, and he wouldn't say she wasn't.
+Land, land I love a man that don't talk with the outside of his head and
+let what he means lay cramped somewheres underneath,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_258" id="Page_258">[Pg 258]</a></span> but that reaches
+down and gets up what he means, and holds it out, for you to take or to
+leave.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Emmons was overseeing the decorations in the dining room. The
+whole evening party she had got right over onto her shoulders the way
+she does everything, and down to counting the plates she was seeing to
+it all. We found her and told her, and her pity went to the poor fellow
+down there at the Cadozas' almost before it went to Chris.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go, of course,' she said. 'I suppose Alex minds, but leave him to me.
+I've got to be here&mdash;but it's not I Chris wants in any case. It's you.
+Get back as soon as you can, Robin.'</p>
+
+<p>"I must say Alex done that last minute right, the way he done
+everything, light and glossy. When Robin come down, I was up in the
+little seat behind the doctor's cart, and Alex stood beside and helped
+her. A servant, he said, would come on after us in the automobile with a
+hamper, and would wait at the Cadozas' gate until she was ready to come
+back. Somehow, it hadn't entered anybody's head, least of all, I guess,
+Alex's own, that he should come, too. He see us off with his manners on
+him like a thick, thick veil, and he even managed to give to himself a
+real dignity so that Robin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_259" id="Page_259">[Pg 259]</a></span> said her good-by with a kind of wistfulness,
+as if she wanted to be reassured. And I liked her the better for that.
+For, after all, she <i>was</i> going&mdash;there was no getting back of that. And
+when a woman is doing the right thing against somebody's will, I'm not
+the one to mind if she hangs little bells on herself instead of going
+off with no tinkle to leave herself be reminded of, pleasant.</p>
+
+<p>"We swung out onto the open road, with Chris sitting still between the
+two of them, and me on the little seat behind. The sunset was flowing
+over the village and glittering in unfamiliar fires on the windows. The
+time was as still as still, in that hour 'long towards night when the
+day seems to have found its harbour it has been looking for and to have
+slipped into it, with shut sails&mdash;so still that Robin spoke of it with
+surprise. I forget just what she said. She was one of them women that
+can say a thing so harmonious with a certain minute that you never wish
+she'd kept still. I believe if she spoke to me when I was hearing music
+or feeling lifted up all by myself, I wouldn't mind it. What she'd say
+would be sure to fit what was being. They ain't many folks in anybody's
+life like that. I believe she could talk to me any time, sole unless
+it's when I first wake up in the <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_260" id="Page_260">[Pg 260]</a></span>morning; then any talking always seems
+like somebody stumbling in, busy, among my sleeping brains.</p>
+
+<p>"For a minute Insley didn't say anything. I was almost sure he was
+thinking how unbelievable it was that he should be there, alone with
+her, where an hour ago not even one of his forbidden dreams could have
+found him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Beautifully still,' he answered, 'as if all the things had stopped
+being, except some great thing.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I wonder,' she says, absent, 'what great thing.' And all the time she
+seemed sort of relaxed, and resting in the sense&mdash;though never in the
+consciousness&mdash;that the need to talk and to be talked to, to suggest and
+to question, had found some sort of quiet, levelling process with which
+she was moving along, assentin'.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley stooped down, better to shield her dress from the mud there was.
+I see him look down at her uncovered hands laying on the robe, and then,
+with a kind of surprise, up at her face; and I knew how surprising her
+being near him seemed.</p>
+
+<p>"'That would be one thing for you,' he answered, 'and another for me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No,' she says, 'I think it's the same thing for us both.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261">[Pg 261]</a></span></p><p>"He didn't let himself look at her, but his voice&mdash;well, I tell you,
+his voice looked.</p>
+
+<p>"'What do you mean?' he says&mdash;just said it a little and like he didn't
+dare trust it to say itself any more.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, being able to help in this, surely,' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"I could no more of helped watching the two of them than if they had
+been angels and me nothing but me. I tried once or twice to look off
+across the fields that was smiling at each other, same as faces, each
+side of the road; but my eyes come back like they was folks and wanted
+to; and I set there looking at her brown hair, shining in the sun,
+without any hat on it, and at his still face that was yet so many kinds
+of alive. He had one of the faces that looked like it had been cut out
+just the way it was <i>a-purpose</i>. There wasn't any unintentional
+assembling of features there, part make-shift and part rank growth of
+his race. No, sir. His face had come to life by being meant to be just
+the way it was, and it couldn't have been better.... It lit up wonderful
+when he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' he said, 'a job is a kind of creation. It's next best to getting
+up a sunrise. Look here,' he remembered, late in the day, 'you'll<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_262" id="Page_262">[Pg 262]</a></span> have
+no dinner. You can't eat with them in that place. And you ought to have
+rest before to-night.'</p>
+
+<p>"Ain't it funny how your voice gets away from you sometimes and goes
+dilly-nipping around, pretty near saying things on its own account? I
+use' to think that mebbe my voice didn't belong to the me I know about,
+but was some of the real me, inside, speaking out with my mouth for a
+trumpet. I donno but I think so yet. For sometimes your voice is a
+person and it says things all alone by itself. So his voice done then.
+The tender concern of it was pretty near a second set of words. It was
+the first time he had struck for her the great and simple note, the note
+of the caring of the man for the physical comfort of the woman. And
+while she was pretending not to need it, he turned away and looked off
+toward the village, and I was certain sure he was terrified at what
+might have been in his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"'I like to think of it down there,' he said, pretty near at random,
+'waiting to be clothed in a new meaning.'</p>
+
+<p>"'The village?' she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"'Everywhere,' he answered. 'Some of the meanings we dress things up in
+are so&mdash;dowdy. We wouldn't think of wearing them ourselves.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_263" id="Page_263">[Pg 263]</a></span></p><p>"She understood him so well that she didn't have to bother to smile.
+And I hoped she was setting down a comparison in her head: Between
+clothing the world in a new meaning, and wearing it for a garment.</p>
+
+<p>"Chris looked up in Insley's face.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm new,' he contributes, 'I'm new on the outside of me. I've got on
+this new brown middie.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I've been admiring it the whole way,' says Insley, hearty&mdash;and that
+time his eyes and Robin's met, over the little boy's head, as we stopped
+at the cottage gate.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_264" id="Page_264">[Pg 264]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>XI</h2>
+
+<p>"The lonesome little parlour at Mis' Cadoza's was so far past knowing
+how to act with folks in it, that it never changed expression when we
+threw open the shutters. Rooms that are used to folks always sort of
+look up when the shutters are opened; some rooms smile back at you; some
+say something that you just lose, through not turning round from the
+window quite quick enough. But Mis' Cadoza's parlour was such a poor
+folkless thing that it didn't make us any reply at all nor let on to
+notice the light. It just set there, kind of numb, merely enduring
+itself.</p>
+
+<p>"'You poor thing,' I thought, 'nobody come in time, did they?'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley picked out a cane-seat rocker that had once known how to behave
+in company, and drew it to the window. Ain't it nice, no matter what
+kind of a dumb room you've got into, you can open its window and fit the
+sky onto the sill, and feel right at home....</p>
+
+<p>"Robin sat there with Chris in her arms, waiting for any stir in the
+front bedroom. I went in the bedroom, while Dr. Heron told me<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_265" id="Page_265">[Pg 265]</a></span> about the
+medicine, and it seemed to me the bare floor and bare walls and
+dark-coloured bedcovers was got together to suit the haggardy unshaven
+face on the pillow. Christopher's father never moved. I set in the
+doorway, so as to watch him, and Insley went with the doctor to the
+village to bring back some things that was needed. And I felt like we
+was all the first settlers of somewheres.</p>
+
+<p>"Chris was laying so still in Robin's arms that several times she looked
+down to see if he was awake. But every time his eyes was wide and dark
+with that mysterious child look that seems so much like thought. It kind
+of hurt me to see him doing nothing&mdash;that's one of the parts about
+sickness and dying and some kinds of trouble that always twists
+something up in my throat: The folks that was so eager and able and
+flying round the house just being struck still and not able to go on
+with everyday doings. I know when Lyddy Ember, the dressmaker, died and
+I looked at her laying there, it seemed to me so surprising that she
+couldn't hem and fell and cut out with her thumb crooked like she
+done&mdash;and that she didn't know a dart from a gore; her hands looked so
+much like she knew how yet. It's like being inactive made death or grief
+double. And it's like <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266">[Pg 266]</a></span>working or playing around was a kind of life....
+The whole house seemed inactive and silence-struck, even to the kitchen
+where Mis' Cadoza and the little lame boy was.</p>
+
+<p>"Robin set staring into the lilacs that never seemed to bloom, and I
+wondered what she was thinking and mebbe facing. But when she spoke, it
+was about the Cadoza kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>"'Miss Marsh,' she says, 'what kind of people must they be that can stay
+alive in a kitchen like that?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Pioneers,' I says. 'They's a lot of 'em pioneerin' away and not
+knowing it's time to stop.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But the dirt&mdash;' she says.</p>
+
+<p>"'What do you expect?' I says. 'They're emergin' out of dirt. But they
+<i>are</i> emergin'.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't it seem hopeless?' says she.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I donno,' I says; 'dirt gets to be apples&mdash;so be you plant 'em.'</p>
+
+<p>"But the Cadoza kitchen <i>was</i> fearful. When we come through it, Mis'
+Cadoza was getting supper, and she'd woke up nameless smells of greasy
+things. There the bare table was piled with the inevitable mix-up of
+unwashed dishes that go along with the Mis' Cadozas of this world, so
+that you wonder how they ever got so much crockery together. There the
+floor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_267" id="Page_267">[Pg 267]</a></span> wasn't swept, clothes was drying on a line over the stove, Spudge
+was eating his supper on the window-sill, and in his bed in the corner
+lay little Eph, so white and frail and queer-coloured that you felt you
+was looking on something bound not to last till much after you'd stopped
+looking. And there was Mis' Cadoza. When we had come through the
+kitchen, little Eph had said something glad at seeing Insley and hung
+hold of his hand and told him how he meant to model a clay Patsy,
+because it was Patsy, the dog, that had gone out in the dark and first
+brought Insley in to see him.</p>
+
+<p>"'An' when I'm big,' the child says, 'I'm going to make a clay <i>you</i>,
+Mr. Insley.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Cadoza had turned round and bared up her crooked teeth.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't you be impident!' she had said, raspish, throwing her hand out
+angular.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Cadoza was like somebody that hadn't got outside into the daylight
+of <i>Yet</i>. She was ignorant, blind to life, with some little bit of a
+corner of her brain working while the rest lay stock-still in her skull;
+unclean of person, the mother to no end of nameless horrors of
+habit&mdash;and her blood and the blood of some creature like her had been
+poured into that poor little boy, sickly, bloodless, not ready for the
+struggle.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_268" id="Page_268">[Pg 268]</a></span></p><p>"'<i>Is</i> there any use trying to do anything with anybody like that?'
