From aa5cc605103fa4379eed2bd09ea84bfaf8e986f0 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: nfenwick Date: Thu, 6 Feb 2025 18:15:40 -0800 Subject: As captured February 7, 2025 --- 53650-0.txt | 7866 ++++++++++++++++++++ 53650-8.txt | 8261 --------------------- 53650-8.zip | Bin 153408 -> 0 bytes 53650-h.zip | Bin 242525 -> 0 bytes 53650-h/53650-h.htm | 16391 ++++++++++++++++++++--------------------- old/53650-8.txt | 8261 +++++++++++++++++++++ old/53650-8.zip | Bin 0 -> 153408 bytes old/53650-h.zip | Bin 0 -> 242525 bytes old/53650-h/53650-h.htm | 8406 +++++++++++++++++++++ old/53650-h/images/cover.jpg | Bin 0 -> 75200 bytes old/53650-h/images/logo.jpg | Bin 0 -> 4612 bytes 11 files changed, 32518 insertions(+), 16667 deletions(-) create mode 100644 53650-0.txt delete mode 100644 53650-8.txt delete mode 100644 53650-8.zip delete mode 100644 53650-h.zip create mode 100644 old/53650-8.txt create mode 100644 old/53650-8.zip create mode 100644 old/53650-h.zip create mode 100644 old/53650-h/53650-h.htm create mode 100644 old/53650-h/images/cover.jpg create mode 100644 old/53650-h/images/logo.jpg diff --git a/53650-0.txt b/53650-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f16f406 --- /dev/null +++ b/53650-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,7866 @@ +*** 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 *** diff --git a/53650-8.txt b/53650-8.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 4647d5f..0000000 --- a/53650-8.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8261 +0,0 @@ -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 - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHERS TO MEN *** - -***** This file should be named 53650-8.txt or 53650-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/6/5/53650/ - -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) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will -be renamed. - -Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright -law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, -so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United -States without permission and without paying copyright -royalties. 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-
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mothers to Men, by Zona Gale
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-
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-Title: Mothers to Men
-
-Author: Zona Gale
-
-Release Date: December 2, 2016 [EBook #53650]
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-Language: English
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-Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHERS TO MEN ***
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Transcriber's Note:

-A Table of Contents has been added.

- -
- -
cover
- -
- -

MOTHERS TO MEN

- -
- -
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

- -
- -

CONTENTS

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
CHAPTER     PAGE
MOTHERS TO MEN1
I13
II28
III37
IV64
V95
VI130
VII169
VIII195
IX206
X242
XI264
XII284
XIII314
- -
- -

[Pg 1]

- -

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."

- -

[Pg 2]

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.

- -

[Pg 3]

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.

- -

[Pg 4]

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.

- -

[Pg 5]

"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[Pg 6] 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[Pg 7] 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[Pg 8] -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?"[Pg 9]... 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[Pg 10] 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.

- -

[Pg 11]

"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—"

- -

[Pg 12]

"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.

- -
- -

[Pg 13]

- -

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.'

- -

[Pg 14]

"'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[Pg 15] 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,[Pg 16] 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[Pg 17] 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[Pg 18] 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,[Pg 19] 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 [Pg 20]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[Pg 21] 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. [Pg 22]'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[Pg 23] 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 [Pg 24]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.[Pg 25] 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.

- -

[Pg 26]

"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[Pg 27] 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.

- -
- -

[Pg 28]

- -

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[Pg 29] -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[Pg 30] 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.[Pg 31] '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?'

- -

[Pg 32]

"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'.'

- -

[Pg 33]

"'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.

- -

[Pg 34]

"'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[Pg 35] 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.[Pg 36] '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.

- -
- -

[Pg 37]

- -

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[Pg 38] 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.

- -

[Pg 39]

"'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[Pg 40] 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[Pg 41] 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.'

- -

[Pg 42]

"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[Pg 43] 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.

- -

[Pg 44]

" ... 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[Pg 45] 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.

- -

[Pg 46]

"'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.'

- -

[Pg 47]

"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.

- -

[Pg 48]

"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,[Pg 49] 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.

- -

[Pg 50]

"'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'[Pg 51] 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?'

- -

[Pg 52]

"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[Pg 53] -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.

- -

[Pg 54]

"'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[Pg 55] 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?'