+says Robin.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Is</i> there?' says I, but I looked right straight at Christopher. If
+there wasn't no use trying to do anything with little Eph, with his
+mother out there in the kitchen, then what was the use of trying to do
+anything with Chris, with his father here in the front bedroom? Sick
+will, tainted blood, ruined body&mdash;to what were we all saving Chris?
+Maybe to misery and final defeat and some awful going out.</p>
+
+<p>"'I don't know,' she says, restless. 'Maybe Alex is right....'</p>
+
+<p>"She looked out towards the lilac bushes again, and I knew how all of a
+sudden they probably dissolved away to be the fine green in the
+conservatory at Proudfit House, and how she was seeing herself back in
+the bright room, with its summer of leaves, and before the tea wagon,
+making tea for Alex lounging in his low chair, begging her not, in
+heaven's name, to try to teach the wise old world....</p>
+
+<p>" ... I knew well enough how she felt. Every woman in the world knows.
+In that minute, or I missed my guess, she was finding herself clinging
+passionate and rebellious to the mere ordered quiet of the life Alex
+would make for her; to the mere outworn routine, the leisure<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_269" id="Page_269">[Pg 269]</a></span> of long
+days in pretty rooms, of guests and house parties and all the little
+happy flummery of hospitality, the doing-nothingness, or the nice tasks,
+of travelling; the joy of sinking down quiet into the easy ways to do
+and be. Something of the sheer, clear, mere self-indulgence of the
+last-notch conservative was sweeping over her, the quiet, the order, the
+plain <i>safety</i> of the unchanging, of going along and going along and
+leaving things pretty much as they are, expecting them to work
+themselves out ... the lure of all keeping-stillness. And I knew she was
+wondering, like women do when they're tired or blue or get a big job to
+do or see a house like the Cadozas', why, after all, she shouldn't, in
+Alex's way, make herself as dainty in morals and intellect as she could
+and if she wanted to 'meddle,' to do so at arm's length, with some of
+the material that is cheap and abundant&mdash;like Chris....</p>
+
+<p>"'Maybe there isn't any use trying to do anything with Chris, either,' I
+says brutal. 'Mebbe Nature's way <i>is</i> best. Mebbe she knows best when to
+let them die off.'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin's arms kind of shut up on the little kiddie. He looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Did you squeeze me on purpose?' he whispered.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_270" id="Page_270">[Pg 270]</a></span></p><p>"She nodded at him.</p>
+
+<p>"'What for?' he asks.</p>
+
+<p>"'Just loving,' she answered.</p>
+
+<p>"After that, we sat still for a long time. Insley came back with the
+medicine, and told me what to do if the sick man came to. Then he filled
+and lit the bracket lamp that seemed to make more shadows than light,
+and then he stopped beside Robin&mdash;as gentle as a woman over a plant&mdash;and
+asked her if she wanted anything. He come through the room several
+times, and once him and her smiled, for a still greeting, almost as
+children do. After a while he come with a little basket of food that he
+had had Abagail put up to the bakery, and we tried to eat a little
+something, all of us. And all the while the man on the bed lay like he
+was locked up in some new, thick kind of silence.</p>
+
+<p>"When eight o'clock had gone, we heard what I had been expecting to
+hear&mdash;the first wheels and footsteps on the Plank Road directed towards
+Proudfit House. And Insley come in, and went over to Robin, and found
+Chris asleep in her arms, and he took him from her and laid him on the
+sagging Brussels couch.</p>
+
+<p>"'You must go now,' he says to Robin, with his kind of still authority
+that wan't ordering nor schoolmastery, nor you-do-as-I-say, but was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_271" id="Page_271">[Pg 271]</a></span>
+just something that made you want to mind him. 'I'll wake Chris and take
+him in at the least change&mdash;but you must go back at once.'</p>
+
+<p>"And of course I was going to stay. Some of my minds was perfectly
+willing not to be at the party in any case, and anyhow the rest of them
+wanted to stay with Chris.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley picked up some little belongings of hers, seeming to know them
+without being told, and because the time was so queer, and mebbe because
+death was in the next room, and mebbe for another reason or two, I could
+guess how, all the while he was answering her friendly questions about
+the little Cadoza boy&mdash;all that while the Personal, the <i>Personal</i>, like
+a living thing, hovered just beyond his words. And at last it just
+naturally came in and possessed what he was saying.</p>
+
+<p>"'I can't thank you enough for coming down here,' he says. 'It's meant
+everything to Chris&mdash;and to me.'</p>
+
+<p>"She glanced up at him with her pretty near boyish frankness, that had
+in it that night some new element of confidence and charm and just being
+dear.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't thank me,' she says, 'it was mine to do, too. And besides, I
+haven't done anything. And I'm running away!'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272">[Pg 272]</a></span></p><p>"He looked off up the road towards where, on its hill, Proudfit House
+was a-setting, a-glowing in all its windows, a-waiting for her to come,
+and to have her engagement to another man announced in it, and then to
+belong up there for ever and ever. He started to say something&mdash;I donno
+whether he knew what or whether he didn't; but anyhow he changed his
+mind and just opened the door for her, the parlour door that I bet was
+as surprised to be used as if it had cackled.</p>
+
+<p>"The Proudfit motor had stood waiting at the gate all this while, and as
+they got out to it, Dr. Heron drove up, and with him was Mis'
+Hubbelthwait come to enquire. So Robin waited outside to see what Dr.
+Heron should say when he had seen Chris's father again, and I went to
+the door to speak to Mis' Hubbelthwait.</p>
+
+<p>"'Liquor's what ails him fast enough,' Mis' Hubbelthwait whispers&mdash;Mis'
+Hubbelthwait would of whispered in the middle of a forty-acre field if
+somebody had said either birth or death to her. 'Liquor's what ails him.
+I know 'em. I remember the nice, well-behaved gentleman that come to the
+hotel and only lived one night after. "Mr. Elder," I says to him,
+severe, "you needn't to tell me your stomach ain't one livin'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_273" id="Page_273">[Pg 273]</a></span> pickle,
+for I know it is!" An' he proved it by dyin' that very night. If he
+didn't prove it, I don't know what he did prove. "Alcoholism," Dr. Heron
+called it, but I know it was liquor killed him. No use dressin' up
+words. An' I miss my guess if this here poor soul ain't the self-same
+river to cross.'</p>
+
+<p>"She would have come in, but there's no call for the whole town to nurse
+a sick-bed, I always think&mdash;and so she sort of hung around a minute,
+sympathetic and mum, and then slimpsed off with very little starch to
+her motions, like when you walk for sick folks. I looked out to where
+Robin and Insley was waiting by the big Proudfit planet that was going
+to take her on an orbit of its own; and all of a sudden, with them in
+front of me and with what was behind me, the awful <i>good-byness</i> of
+things sort of shut down on me, and I wanted to do something or tell
+somebody something, I didn't know what, before it was too late; and I
+run right down to them two.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' I says, scrabblin' some for my words, 'I want to tell you
+something, both of you. If it means anything to either of you to know
+that there's a little more to me, for having met both of you&mdash;then I
+want you to know it. And it's true. You both&mdash;oh, I donno,' I says,
+'what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274">[Pg 274]</a></span> it is&mdash;but you both kind of act like life was a person, and like
+it wasn't just your dinner to be et.... And I kind of know the person,
+too....'</p>
+
+<p>"I knew what I meant, but meant things and said things don't often match
+close. And yet I donno but they understood me. Anyway, they both took
+hold of a hand of mine, and said some little broke-off thing that I
+didn't rightly get. But I guess that we all knew that we all knew. And
+in a minute I went back in the house, feeling like I'd got the best of
+some time when I might of wished, like we all do, that I'd let somebody
+know something while then was then.</p>
+
+<p>"When I got inside the door, I see right off by Dr. Heron's face that
+there'd been some change. And sure enough there was. Chris's father had
+opened his eyes and had spoke. And I done what I knew Robin would have
+wanted; I wheeled round and went to the door and told her so.</p>
+
+<p>"'He's come to,' I says, 'and he's just asked for Chris.'</p>
+
+<p>"Sharp off, Robin turned to say something to the man waiting in the
+automobile. Insley tried to stop her, but she put him by. They come back
+into the cottage together, and the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275">[Pg 275]</a></span> Proudfit automobile started steaming
+back to Proudfit House without her.</p>
+
+<p>"Once again Robin roused Chris, as she had roused him on the night when
+he slept on the church porch; she just slipped her hands round his
+throat and lifted his face, and this time she kissed him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Come with Robin,' she said.</p>
+
+<p>"Chris opened his eyes and for a minute his little senses come
+struggling through his sleep, and then with them come dread. He looked
+up in Robin's face, piteous.</p>
+
+<p>"'Did my daddy <i>go out</i>?' he asks, shrill, 'like my mama did?'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, no, dear,' Robin said. 'He wants you to say good-by to him first,
+you know. Be still and brave, for Robin.'</p>
+
+<p>"There wasn't no way to spare him, because the poor little figure on the
+bed was saying his name, restless, to restless movements. I was in there
+by him, fixing him a little something to take.</p>
+
+<p>"'Where's Chris?' the sick man begged. 'Look on the church steps&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"They took Chris in the room, and Insley lifted him up to Robin's knee
+on the chair beside the bed.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hello&mdash;my nice daddy,' Chris says, in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_276" id="Page_276">[Pg 276]</a></span> his little high voice, and
+smiles adorable. 'I&mdash;I&mdash;I was waitin' for you all this while.'</p>
+
+<p>"His father put out his hand, awful awkward, and took the child's arm
+about the elbow. I'll never forget the way the man's face looked. It
+didn't looked <i>used</i>, somehow&mdash;it looked all sort of bare and barren,
+and like it hadn't been occupied. I remember once seeing a brand-new
+house that had burned down before anybody had ever lived in it, and some
+of it stuck up in the street, nice new doors, nice hardwood stairway,
+new brick chimney, and everything else all blackened and spoiled and
+done for, before ever it had been lived in. That was what Chris's
+father's face made me think of. The outline was young, and the eyes was
+young&mdash;young and burning&mdash;but there was the man's face, all spoiled and
+done for, without ever having been used for a face at all.</p>
+
+<p>"'Hello, sonny,' he says, weak. 'Got a good home?'</p>
+
+<p>"'He's in a good home, with good people, Mr. Bartlett,' Insley told him.</p>
+
+<p>"'For keeps?' Chris's father asks, his eyes burning at Insley's over the
+boy's head.</p>
+
+<p>"'We shall look after him somehow, among us,' Robin says. 'Don't worry
+about him, Mr. Bartlett. He's all right.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_277" id="Page_277">[Pg 277]</a></span></p><p>"The father's look turned toward her and it sort of lingered there a
+minute. And then it lit up a little&mdash;he didn't smile or change
+expression, but his look lit up some.</p>
+
+<p>"'You're the kind of a one I meant,' he says. 'I wanted he should have a
+good home. I&mdash;I done pretty good for you, didn't I, Chris?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"Chris leaned way over and pulled at his sleeve. 'You&mdash;you&mdash;you come in
+our house, too,' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'No, sonny, no,' says the man. 'I guess mebbe I'm&mdash;goin' somewheres
+else. But I done well by you, didn't I? Your ma and I always meant you
+should hev a good home. I'm glad&mdash;if you've got it. It's nicer than
+bein' with me&mdash;ain't it? Ain't it?'</p>
+
+<p>"Chris, on Robin's knee, was leaning forward on the bed, his hand
+patting and pulling at his father's hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'If you was here, then it is,' the child says.</p>
+
+<p>"At that his father smiled&mdash;and that was the first real, real look that
+had come into his face. And he looked around slow to the rest of us.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wasn't never the kind to hev a kid,' he says. 'The drink had me&mdash;had
+me hard. I knew I'd got to find somebody to show him&mdash;about growin' up.