- -

[Pg 56]

"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.

- -

[Pg 57]

"'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[Pg 58] 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,[Pg 59] 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[Pg 60] 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,[Pg 61] 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,[Pg 62] '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[Pg 63] 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.'

- -
- -

[Pg 64]

- -

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[Pg 65] 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[Pg 66] 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[Pg 67] 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[Pg 68] 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[Pg 69] 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[Pg 70] 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[Pg 71] 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[Pg 72] 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 [Pg 73]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.'

- -

[Pg 74]

"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.'

- -

[Pg 75]

"'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,[Pg 76] 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.

- -

[Pg 77]

"'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[Pg 78] 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[Pg 79] 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[Pg 80] 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[Pg 81] 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[Pg 82] 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?'

- -

[Pg 83]

"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[Pg 84] 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[Pg 85] 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[Pg 86] 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.

- -

[Pg 87]

"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[Pg 88] 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[Pg 89] 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[Pg 90] 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[Pg 91] 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[Pg 92] 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.[Pg 93] 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[Pg 94] 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.'

- -
- -

[Pg 95]

- -

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[Pg 96] 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 [Pg 97]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 [Pg 98]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[Pg 99] 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[Pg 100] 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.'

- -

[Pg 101]

"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[Pg 102] 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[Pg 103] 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[Pg 104] -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.

- -

[Pg 105]

"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[Pg 106] 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[Pg 107] 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[Pg 108] 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.

- -

[Pg 109]

"'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.'

- -

[Pg 110]

"'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.

- -

[Pg 111]

"'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[Pg 112] 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[Pg 113] 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[Pg 114] 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?'[Pg 115] 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.

- -

[Pg 116]

"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[Pg 117] 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[Pg 118] 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,[Pg 119] 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[Pg 120] -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.

- -

[Pg 121]

"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[Pg 122]—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,[Pg 123] 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.

- -

[Pg 124]

"'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,'[Pg 125] 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[Pg 126] 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[Pg 127] 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[Pg 128] 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[Pg 129] 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?'

- -
- -

[Pg 130]

- -

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.

- -

[Pg 131]

"'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[Pg 132] 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 [Pg 133]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.

- -

[Pg 134]

"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.

- -

[Pg 135]

"'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.'

- -

[Pg 136]

"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[Pg 137] -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' [Pg 138]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.'

- -

[Pg 139]

"'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.

- -

[Pg 140]

"'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[Pg 141] -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[Pg 142] 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'[Pg 143] 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.

- -

[Pg 144]

"'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?'

- -

[Pg 145]

"'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.[Pg 146] 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[Pg 147] 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[Pg 148] 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.'

- -

[Pg 149]

"'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, [Pg 150]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[Pg 151] 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.[Pg 152] 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[Pg 153] 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[Pg 154] 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—'

- -

[Pg 155]

"'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.

- -

[Pg 156]

"'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.'

- -

[Pg 157]

"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[Pg 158] 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[Pg 159] 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?

- -

[Pg 160]

"'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[Pg 161] 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, [Pg 162]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 [Pg 163]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'[Pg 164] -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[Pg 165] 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[Pg 166] 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[Pg 167] 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[Pg 168] 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.

- -
- -

[Pg 169]

- -

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.[Pg 170] 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[Pg 171] 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[Pg 172] 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[Pg 173] 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?'

- -

[Pg 174]

"'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.'

- -

[Pg 175]

"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 [Pg 176]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 [Pg 177]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.

- -

[Pg 178]

"'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.

- -

[Pg 179]

"'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[Pg 180] 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 [Pg 181]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[Pg 182] 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.[Pg 183] 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[Pg 184] 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[Pg 185] 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[Pg 186] 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;[Pg 187] 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[Pg 188] 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:—

- -

[Pg 189]

"'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?'

- -

[Pg 190]

"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:—

- -

[Pg 191]

"'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[Pg 192] 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[Pg 193] -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.

- -

[Pg 194]

"'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.

- -
- -

[Pg 195]

- -

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[Pg 196] 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[Pg 197] 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[Pg 198] 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[Pg 199] 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.[Pg 200] 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[Pg 201] 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[Pg 202] 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[Pg 203] 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[Pg 204]—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.

- -

[Pg 205]

"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.

- -
- -

[Pg 206]

- -

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.'

- -

[Pg 207]

"'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[Pg 208] -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.

- -

[Pg 209]

"'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.

- -

[Pg 210]

"'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.[Pg 211] 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[Pg 212] 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[Pg 213] 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.'

- -

[Pg 214]

"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[Pg 215] 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.

- -

[Pg 216]

"'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.

- -

[Pg 217]

"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[Pg 218] 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[Pg 219] 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'[Pg 220] 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[Pg 221] 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.

- -

[Pg 222]

"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[Pg 223] 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—'

- -

[Pg 224]

"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[Pg 225] 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?'

- -

[Pg 226]

"'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[Pg 227] 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[Pg 228] 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[Pg 229] 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,[Pg 230] 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[Pg 231] 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[Pg 232] 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[Pg 233] 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[Pg 234] 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[Pg 235] 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[Pg 236] 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[Pg 237] 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[Pg 238] 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[Pg 239] 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[Pg 240] 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?'

- -

[Pg 241]

"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.

- -
- -

[Pg 242]

- -

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[Pg 243] 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 [Pg 244]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[Pg 245] 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.

- -

[Pg 246]

"'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[Pg 247] 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?'

- -

[Pg 248]

"'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.'

- -

[Pg 249]

"'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[Pg 250] 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.

- -

[Pg 251]

"'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[Pg 252] 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;[Pg 253] 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.

- -

[Pg 254]

"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.

- -

[Pg 255]

"'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.

- -

[Pg 256]

"'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[Pg 257] 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,[Pg 258] 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[Pg 259] 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 [Pg 260]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.'

- -

[Pg 261]

"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[Pg 262] 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.'

- -

[Pg 263]

"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.

- -
- -

[Pg 264]

- -

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[Pg 265] 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 [Pg 266]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[Pg 267] 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.

- -

[Pg 268]

"'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[Pg 269] 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.

- -

[Pg 270]

"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[Pg 271] -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!'

- -

[Pg 272]

"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'[Pg 273] 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[Pg 274] 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[Pg 275] 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[Pg 276] 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.'

- -

[Pg 277]

"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.'

- -

[Pg 278]

"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[Pg 279] 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.

- -

[Pg 280]

"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[Pg 281] 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[Pg 282] 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.'

- -

[Pg 283]

"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.'

- -
- -

[Pg 284]

- -

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[Pg 285] 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.'

- -

[Pg 286]

"'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.

- -

[Pg 287]

"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[Pg 288] 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[Pg 289] 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.

- -

[Pg 290]

"'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[Pg 291] 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,[Pg 292] 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[Pg 293] 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:—

- -

[Pg 294]

"'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, [Pg 295]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[Pg 296] 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.

- -

[Pg 297]

"'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,[Pg 298] '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[Pg 299] 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[Pg 300] 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[Pg 301] 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[Pg 302] 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[Pg 303] 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.'

- -

[Pg 304]

"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[Pg 305] 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[Pg 306] 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[Pg 307] 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[Pg 308] 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 [Pg 309]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[Pg 310] 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[Pg 311] -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[Pg 312] 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,[Pg 313] 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.

- -
- -

[Pg 314]

- -

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.

- -

[Pg 315]

"'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' [Pg 316]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[Pg 317] 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[Pg 318] 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.

- -

[Pg 319]

"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,[Pg 320] 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.

- -

[Pg 321]

"'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.[Pg 322] 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[Pg 323] 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.[Pg 324] '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:—

- -

[Pg 325]

"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[Pg 326] -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.'

- -

[Pg 327]

"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. + + + + +
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 53650 ***
+ +

Transcriber's Note:

+A Table of Contents has been added.

+ +
+ +
cover
+ +
+ +

MOTHERS TO MEN

+ +
+ +
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

+ +
+ +

CONTENTS

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
CHAPTER     PAGE
MOTHERS TO MEN1
I13
II28
III37
IV64
V95
VI130
VII169
VIII195
IX206
X242
XI264
XII284
XIII314
+ +
+ +

[Pg 1]

+ +

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."

+ +

[Pg 2]

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.

+ +

[Pg 3]

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.

+ +

[Pg 4]

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.

+ +

[Pg 5]

"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[Pg 6] 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[Pg 7] 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[Pg 8] +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?"[Pg 9]... 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[Pg 10] 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.