+I'm glad you're goin' to.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_278" id="Page_278">[Pg 278]</a></span></p><p>"He shut his eyes and Chris threw himself forward and patted his face.</p>
+
+<p>"'Daddy!' he cried, 'I wanted to tell you&mdash;I had that hot ice-cream
+an'&mdash;an'&mdash;an' tea on a litty wagon....'</p>
+
+<p>"Robin drew him back, hushed him, looked up questioning to Insley. And
+while we all set there, not knowing whether to leave or to stay, the man
+opened his eyes, wide and dark.</p>
+
+<p>"'I wish't it had been different,' he said. 'Oh&mdash;<i>God</i>....'</p>
+
+<p>"Chris leans right over, eager, towards him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Didn't he say anything back?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'I guess so,' the man says, thick. 'I guess if you're a good boy, he
+did.' Then he turned his head and looked straight at Robin. 'Don't you
+forget about his throat, will you?' he says.
+'It&mdash;gets&mdash;sore&mdash;awful&mdash;easy....'</p>
+
+<p>"He stopped talking, with a funny upsetting sound in his voice. It
+struck me then, like it has since, how frightful it was that neither him
+nor Chris thought of kissing each other&mdash;like neither one had brought
+the other up to know how. And yet Chris kissed all of us when we asked
+him&mdash;just like something away back in him knew how, without being
+brought up to know.</p>
+
+<p>"He knew how to cry, though, without no<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_279" id="Page_279">[Pg 279]</a></span> bringing up, like folks do. As
+Robin come with him out of the room, Chris hid his face in her skirts,
+crying miserable. She set down by the window with him in her arms, and
+Insley went and stood side of them, not saying anything. I see them so,
+while Dr. Heron and I was busy for a minute in the bedroom. Then we come
+out and shut the door&mdash;ain't it strange, how one minute it takes so many
+people around the bed, and next minute, there's the one that was the one
+left in there all alone, able to take care of itself.</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Heron went away, and Robin still set there, holding Chris. All of a
+sudden he put up his face.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin,' he says, 'did&mdash;did my daddy leave me a letter?'</p>
+
+<p>"'A letter?' she repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"'To tell me what to do,' says the child. 'Like before. On the church
+steps.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No&mdash;why, no, Chris,' she answers him. 'He didn't have to do that, you
+know.'</p>
+
+<p>"His eyes was holding hers, like he wanted so much to understand.</p>
+
+<p>"'Then how'll I know?' he asks, simple.</p>
+
+<p>"It seemed to me it was like a glass, magnifying living, had suddenly
+been laid on life. Here he was, in the world, with no 'letter' to tell
+him what to do.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280">[Pg 280]</a></span></p><p>"All she done was just to lay her cheek right close to his cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin is going to tell you what to do,' she says, 'till you are big
+enough to know.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley stood there looking at her, and his face was like something had
+just uncovered it. And the minute seemed real and simple and almost
+old&mdash;as if it had begun to be long, long before. It was kind of as if
+Robin's will was the will of all women, away back for ever and ever in
+time, to pour into the world their power of life and of spirit, through a child.</p>
+
+<p class="space-above">"Insley went out in the kitchen to see Mis' Cadoza about some
+arrangements&mdash;if 'Arrangements' means funerals, it always seems like the
+word was spelt different and stiffer&mdash;and we was setting there in that
+sudden, awful idleness that comes on after, when there was the noise of
+an automobile on the Plank Road, and it stopped to the cottage and Alex
+Proudfit come springing up to the front door. He pushed it open and come
+in the room, and he seemed to put the minute in capitals, with his voice
+and his looks and his clothes. I never see clothes so black and so white
+and so just-so as Alex Proudfit's could be, and that night they was more
+just-so than usual. That night, his hands, with their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281">[Pg 281]</a></span> thick, strange
+ring, and his dark, kind of <i>even</i> face was like some fancy picture of a
+knight and a lover. But his face never seemed to me to be made very much
+a-purpose and just for him. It was rather like a good sample of a good
+brand, and like a good sample of any other good brand would have done
+him just as well. His face didn't fit him inevitable, like a cork to a
+bottle. It was laid on more arbitrary, like a window on a landscape, and
+you could have seen the landscape through any other window just as well,
+or better.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin!' he said, 'why did you let the car come back without you? We've
+been frantic with anxiety.'</p>
+
+<p>"She told him in a word or two what had happened, and he received it
+with his impressions just about half-and-half: one-half relief that the
+matter was well over and one-half anxiety for her to hurry up. Everyone
+was at the house, everyone was wondering. Mrs. Emmons was anxious....
+'My poor Robin, you've overtaxed your strength,' he ends. 'You'll look
+worn and not yourself to-night. It's too bad of it. Come, for heaven's
+sake, let's be out of this. Come, Calliope....'</p>
+
+<p>He asked her if she had anything to bring, and he gathered up what she
+told him was hers. I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_282" id="Page_282">[Pg 282]</a></span> got ready, too, so's to go up to Proudfit House to
+put Chris to bed and set by him awhile. And just as I was going out to
+let Insley know we was leaving, the door to the other room opened and
+there stood Mis' Cadoza. I see she'd twisted her hair over fresh and
+she'd put on a collar. I remember now the way I felt when she spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've got the coffee pot on and some batter stirred up,' says she, kind
+of shame-faced. 'I thought mebbe some hot pan-cakes and somethin' hot to
+drink'd go good&mdash;with Mr. Insley an' all of you.'</p>
+
+<p>"Alex started to say something&mdash;heaven knows what&mdash;but Robin went right
+straight up to Mis' Cadoza&mdash;and afterwards I thought back to how Robin
+didn't make the mistake of being too grateful.</p>
+
+<p>"'How I'd like them!' she says, matter-of-fact. 'But I've got a lot of
+people waiting for me, and I oughtn't to keep them....'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley spoke up from where he was over on the edge of little Eph's bed,
+and I noticed Mis' Cadoza had tried to neaten up the kitchen some, and
+she'd set the table with oil-cloth and some clean dishes.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was afraid you'd all stay,' he says, 'and I do want all the
+pan-cakes. Hurry on&mdash;you're keeping back our supper.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_283" id="Page_283">[Pg 283]</a></span></p><p>"He nodded to Alex, smiled with us, and come and saw us out the door.
+Mis' Cadoza come too, and Robin and I shook hands with her for
+goodnight. And as Mis' Cadoza stood there in her own door, seeing us
+off, and going to be hostess out in her own kitchen, I wondered to
+myself if it was having a collar on, or what it was, that give her a
+kind of pretty near dignity.</p>
+
+<p>"I got in the front seat of the car. Chris was back in the tonneau
+between Robin and Alex, and as we started he tried to tell Alex what had
+happened.</p>
+
+<p>"'My&mdash;my&mdash;my daddy&mdash;&mdash;' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Poor little cuss,' says Alex. 'But how extremely well for the child,
+Robin, that the beggar died. Heavens, how I hate your going in these
+ghastly places. My poor Robin, what an experience for <i>to-night</i>! For
+our to-night....'</p>
+
+<p>"She made a sudden move, abrupt as a bird springing free of something
+that's holding it. She spoke low, but I heard every word of it.</p>
+
+<p>"'Alex,' she said, 'we've made a mistake, you and I. But it isn't too
+late to mend it now.'</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_284" id="Page_284">[Pg 284]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>XII</h2>
+
+<p>"'I hope, Calliope,' said Postmaster Silas Sykes to me, 'that you ain't
+in favour of women suffrage.'</p>
+
+<p>"'No, Silas,' says I, 'I ain't.'</p>
+
+<p>"And I felt all over me a kind of a nice wild joy at saying a thing that
+I knew a male creature would approve of.</p>
+
+<p>"Silas was delivering the groceries himself that day, and accepting of a
+glass of milk in my kitchen doorway. And on my kitchen stoop Letty
+Ames&mdash;that had come home in time for the Proudfit party&mdash;was a-sitting,
+a-stitching away on a violet muslin breakfast-cap. It was the next day
+after the party and my regular wash-day and I was glad to be back in my
+own house, washing quiet, with Emerel Daniel to help me.</p>
+
+<p>"'At school,' says Letty, 'everybody was for it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know it,' says Silas, gloomy. 'The schools is goin' to the dogs,
+hot-foot. Women suffrage, tinkerin' pupils' teeth, cremation&mdash;I don't
+know<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_285" id="Page_285">[Pg 285]</a></span> what-all their holdin' out for. In my day they stuck to 'rithmetic
+and toed the crack.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That isn't up to date, Mr. Sykes,' says Letty, to get Silas riled.</p>
+
+<p>"It done it. He waved his left arm, angular.</p>
+
+<p>"'Bein' up to date is bein' up to the devil,' he begun, raspish, when I
+cut in, hasty and peaceful.</p>
+
+<p>"'By the way, Silas,' I says, 'speaking of dates, it ain't more'n a
+<i>year</i> past the time you aldermen was going to clear out Black Hollow,
+is it? Ain't you going to get it done <i>this</i> spring?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, dum it, no,' Silas says. 'They're all after us now to get to
+pavin' that new street.'</p>
+
+<p>"'That street off there in the marsh. I know they are,' I says innocent.
+'Your cousin's makin' the blocks, ain't he, Silas?'</p>
+
+<p>"Just then, in from the shed where she was doing my washing come Emerel
+Daniel&mdash;a poor little thing that looked like nothing but breath with the
+skin drawn over it&mdash;and she was crying.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'I guess you'll have to leave me go home. I
+left little Otie so sick&mdash;I hadn't ought to of left him&mdash;only I did want
+the fifty cents....'</p>
+
+<p>"'Otie!' I says. 'I thought Otie was getting better.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_286" id="Page_286">[Pg 286]</a></span></p><p>"'I've kept sayin' so because I was ashamed to let folks know,' Emerel
+says, 'an' me leavin' him to work. But I had to have the money&mdash;'</p>
+
+<p>"'Land,' I says, 'of course you did. Go on home. Silas'll take you in
+the delivery wagon, won't you, Silas? You're going right that way, ain't
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>"'I wasn't,' says Silas, 'but I can go round that way to oblige.' That's
+just exactly how Silas is.</p>
+
+<p>"'Emerel,' I says, 'when you go by the Hollow, you tell Silas what you
+was tellin' me&mdash;about the smells from there into your house. Silas,' I
+says, 'that hole could be filled up with sand-bar sand dirt cheap, now
+while the river's low, and you know it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Woman&mdash;' Silas begins excitable.</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course you can't,' I saved him the trouble, 'not while the council
+is running pavement halfway acrost the swamp to graft off'n the Wooden
+Block folks. That's all, Silas. I know you, head and heart,' I says,
+some direct.</p>
+
+<p>"'You don't understand city dealin's no more'n&mdash;Who-a!' Silas yells,
+pretending his delivery horse needed him, and lit down the walk, Emerel
+following. Silas reminds me of the place in the atmosphere where a
+citizen ought to be, and ain't.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_287" id="Page_287">[Pg 287]</a></span></p><p>"Emerel had left the clothes in the bluing water, so I stood and talked
+with Letty a minute, stitching away on her muslin breakfast-cap.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd be for women voting just because Silas isn't,' she says, feminine.</p>
+
+<p>"'In them words,' says I to her, 'is some of why women shouldn't do it.
+The most of 'em reason,' I says, 'like rabbits!'</p>
+
+<p>"Letty sort of straightened up and looked at me, gentle. She just
+graduated from the Indian Mound School and, in spite of yourself, you
+notice what she says. 'You're mistaken, Miss Marsh,' says she, 'I
+believe in women voting because we're folks and mothers, and we can't
+bring up our children with men taking things away from 'em that we know
+they'd ought to have. I want to bring up my children by my votes as well
+as by my prayers,' says she.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Your</i> children!' says I.</p>
+
+<p>"I donno if you've ever noticed that look come in a girl's face when she
+speaks of her children that are going to be sometime? Up to that minute
+I'd 'a' thought Letty's words was brazen. But when I see how she looked
+when she said it, I sort of turned my eyes away, kind of half reverent.
+We didn't speak so when I was a girl. The most we ever heard mentioned
+like that was when our mothers showed us our first baby dress<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288">[Pg 288]</a></span> and told
+us that was for <i>our</i> baby&mdash;and then we always looked away, squeamish.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's kind of nice,' I says, slow, 'your owning up, out loud that
+way, that maybe you might possibly have&mdash;have one, sometime.'</p>
+
+<p>"'My mother has talked to me about it since I began to
+know&mdash;everything,' Letty said.</p>
+
+<p>"That struck awful near home.</p>
+
+<p>"'I always wisht,' I says, 'I'd talked with my mother&mdash;like that. I
+always wisht I'd had her tell me about the night I was born. I think
+everybody ought to know about that. But I remember when she begun to
+speak about it, I always kind of shied off. I should think it would of
+hurt her. But then,' I says, 'I never had any of my own. So it don't
+matter.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, yes, you have, Miss Marsh,' says Letty.</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at her, blank.</p>
+
+<p>"'Every child that's born belongs to you,' says Letty to me, solemn.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go on,' says I, to draw her out. 'I wouldn't own most of the little
+jackanapesses.'</p>
+
+<p>"'But you <i>do</i>,' says Letty, 'and so do I! So does every woman, mother
+or not.'</p>
+
+<p>"She set the little violet muslin cap on her head to try it, and swept
+up and made me a little bow. Pretty as a picture she looked, and ready
+for loving.... I always wonder if things<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289">[Pg 289]</a></span> ain't sometimes arranged to
+happen in patterns, same as crystals. For why else should it be that at
+that instant minute young Elbert Sykes, Silas's son, that was home for
+the party and a little longer, come up to my door with a note from his
+mother&mdash;and see Letty in the violet cap, bowing like a rose?</p>
+
+<p>"While they was a-talking easy, like young folks knows how to do
+nowdays, I read the note; and it was about what had started Silas to
+talking suffrage. Mis' Sykes had opened her house to a suffrage meeting
+that evening, and Mis' Martin Lacy from the City was a-going to talk,
+and would I go over?</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, yes,' I says to Elbert. 'Tell her I'll come, just for something
+to do. I wonder if I can bring Letty, too?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mother'd be proud, I know,' says Elbert, looking at her like words,
+and them words a-praising. They had used to play together when they was
+little, but school had come in and kind of made them over.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>So</i>,' says he to Letty, bantering, 'you're in favour of women voting,
+are you?'</p>
+
+<p>"She broke off her thread and looked up at him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course I am,' she says, giving a cunning little kitten nod that run
+all down her shoulders.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290">[Pg 290]</a></span></p><p>"'So you think,' says Elbert, 'that you're just as strong as I am&mdash;to
+carry things along? Mind you, I don't say as clever. You're easily that.
+But put it at just <i>strong</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>"She done the little nod again, nicer than the first time.</p>
+
+<p>"'You talk like folks voted with their muscles,' says she. 'Well, I
+guess some men do, judging by the results.'</p>
+
+<p>"He laughed, but he went on.</p>
+
+<p>"'And you think,' he says, 'that you would be just as wonderful in
+public life as you would be in your home&mdash;your very own home?'</p>
+
+<p>"Letty put the last stitch in her muslin cap and she set it on her
+head&mdash;all cloudy and rose-budded, and land, land, she was lovely when
+she looked up.</p>
+
+<p>"'Surely,' she says from under the ruffle, with a little one-cornered
+smile.</p>
+
+<p>"He laughed right into her eyes. 'I don't believe you think so,' he
+says, triumphant. And all of a sudden there come a-sticking up its head
+in his face the regular man look&mdash;I can't rightly name it, but every
+woman in the world knows it when she sees it&mdash;a kind of an <i>I'm the one
+of us two but don't let's stop pretending it's you</i> look.</p>
+
+<p>"When she see it, what do you suppose Letty<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_291" id="Page_291">[Pg 291]</a></span> done? First she looked
+down. Then she blushed. Then she shrugged up one shoulder and laughed,
+sort of little and low and soft. <i>And she kept still.</i> She was about as
+much like the dignified woman that had just been talking to me about
+women's duty as a bow of blue ribbon is like my work apron. And as plain
+as the blue on the sky, I see that <i>she liked the minute when she let
+Elbert beat her&mdash;liked it</i>, with a sort of a glow and a quiver.</p>
+
+<p>"He laughed again, and, 'You stay just the the way you are,' he says,
+and he contrived to make them common words sort of flow all over her
+like petting.</p>
+
+<p>"That evening, when we marched into the Sykes's house to the meeting, he
+spoke to her like that again. The men was invited to the meeting, too,
+but Mis' Sykes let it be known that they needn't to come till the coffee
+and sandwiches, thus escaping the speech. Mis' Sykes ain't in favour of
+suffrage, but she does love a new thing in town, and Mis' Martin Lacy
+was so well dressed and so soft-spoken that Mis' Sykes would of left her
+preach foot-binding in her parlour if she'd wanted to. Mis' Sykes is
+like that. Letty was about the youngest there, and she was about the
+prettiest I 'most ever saw; and when he'd got them all seated,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_292" id="Page_292">[Pg 292]</a></span> young
+Elbert Sykes, that was the only man there, just naturally gravitated
+over and set down by her, like the Lord meant. I love to see them little
+things happen, and I never smile at them, same as some. Because it's
+like I got a peek in behind the curtain and see the eternal purpose
+working away, quiet and still.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Mis' Lacy, she talked, and she put things real sane and plain,
+barring I didn't believe any of what she said. And pretty soon I stopped
+trying to listen and I begun thinking about Emerel Daniel. I'd been down
+to see her just before supper, and I hadn't had her out of my head much
+of the time since. Emerel's cottage wasn't half a block from Black
+Hollow, the great low place beyond the river road that the town used as
+a dump. It was full of things without names, and take it on a day with
+the wind just right, Emerel had to keep her window shut on that side of
+her house. Water was standing in the hollow all the whole time. Flies
+and mosquitoes come from it by the flock and the herd. And when I'd held
+my nose and scud past it that afternoon to get to Emerel's, I'd almost
+run into Dr. Heron, just coming out from seeing Otie, and I burst right
+out with my thoughts all over him, and asked him if Black Hollow wasn't
+what was the matter<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293">[Pg 293]</a></span> with Otie and if it wasn't all that was the matter
+with him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Unquestionably,' says Dr. Heron. 'I told Mrs. Daniel six months ago
+that she must move.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says I, 'not having any of her other country homes open this
+year, Emerel had to stay where she was. And Otie with her. But what did
+you say to the council about filling in the hole?'</p>
+
+<p>"'The council,' says Dr. Heron, 'is paving the county swamp. There's a
+good crop of wooden blocks this year.'</p>
+
+<p>"'True enough,' says I, grim, 'and Otie is a-paying for it.'</p>
+
+<p>"That was exactly how the matter stood. And all the while Mis' Lacy was
+a-talking her women suffrage, I set there grieving for Emerel, and
+wondering how it was that Silas Sykes and Timothy Toplady and Jimmy
+Sturgis and even Eppleby Holcomb, that belonged to the common council,
+<i>could</i> set by and see Otie die, and more or less of the rest of us in
+the same kind of danger.</p>
+
+<p>"Next I knew, Mis' Lacy, that was all silky movements and a sweet voice,
+had got through her own talk and was asking us ladies to express
+ourselves. Everybody felt kind of delicate at first, and then Libby
+Liberty starts up and spoke her mind:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[Pg 294]</a></span></p><p>"'<i>I</i> believe all you've been a-saying,' she says, 'and I hev for
+twenty years. I never kill a hen without I realize how good the women
+can do a human being's work if they're put to it.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I always think of that, too,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, quick, 'about
+the hotel....' She kind of stopped, but we all knew what she meant.
+Threat is seldom if ever sober, especially on election day; but he
+votes, and she only runs the hotel and keeps them both out of the
+poorhouse.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, look at me,' says Abagail Arnold, 'doin' work to oven and to
+counter, an' can't get my nose near nothin' public but my taxes.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Of course,' says Mis' Uppers, rocking, 'I've almost <i>been</i> the mayor
+of Friendship Village, bein' his wife, so. An' I must say he never done
+a thing I didn't think I could do. Or less it was the junketin' trips.
+I'd 'a' been down with one o' my sick headaches on every one o' them.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Men <i>know</i> more,' admitted Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'but I donno as
+they can <i>do</i> any more than us. When the Fire Chief was alive an'
+holdin' office an' entertaining politicians, I use' often to think o'
+that, when I had their hot dinner to get.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I s'pose men do know more than we do,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[Pg 295]</a></span>reflective. 'I know Eppleby is lightnin'
+at figures, an' he can tell about time-tables, an' he sees sense to fine
+print parts o' the newspapers that looks like so many doctors'
+prescriptions to me. An' yet honestly, when it comes to some questions
+of sense, I've known Eppleby not to have any.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Jimmy, either,' says Mis' Sturgis, confidential. 'I donno. I've
+thought about that a good deal. It seems as if, if we got the chance, us
+women might not vote brilliant at first, but we would vote with our
+sense. The sense that can pick out a pattern and split a receipt, an'
+dress the children out o' the house money. I bet there's a lot o' that
+kind o' sense among women that don't get used up, by a long shot.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Timothy Toplady drew her shawl up her back, like she does.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well-a,' she says, 'Timothy's an awful good husband, but when I see
+some of the things he buys for the house, an' the way he gets took in on
+real estate, I often wonder if he's such a good citizen as he lets on.'</p>
+
+<p>"I kep' a-wondering why Letty didn't say something, and by and by I
+nudged her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Go on, speak up,' I intimated.</p>
+
+<p>"And, same time, I heard Elbert Sykes, on the other side, say something
+to her, low. 'I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[Pg 296]</a></span> could tell them,' he says to her, 'that to look like
+you do is better than being elected!'</p>
+
+<p>"And Letty&mdash;what do you s'spose?&mdash;she just glanced up at him, and made a
+little kind of a commenting wrinkle with her nose, and looked down and
+kept her silence. Just like he'd set there with a little fine chain to
+her wrist.</p>
+
+<p>"We talked some more and asked some questions and heard Mis' Lacy read
+some, and then it was time for the men. They come in together&mdash;six or
+eight of them, and most of them, as it happened, members of the common
+council. And when Mis' Sykes had set them down on the edge of the room,
+and before anybody had thought of any remark to pass, Mis' Lacy she
+spoke up and ask' the men to join in the discussion, and called on Mis'
+Sykes, that hadn't said nothing yet, to start the ball a-rolling.</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Well</i>,' says Mis' Sykes, with her little society pucker, 'I must say
+the home and bring-up my children seems far, far more womanly to me than
+the tobacco smoke and whiskey of public life.'</p>
+
+<p>"She glanced over to the men, kind of with a way of arching her neck and
+they all gave her a sort of a little ripple, approving. And with this
+Mis' Toplady kind of tossed her head up.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[Pg 297]</a></span></p><p>"'Oh, well, I don't want the responsibility,' she says. 'Land, if I was
+a votin' woman, I should feel as if I'd got bread in the pan and cake in
+the oven and clothes in the bluin' water all the whole time.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He, he, he!' says Timothy, her lawful lord. And Silas and Jimmy
+Sturgis and the rest joined in, tuneful.</p>
+
+<p>"Then Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, she vied in, and done a small,
+careless laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, well, me, too,' she says, 'I declare, as I get older an' wake up
+some mornin's I feel like life was one big breakfast to get an' me the
+hired girl. If I had to vote besides, I donno what I <i>would</i> do.'</p>
+
+<p>"'An',' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'I always feel as if a politician was a
+disgrace to be, same as an actor, <i>unless</i> you got to be a big one. An'
+can us women ever be big ones even if we want? Which I'm sure I don't
+want,' she says, sidling a look towards the men's row.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, not only that,' says Abagail Arnold, 'but you'd feel so kind of
+sheepish votin' for the President, away off there in Washington. I
+always feel terrible sheepish even prayin' for him, let alone
+votin'&mdash;an' like it <i>couldn't</i> make no real difference.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, an' <i>ladies</i>!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[Pg 298]</a></span> 'really it's bad enough to
+have been the wife of a mayor. If I had to vote an' was in danger of
+coming down with a nomination for somethin' myself, I couldn't get to
+sleep nights.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Mercy,' said Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'a mayor is nothin' but a baby
+in public life compared to a fire chief. A mayor gets his night's rest.
+Could a woman ever chase to fires at three o'clock in the mornin'? An'
+if she votes, what's to prevent her bein' elected to some such job by
+main strength?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Or like enough get put on a jury settin' on a murderer, an' hev to
+look at dug-up bones an' orgins,' says Mis' Sturgis&mdash;her that's an
+invalid and gloomy by complexion.</p>
+
+<p>"And one and all, as they spoke, they looked sidewise to the men for
+their approval. And they got it.</p>
+
+<p>"'That's the ticket!' says Timothy Toplady, slapping his knee. 'I tell
+you, gentlemen, we've got a nice set of women folks here in this town.
+They don't prostitute their brains to no fool notions.'</p>
+
+<p>"There was a little hush, owing to that word that Timothy had used kind
+of uncalled for, and then a little quick buzz of talk to try to cover
+it. And in the buzz I heard Elbert saying to Letty:</p>
+
+<p>"'You <i>know</i> you think of yourself in a home<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[Pg 299]</a></span> afterward&mdash;and not around
+at polls and things, Letty.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You don't have to board at the polls because you vote there, you
+know,' Letty said; but she says it with a way, with a way. She said it
+like a pretty woman talking to a man that's looking in her eyes and
+thinking how pretty she is, and she knows he's thinking so. And you
+can't never get much real arguing done that way.</p>
+
+<p>"It always kind of scares me to see myself showed up&mdash;and now it was
+like I had ripped a veil off the whole sex, and off me, too. I see us
+face to face. Why was it that before them men had come in, the women had
+all talked kind of doubtful and suffrage-leaning, and then had veered
+like the wind the minute the men had come on the scene? Mis' Toplady had
+defied Timothy time after time, both public and private; Mis'
+Hubbelthwait bosses her husband not only drunk but sober; Mis' Sturgis
+don't do a thing Jimmy wants without she happens to want it too&mdash;and so
+on. Yet at the mention of this one thing, these women that had been
+talking intelligent and wondering open-minded had all stopped being the
+way they was and had begun to say things sole to please the men. Even
+Libby Liberty had kept still&mdash;her that has a regular tongue in her head.
+And Letty, that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[Pg 300]</a></span> believed in it all, and had talked to me so womanly
+that morning, she was listening and blushing for Elbert and holding her
+peace. And then I remembered, like a piece of guilt, sensing that nice,
+wild feeling I myself had felt that morning a-denying woman suffrage in
+the presence of Postmaster Silas Sykes. What in creation ailed us all?</p>
+
+<p>"<i>What in creation....</i> Them words sort of steadied me. It looked to me
+like it was creation itself that ailed us yet. Creation is a thing that
+it takes most folks a good while to recover from....</p>
+
+<p>" ... I remembered seeing Silas's delivery boy go whistling along the
+street one night, and pass a cat. The cat wasn't doing nothing active.
+It was merely idle. But the boy brought up a big shingle he was carrying
+and swished it through the air and says 'Z-t-t-t-t,' to the cat's heels,
+to see the cat take to them&mdash;which it done&mdash;like the cat immemorial has
+done for immemorial boys, delivery and other. And once, at dusk, a big,
+strange man with a gun on his shoulder passed me on Daphne Street, and
+when he done so, he says to me 'Z-t-t-t,' under his breath, just like
+the boy to the cat, and just like the untamed man immemorial has said
+when he got the chance. It seemed to me like men was<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_301" id="Page_301">[Pg 301]</a></span> created with, so
+to say, a shingle and a gun, for the hunting, and just as there is joy
+in their hunting, so there is a palpitatin' delight in being hunted and
+flattered by being caught and bound, hand and foot and mind.</p>
+
+<p>"'We like it&mdash;why, I tell you, we like it,' I says to myself, 'and us
+here in Mis' Sykes's parlour are burning with the old original,
+left-over fire, breathed at creation into women's breasts!'</p>
+
+<p>"And it seemed like I kind of touched hands with all the women that used
+to be. And I looked over to that row of grinning, tired men, not so very
+much dressed up, and I thought:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, you're the men of this world and we're the women, and there ain't
+no more thrilling fact in this universe. And why don't we all reco'nize
+it and shut up?'</p>
+
+<p>"That was what I was thinking over in my mind while Mis' Martin Lacy
+said good night to us and rushed off to catch her train for the City,
+hoping she had made us see some light. That was what I was still going
+over when Mis' Sykes called me to help with the refreshments. And then,
+just as I started out to the kitchen, the outside door that was part
+open was pushed in and somebody come in the room. It was Emerel Daniel,
+in calico and no hat. And as<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_302" id="Page_302">[Pg 302]</a></span> soon as we see her face, everybody stopped
+talking and stared. She was white as the table-cloth and shaking.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'won't one of you come down to the house?
+Otie's worse&mdash;I donno what it is. I donno what to do to take care of
+him.'</p>
+
+<p>"She broke down, poor, nervous little thing, and sort of swallowed her
+whole throat. And Mis' Toplady and we all rushed right over to her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Why, Emerel,' Mis' Toplady says, 'I thought Otie was getting ever so
+much better. Is it the real typhoid, do you s'pose?' she ask' her.</p>
+
+<p>"Emerel looked over to me. 'Isn't it?' she says. And then I spoke right
+up with all there is to me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir,' I says, 'it is the real typhoid. And if you want to know
+what's giving it to him, ladies and gentlemen, ask the common council
+that's setting over there by the wall. Dr. Heron says that Black Hollow,
+that's a sink for the whole town, give it to him, and that nothing else
+did&mdash;piled full of diseases right in back of Emerel's house. And if you
+want to know who's responsible for his dying if he dies,' I says right
+out, 'look over in the same direction to the men that wouldn't vote to
+fill in the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[Pg 303]</a></span> Black Hollow with sand because they needed the money so bad
+for paving up half the county swamp.'</p>
+
+<p>"It was most as still in the room as when Timothy had said 'prostitute.'
+All but me. I went right on&mdash;nothing could of kept me still then.</p>
+
+<p>"'Us ladies,' I says, 'has tried for two years to get the Council to
+fill in that hole. We've said and said what would happen to some of us,
+what with our pumps so near the place, and what with flies from it
+visiting our dinner-table dishes, sociable and continual. What did you
+say to us? You said women hadn't no idee of town finances. Mebbe we
+ain't&mdash;mebbe we ain't. But we have got some idea of town humanity, if I
+do say it, that share in it. And this poor little boy has gone to work
+and proved it.'</p>
+
+<p>"With that, Emerel, who had been holding in&mdash;her that's afraid even to
+ask for starch if you forget to give it to her&mdash;she broke right down and
+leaned her head on her arm on the clock shelf:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh,' she says, 'all the years I been giving him his victuals and his
+bath and sewing his clothes up, I never meant it to come to this&mdash;for no
+reason. If Otie dies, I guess he needn't of&mdash;that's the worst. He
+needn't of.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304">[Pg 304]</a></span></p><p>"Mis' Toplady put her arm right around Emerel and kind of poored her
+shoulder in that big, mother way she's got&mdash;and it was her that went
+with her, like it's always Mis' Toplady that does everything. And us
+ladies turned around and all begun to talk at once.</p>
+
+<p>"'Let's plan out right here about taking things in to Emerel,' says Mis'
+Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I've got some fresh bread out of the oven.
+I'll carry her a couple of loaves, and another couple next baking or
+two.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I'll take her in a hen,' says Libby Liberty, 'so be she'll kill it
+herself.'</p>
+
+<p>"Somebody else said a ham, and somebody some butter, and Libby threw in
+some fresh eggs, if she got any. Mis' Hubbelthwait didn't have much to
+do with, but she said she would take turns setting up with Otie. Mis'
+Sykes give a quarter&mdash;she don't like to bake for folks, but she's real
+generous with money. And Silas pipes in:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Emerel can have credit to the store till Otie begins to get better,'
+he said. 'I ain't been lettin' her have it. She's looked so peaked I
+been afraid she wan't a-goin' to be able to work, an' I didn't want she
+should be all stacked up with debts.'</p>
+
+<p>"But me, I set there a-thinking. And all of a sudden I says out what I
+thought: 'Ladies,' I<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305">[Pg 305]</a></span> says, 'and all of you: What to Emerel is hens and
+hams and credit? They ain't,' I says, 'nothing but patches and poultices
+on what's the trouble up to her house.'</p>
+
+<p>"Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying much, spoke up:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'I know,' he says, 'I know. You mean what good do they do to the boy.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I mean just that,' I says. 'What good is all that to Otie that's lying
+over by Black Hollow? And how does it keep the rest of the town safe?'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says Silas, eager, 'let's us get out the zinc wagon you ladies
+bought, and let's us go to collectin' the garbage again so that won't
+all be dumped in Black Hollow. And leave the ladies keep on payin' for
+it. It's real ladies' work, I think, bein' as it's no more'n a general
+scrapin' up of ladies' kitchens.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then Letty Ames, that hadn't been saying anything, spoke up, to nobody
+in particular:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Otie's a dear little soul,' she said, 'a dear little soul!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Ain't he?' says Marne Holcomb. 'Eppleby 'most always has a nut or
+somethin' in his pocket to give him as he goes by. He takes it like a
+little squirrel an' like a little gentleman.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He's awful nice when he comes in the shop,' said Abagail. 'He looks at
+the penny-apiece kind<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_306" id="Page_306">[Pg 306]</a></span> and then buys the two-for-a-cent, so's to give
+his mother one.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He knows how to behave in a store,' Silas admitted. 'I 'most always
+give him a coffee-berry, just to see him thank me.'</p>
+
+<p>"'He come into the hotel one day,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'an' stood by
+me when I was bakin'. I give him a little wad of dough to roll.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I let him drive the 'bus one day, settin' on my knee,' says Jimmy
+Sturgis. 'He was a nice, careful, complete little cuss.'</p>
+
+<p>"Eppleby Holcomb nodded with his eyes shut.</p>
+
+<p>"'We don't like folks to swing on our front gate,' he says. 'He done it,
+but he marched right in and told us he'd done it. I give him a
+doughnut&mdash;an' he's kep' right on swingin' an' ownin' up an' eatin'
+doughnuts.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Even when he chased my chickens,' says Libby Liberty, 'he chased 'em
+like a little gentleman&mdash;<i>towards</i> the coop an' not down the road. I
+always noticed that about him.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' says Letty, again, 'he's a dear little soul. <i>What makes us let
+him die?</i>'</p>
+
+<p>"She said it so calm that it caught even my breath&mdash;and my breath, in
+these things, ain't easy caught. But I got it right back again, and I
+says:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes, sir. He was on the way to being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_307" id="Page_307">[Pg 307]</a></span> somebody that Friendship Village
+could have had for the right kind of an inmate. And now he'll be nothing
+but a grave, that's no good to anybody. And Sodality,' I couldn't help
+adding, 'will likely pitch right in and take care of his grave,
+tasteful.'</p>
+
+<p>"And when I said that, it come over me how Emerel had dressed him and
+bathed him and made his clothes, and done washings, tireless, to get the
+fifty cents&mdash;besides bringing him into the world, tedious. And now it
+was all going for nothing, all for nothing&mdash;when we could of helped it.
+And I plumped out with what I'd said that morning to Silas:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Why don't you fill up Black Hollow with sand-bar sand out of the
+river, now it's so low? Then, even if it's too late for Otie, mebbe we
+can keep ourselves from murderin' anybody else.'</p>
+
+<p>"Them half a dozen men of the common council set still a minute, looking
+down at Mis' Sykes's parlour ingrain. And I looked over at them, and my
+heart come up in my throat and both of them ached like the toothache.
+Because all of a sudden it seemed to me it wasn't just Timothy and
+Eppleby and Silas and some more of the council setting there by the
+wall&mdash;but it was like, in them few men, tired and not so very well
+dressed, was setting the lawmakers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308">[Pg 308]</a></span> of the whole world; and there in
+front of them, wasn't only Mis' Holcomb and Libby and Letty and me, but
+Emerel Daniel, too, and all the women there is&mdash;saying to them: 'My
+land, we've dressed 'em an' bathed 'em an' sewed for 'em an' brought 'em
+into the world, tedious. Let 'em live&mdash;fix things so's they can live an'
+so's it needn't all go for nothin'.' And I sort of bubbled up and
+spilled over, as if everything we was all of us <i>for</i> had come up in my
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, folks,' I says, 'just look what us in this room could have done
+for Otie&mdash;so be we'd begun in time.'</p>
+
+<p>"Right like a dash of cold water into my face, Mis' Sykes spoke up, cold
+as some kind of death:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, ladies,' she says, 'I guess we've got our eyes open now. <i>I</i> say
+that's what we'd ought to hev been doin' instead o' talkin' women
+votin',' she says, triumphant.</p>
+
+<p>"Then somebody spoke again, in a soft, new, not-used-to-it little voice,
+and in her chair over beside Elbert, Letty Ames leaned forward, and her
+eyes was like the sunny places in water.</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't you see,' she says, 'don't you see, Mis' Sykes, that's what Mis'
+Lacy meant?'</p>
+
+<p>"'How so?' says Mis' Sykes, short.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll never forget how sweet and shy and <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309">[Pg 309]</a></span>unexpected and young Letty
+looked, but she answered, as brave as brave:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Otie Daniel is sick,' she said, 'and all us women can do is to carry
+him broth and bread and nurse him. It's only the men that can bring
+about the things to make him well. And they haven't done it. It's been
+the women who have been urging it&mdash;and not getting it done. Wasn't it
+our work to do, too?'</p>
+
+<p>"I see Elbert looking at her&mdash;like he just couldn't bear to have her
+speak so, like some men can't. And I guess he spoke out in answer before
+he meant to:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'But let them do it womanly, Letty,' he said, 'like your mother did and
+my mother did.'</p>
+
+<p>"Letty turned and looked Elbert Sykes straight in the face:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>Womanly!</i>' she says. 'What is there womanly about my bathing and
+feeding a child inside four clean walls, if dirt and bad food and
+neglect are outside for him? Will you tell me if there is anything more
+womanly than my right to help make the world as decent for my children
+as I would make my own home?'</p>
+
+<p>"I looked at Letty, and looked; and I see with a thrill I can't tell you
+about how Letty seemed. For she seemed the way she had that morning on
+my kitchen stoop, when she spoke<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310">[Pg 310]</a></span> of her children and when I felt like
+I'd ought to turn away&mdash;the way I'd used to when my mother showed me my
+baby dress and told me who it would be for. Only now&mdash;only now, somehow,
+I didn't want to turn away. Somehow I wanted to keep right on looking at
+Letty, like Elbert was looking. And I see what he see. How Letty was
+what she'd said that morning that she was&mdash;and that I was&mdash;and that we
+all was: A mother, then and there, whether she ever had any children or
+not. And she was next door to owning up to it right there before them
+all and before Elbert. We didn't speak so when I was a girl. We didn't
+own up, out loud, that we ever thought anything about what we was for.
+But now, when I heard Letty do it....</p>
+
+<p>" ... Now, when I heard Letty do it, all to once, I looked into a window
+of the world. And instead of touching hands like I had with the women
+that use' to be, I looked off and off down all the time there's going to
+be, and for a minute I touched, tip-fingers, the hands of the other
+women that's coming towards me; and out of places inside of me that I
+didn't know before had eyes, I see them, mothers to the whole world,
+<i>inside their four walls and out</i>. And they wasn't coming with poultices
+and bread and broth in their hands, to patch up what had been left<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311">[Pg 311]</a></span>
+undone; nor with the keys to schoolhouses that they'd got open by
+scheming; nor with newspapers full of health that they'd had to run down
+back alleys to sell; nor national holidays that they'd got a-hold of
+through sheer accident; nor yet with nice new headstones for cemetery
+improvements on the dead and gone&mdash;no, sir, their hands wasn't occupied
+with any of these ways of serving that they'd schemed for and stole. But
+their hands&mdash;was in men's hands, closer and nearer than they'd ever been
+before. And their eyes was lit up with a look that was a new look, and
+that give new life to the old original left-over blaze. And I looked
+across to that row of tired men, not so very much dressed up, and I
+thought:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'You're the men of this world and we're the women. And there ain't no
+more thrilling fact in this universe, save one, <i>save one</i>: And that's
+that we're all human beings. That your job and ours is to make the world
+ready for the folks that are to come, and to make the folks that come
+fit to live in that new world. And yet over there by Black Hollow one of
+our children is dying from something that was your job <i>and</i> ours to do,
+and we didn't take hold of hands and do it!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Letty!' I says out. 'And Silas and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312">[Pg 312]</a></span> all of you! Let's pretend,
+just for a minute, that we was all citizens and equal. And let's figure
+out things for Otie, just like we had the right!'</p>
+
+<p class="space-above">"I'd asked Letty to spend the night with me, and Elbert walked home with
+us. And just as we got there, he says to her again:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, Letty&mdash;you ain't <i>strong</i> enough to help carry things along!'</p>
+
+<p>"'You've got more strength,' she says to him, 'and more brains. But it
+isn't so much the strength or the brains in women that is going to help
+when the time comes. It's the&mdash;mother in them.'</p>
+
+<p>"And I says to myself:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'And it's the&mdash;<i>human beingness</i> of them.' But Letty didn't know that
+yet.</p>
+
+<p>"Elbert answered, after a minute:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'You may be right and you may be wrong, but, Letty, Letty, what a woman
+you are!'</p>
+
+<p>"And at that Letty looked up at him, just as she had looked at him that
+morning&mdash;just for a minute, and then she dipped down the brim of her big
+hat. I donno what she answered him. I didn't care. I didn't care. For
+what I see was the old wild joy of a woman in being glorified by a male
+creature. And I knew then,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_313" id="Page_313">[Pg 313]</a></span> and I know now, that that won't never die,
+no matter what.</p>
+
+<p>"Elbert put out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'Good night, Letty,' he said.</p>
+
+<p>"She gave him hers, and he closed over it light with his other hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'May I see you to-morrow?' he asked her.</p>
+
+<p>"'Oh, I don't know,' said Letty. 'Come and see if I'll see you&mdash;will
+you?'</p>
+
+<p>"He laughed a little, looking in her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"'At about eight,' he promised. 'Good night....'</p>
+
+<p>"I got the key out from under the mat to a tune inside me. Because I'd
+heard, and I knew that Letty had heard, that tone in Elbert's voice that
+is the human tone&mdash;I can't rightly name it, but every woman in the world
+knows it when she hears it&mdash;a tone that says: <i>If I have my way, you and
+I are going to live out our lives together</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"And I knew then, and I know now, that that tone won't ever die, either.
+And some day, away off in a new world right here on this earth, I
+believe there's going to be a wilder joy in being men and women than all
+the men and women up to now have ever lived or dared or dreamed.</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_314" id="Page_314">[Pg 314]</a></span></p>
+
+<h2>XIII</h2>
+
+<p>"'Miss Marsh,' says Christopher.</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Emmons's living-room was like a cup of something cool, and I set
+there in the after-supper light having such a nice rested time drinking
+it in that at first I didn't hear him.</p>
+
+<p>"'Miss Marsh,' he says again, and pulled at my dress. I put out my hand
+to him and he took it. Sometimes I donno but hands are a race of beings
+by themselves that talk and answer and do all the work and act like
+slaves and yet really rule the world.</p>
+
+<p>"'Is it me telling my feet where to go or do they tell me where I go?'
+asked Christopher.</p>
+
+<p>"'You can have it either way you want,' I told him. 'Some does one way
+and some does the other. Which way do you like?'</p>
+
+<p>"He thought for a minute, twisting on one foot with the other up in his
+hand.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'd like 'em to know how without our sayin' so,' he announces finally.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' I says, 'I left out that way. That's really the best way of
+all.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked at me eager.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_315" id="Page_315">[Pg 315]</a></span></p><p>"'Is it a game?' he says.</p>
+
+<p>"'Yes,' I told him.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's its name?' he ask' me.</p>
+
+<p>"'Game of Life,' I told him again.</p>
+
+<p>"He thought about it, still twisting. Then he done one of his littlest
+laughs, with his head turned away.</p>
+
+<p>"'My feet heard you,' he says. 'Now they know how to play.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I hope so, Christopher,' says I, and kissed him on the back of his
+neck. That made him mad, like it usually done.</p>
+
+<p>"'My neck is my neck,' says he, 'and it's shut in my collar. It ain't
+home to-day.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Is your mouth home?' I ask' him.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was.</p>
+
+<p>"I could of set there talking with him all evening, but not on the night
+of Sodality's Annual. I'd stopped by for Mis' Emmons. She was getting
+ready, and while I waited I could hear folks passing on their way to the
+schoolhouse where the meeting was. For the town was all het up about
+what the meeting was going to do.</p>
+
+<p>"I'd seen half-dozen or so of us that afternoon when we was putting
+plants on the hall platform, and we'd all spoke our minds.</p>
+
+<p>"'I'm gaspin',' observed Mis' Sturgis, 'to take a straw vote of us on
+this amendin' <span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316">[Pg 316]</a></span>business. Near as I can make out, it's going through.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Near as I can make out,' says Marne Holcomb, 'a good deal more than
+amending is going on here to-night. It looks to me as if Sodality was
+just going to get into its own Cemetery and be forgot, and as if
+something else was coming to meet us&mdash;something big!'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Toplady spoke up, comfortable, down on her knees putting green
+paper on the pots.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well, my land!' she says, 'I've noticed two-three things in my
+lifetime. And one is, that do what whoever will, things do change. And
+so whenever a new change pops up, I always think: "Oh, I guess you're
+comin' along anyway. I donno's I need to help." An' yet somethin' in me
+always prances to pitch in, too.'</p>
+
+<p>"Timothy was there, occupying himself with the high places us ladies
+couldn't get up to.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says he, 'if folks stop dying, like Sodality evidently intends
+they shall if it goes out of business, maybe you'll stay home some,
+Amandy, and not always be off laying folks out.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I know it,' Mis' Toplady returns, 'I've laid out most everybody I
+know, and of course I'm real glad to do it. But the last dead's hair I
+done up, I caught myself thinking how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_317" id="Page_317">[Pg 317]</a></span> much more interesting it'd be if
+they was alive an' could find fault. Doin' for the dead gets kind of
+monotonous, <i>I</i> think.'</p>
+
+<p>"'<i>I</i> don't,' says Timothy, decided. 'The minute you work for the
+living, you get all upset with being criticised. I s'pose the dead would
+find fault, if they could, over the way you cut the grass for 'em. But
+they can't an' so there's an end to it, an' we get along, peaceful. If
+they was living folks layin' there, you can bet they'd do some back
+talk.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' says I, 'I've been sick of Sodality for years. But it was about
+the most what-you-might-call society I had, and I hated to give it up.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Me, either,' says Mame Holcomb.</p>
+
+<p>"'Me, either,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I declare I've often said I wouldn't
+know what <i>to</i> do if folks stopped dyin' so's Sodality would have to
+close out.'</p>
+
+<p>"Mis' Sykes was setting watching the rest of us.</p>
+
+<p>"'Well,' she observes, cold, 'if I was usin' the dead to keep in
+society, I donno's I'd own it up.'</p>
+
+<p>"Silas Sykes had just come over from the store to see if there was
+anything he could meddle in.</p>
+
+<p>"'Heh!' says he, showing his teeth. 'Not<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_318" id="Page_318">[Pg 318]</a></span> many of Sodality, as I can
+see, <i>deserves</i> to die and be done for, civilized.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Don't you worry yourself, Silas Sykes,' says I, 'we're going to be
+done things for before we die hereafter, and more civilized than ever
+you dreamed of, all up and down your ledger. That's where you do dream,
+ain't it, Silas?' I says. And though I said it gay, I meant it frank.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember I looked off down the room, and all of a sudden I see it as
+it would be that night, packed with folks. Somehow, we'd got to saying
+less about the Sodality part of the meeting, and more about the <i>open</i>
+part. Most of the town would be there. We'd got the School Board to
+leave us announce the second party for that night, following the
+meeting, and music was coming, and us ladies had froze the ice-cream,
+and the whole time reminded me of a big bud, flowered slow and bursting
+sudden.</p>
+
+<p>"'Land, land,' I says, fervent, 'I feel like Friendship Village was a
+person that I was going to meet to-night for the first time.'</p>
+
+<p>"'You express yourself so odd sometimes, Calliope,' says Mis' Sykes,
+distant&mdash;but Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, they
+both looked up and nodded, and they knew.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_319" id="Page_319">[Pg 319]</a></span></p><p>"I set holding Christopher in Mis' Emmons's living-room, and thinking
+about this and most everything else, when I looked out and see Insley
+going along. He hadn't been back in town since Christopher's father's
+funeral, two days before, and I'd been wanting to talk over with him a
+thing or two that was likely to come up at the meeting, that of course
+he was going to be at, and that had to be handled with thimbles on every
+finger, or somebody'd get pricked. So I rapped smart on the upper sash
+and called to him through the screen, but not before I had seen the look
+on his face. I've caught that special look only once or twice in my
+life&mdash;the look of somebody passing the house that is different to them
+from all other houses in the world. The look that wants to be a look and
+won't let itself be, that tries to turn the other way and can't start,
+that thinks it's unconscious and knows it isn't, and that finally, with
+Insley, give it up and looked Mis' Emmons's house straight in the face
+for a minute, as if he might anyhow let himself have that much intimacy.</p>
+
+<p>"I had a little list of things I wanted to see go through that night.
+Enough of us was ready to have Sodality perform its last cemetery rite
+and bury itself so that that was pretty sure to go through, but I wanted
+more than that,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_320" id="Page_320">[Pg 320]</a></span> and several of us ladies did; and it looked to me like
+the schoolhouse and the young folks and the milk and the meat of this
+town could be done nice things to, so be we managed the meeting right. I
+even had a wild dream that the whole new society might adopt
+Christopher. Well, I donno why that's funny. It ain't funny when a club
+makes a building or a play or a bazaar or a dinner. Why shouldn't it
+make a man?</p>
+
+<p>"I told some of this to Insley, and he caught fire and lit up into a
+torch and had it all thought out beforehand, better than I could of
+dreamed it. But he made me feel bad. Haunted folks&mdash;folks haunted by
+something that was and that isn't&mdash;always makes me feel bad. How is it
+possible, I see he was asking himself the old, wore-out question, to
+drive out of the world something that is the world?</p>
+
+<p>"While we talked, Christopher went off to sleep in my arms, and even
+while I was so interested, I was enjoying the change that comes&mdash;the
+head growing heavier and heavier on my arm, as if sleep weighed
+something.</p>
+
+<p>"'Poor little kiddie,' I says, stupid.</p>
+
+<p>"'Rich little kiddie,' Insley says, wistful.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dear little kiddie,' says somebody else.</p>
+
+<p>"In the dining room doorway Robin stood&mdash;in a doorway as we had first
+seen her.</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_321" id="Page_321">[Pg 321]</a></span></p><p>"'Put him over here on the couch, do,' she says. 'It's much too hot to
+hold him, Calliope.'</p>
+
+<p>"She'd called me that at Mr. Bartlett's funeral, and I recollect how my
+throat went all over me when she done so. Ain't it funny about your own
+first name? It seems so <i>you</i> when somebody nice says it for the first
+time&mdash;more you than you ever knew you were.</p>
+
+<p>"Insley lifted Chris in his arms to do as she said, and then stood
+staring at her across the child.</p>
+
+<p>"'I've been thinking,' he said, blunt&mdash;it's like watching the sign of
+folks to watch the different kind of things that makes them blunt. 'It's
+not my affair, but do you think you ought to let Chris get so&mdash;so used
+to you? What will he do when you're&mdash;when you go away?'</p>
+
+<p>"At this she said nothing for a moment, then she smiled up at him.</p>
+
+<p>"'I meant what I told him that night his father died,' she answered.
+'I'm going to keep Chris with me, always.'</p>
+
+<p>"'Always?' He stared at her, saw her face mean what she said. 'How fine
+of you! How fine of Mr. Proudfit!' said Insley.</p>
+
+<p>"She waited just a breath, then she met his eyes, brave.</p>
+
+<p>"'Not fine of me,' she says&mdash;'only fine for me.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_322" id="Page_322">[Pg 322]</a></span> And not&mdash;Mr. Proudfit
+at all. I ought to take back what I told you&mdash;since I did tell you. That
+is not going to be.'</p>
+
+<p>"I don't think Insley meant for a minute to show any lack of formal
+respect for Christopher's sleep. But what Insley did was simply to turn
+and sit him down, bolt upright, on my lap. Then he wheeled round, trying
+to read her face.</p>
+
+<p>"'Do you mean you aren't going to marry him?' he demanded, rough&mdash;it's
+like watching another sign of folks to watch for the one thing that will
+make one or another rough.</p>
+
+<p>"'We are not going to be married,' she said. 'I mean that.'</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose likely the room went away altogether then, Christopher and me
+included, and left Insley there in some place a long ways from
+everywhere, with Robin's face looking at him. And he just naturally took
+that face between his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"'Robin,' he said, 'don't make me wait to know.'</p>
+
+<p>"Insley was the suddenest thing. And land, what it done to her name to
+have him say it. Just for a minute it sounded as if her name was the
+population of the world,&mdash;but with room for everybody else, too.</p>
+
+<p>"I think she put up her hands to take down<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_323" id="Page_323">[Pg 323]</a></span> his hands, but when she
+touched them, I think hers must have closed over his, next door to on
+purpose.</p>
+
+<p>"'Dear,' she says, 'tell me afterward.'</p>
+
+<p>"In that minute of stillness in which any new heaven is let down on a
+suitable new earth, a little voice piped up:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"'Tell it now,' says the voice. 'Is it a story? Tell it now.'</p>
+
+<p>"And there was Christopher, wide awake where he had been set down rude
+on my knee, and looking up at them, patient.</p>
+
+<p>"'I was dreamin' my dream,' he explained, polite. 'It was about all the
+nice things there is: You and you and you and hot ice-cream and the
+house's party.... Is they any more?' he asked, anxious.</p>
+
+<p>"Robin put out her arms for him, and she and Insley and I smiled at one
+another over his head.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ever so many more,' we told him.</p>
+
+<p class="space-above">"I slipped out then and found Mis' Emmons, and I guess I come as near
+shining as anything that's like me can.</p>
+
+<p>"'What's the matter?' she says to me. 'You look as if you'd turned up
+the wick.'</p>
+
+<p>"'I did. They have. I won't tell,' I says.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_324" id="Page_324">[Pg 324]</a></span> 'Oh, Mis' Emmons, I guess
+the meeting to-night won't need to adopt Christopher.'</p>
+
+<p>"She looked up at me quick, and then she started shining, too.</p>
+
+<p>"'What a universe it is,' she says, '&mdash;what a universe it is.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then we went off down to the meeting together. And the village was
+wonderful to go through, like a home some of us had hollowed out of the
+hills and was living in, common. As we went walking to the schoolhouse,
+the sidewalks seemed to me no more than ways dickered up to fasten us
+together, and to fasten us to them whose feet had wore the road before
+us, and to lead us to them that was coming, coming after: Christopher
+and Eph and Spudge Cadoza and Otie Daniel, or them like these. Otie
+Daniel had died the night before. Dr. Barrows had said Eph would not be
+lame, but we see he wan't sure of the value of the boy's physical life.
+But even so, even so we had a chance with Chris, and we had a chance
+with Spudge, and we had millions more. My feet wanted to run along them
+roads to meet the millions and my fingers tingled to get things ready.
+And as we went down Daphne Street to that meeting, I see how we all
+<i>was</i> getting things ready, and I could of sung out for what I saw:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_325" id="Page_325">[Pg 325]</a></span></p><p>"For Mame Holcomb, sprinkling clothes on the back porch and hurrying to
+get to the hall.</p>
+
+<p>"For Mis' Uppers, picking her currants before she went, so's to get an
+early start on her jam in the morning.</p>
+
+<p>"For Viny Liberty, setting sponge for her bread loud enough so we heard
+her clear out in the street, and for Libby, shutting up her chicken coop
+that they earned their own living with.</p>
+
+<p>"For Mis' Toplady, driving by with Timothy, and her in the brown silk
+she'd made herself, like she's made all she's got.</p>
+
+<p>"For Abagail Arnold, wiping out her window to be filled to-morrow with
+the pies of her hand.</p>
+
+<p>"For little Mis' Sparks, rocking her baby on the front stoop and
+couldn't come to the meeting at all, 'count of having nobody to leave
+him with.</p>
+
+<p>"For them that had left cloth bleaching in their side yards and was
+saving the price of buying bleached. For them that had done their day's
+work, from parlour to wood-shed, and had hurried up the supper dishes
+and changed their dress and was on their way to the schoolhouse. For
+them that had lived lives like this and had died at it. For all the
+little dog-eared, wore-out account books where every one of them women<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_326" id="Page_326">[Pg 326]</a></span>
+figured out careful what they couldn't spend. And I looked down the
+street till I couldn't see no farther, and yet Daphne Street was going
+on, round and round the world, and acrost and acrost it, full of women
+doing the same identical way. And I could see away off to the places
+that Daphne Street led past, where women has all these things done for
+them and where the factories is setting them free, like us here in the
+village ain't free just yet, and I felt a wicked envy for them that can
+set their hands to the New Work, that us here in Friendship Village is
+trying so hard to get in between whiles. And I could see away ahead to
+times when sponge and currants and clothes and coops and similar won't
+have to be mothered by women 'most as much as children are; but when
+women, Away Off Then, will be mothers and workers and general human
+beings such as yet we only know how to think about being, scrappy and
+wishful. But all the time, in their arms and in ours and nowheres else,
+lays all the rest of the world that is ever going to be. And something
+in me kind of climbed out of me and run along ahead and looked back at
+me over its shoulder and says: 'Keep up, keep up, Calliope.' And before
+I knew it, right out loud, I says: 'I will. I will.'</p>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_327" id="Page_327">[Pg 327]</a></span></p><p>"An hour later, up in the schoolhouse, Silas Sykes stood arguing, to
+the top of his tone, that the first work of the reorganized
+society&mdash;that was to take in the whole town&mdash;had ought to be to buy a
+bargain Cupid-and-fish fountain he knew of, for the market square.</p>
+
+<p>"'It's going to take years and years to do&mdash;everything,' says Mis'
+Emmons to me, low.</p>
+
+<p>"But that didn't seem like much of anything to either of us. 'What if it
+is,' I says. And she nodded."</p>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mothers to Men, by Zona Gale
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+</body>
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