+ +

[Pg 11]

"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—"

+ +

[Pg 12]

"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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 13]

+ +

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.'

+ +

[Pg 14]

"'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[Pg 15] 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,[Pg 16] 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[Pg 17] 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[Pg 18] 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,[Pg 19] 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 [Pg 20]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[Pg 21] 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. [Pg 22]'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[Pg 23] 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 [Pg 24]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.[Pg 25] 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.

+ +

[Pg 26]

"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[Pg 27] 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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 28]

+ +

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[Pg 29] +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[Pg 30] 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.[Pg 31] '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?'

+ +

[Pg 32]

"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'.'

+ +

[Pg 33]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 34]

"'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[Pg 35] 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.[Pg 36] '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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 37]

+ +

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[Pg 38] 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.

+ +

[Pg 39]

"'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[Pg 40] 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[Pg 41] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 42]

"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[Pg 43] 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.

+ +

[Pg 44]

" ... 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[Pg 45] 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.

+ +

[Pg 46]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 47]

"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.

+ +

[Pg 48]

"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,[Pg 49] 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.

+ +

[Pg 50]

"'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'[Pg 51] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 52]

"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[Pg 53] +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.

+ +

[Pg 54]

"'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[Pg 55] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 56]

"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.

+ +

[Pg 57]

"'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[Pg 58] 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,[Pg 59] 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[Pg 60] 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,[Pg 61] 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,[Pg 62] '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[Pg 63] 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.'

+ +
+ +

[Pg 64]

+ +

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[Pg 65] 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[Pg 66] 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[Pg 67] 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[Pg 68] 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[Pg 69] 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[Pg 70] 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[Pg 71] 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[Pg 72] 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 [Pg 73]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.'

+ +

[Pg 74]

"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.'

+ +

[Pg 75]

"'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,[Pg 76] 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.

+ +

[Pg 77]

"'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[Pg 78] 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[Pg 79] 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[Pg 80] 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[Pg 81] 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[Pg 82] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 83]

"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[Pg 84] 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[Pg 85] 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[Pg 86] 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.

+ +

[Pg 87]

"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[Pg 88] 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[Pg 89] 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[Pg 90] 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[Pg 91] 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[Pg 92] 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.[Pg 93] 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[Pg 94] 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.'

+ +
+ +

[Pg 95]

+ +

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[Pg 96] 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 [Pg 97]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 [Pg 98]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[Pg 99] 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[Pg 100] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 101]

"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[Pg 102] 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[Pg 103] 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[Pg 104] +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.

+ +

[Pg 105]

"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[Pg 106] 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[Pg 107] 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[Pg 108] 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.

+ +

[Pg 109]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 110]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 111]

"'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[Pg 112] 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[Pg 113] 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[Pg 114] 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?'[Pg 115] 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.

+ +

[Pg 116]

"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[Pg 117] 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[Pg 118] 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,[Pg 119] 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[Pg 120] +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.

+ +

[Pg 121]

"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[Pg 122]—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,[Pg 123] 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.

+ +

[Pg 124]

"'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,'[Pg 125] 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[Pg 126] 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[Pg 127] 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[Pg 128] 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[Pg 129] 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?'

+ +
+ +

[Pg 130]

+ +

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.

+ +

[Pg 131]

"'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[Pg 132] 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 [Pg 133]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.

+ +

[Pg 134]

"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.

+ +

[Pg 135]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 136]

"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[Pg 137] +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' [Pg 138]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.'

+ +

[Pg 139]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 140]

"'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[Pg 141] +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[Pg 142] 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'[Pg 143] 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.

+ +

[Pg 144]

"'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?'

+ +

[Pg 145]

"'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.[Pg 146] 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[Pg 147] 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[Pg 148] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 149]

"'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, [Pg 150]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[Pg 151] 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.[Pg 152] 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[Pg 153] 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[Pg 154] 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—'

+ +

[Pg 155]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 156]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 157]

"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[Pg 158] 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[Pg 159] 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?

+ +

[Pg 160]

"'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[Pg 161] 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, [Pg 162]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 [Pg 163]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'[Pg 164] +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[Pg 165] 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[Pg 166] 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[Pg 167] 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[Pg 168] 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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 169]

+ +

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.[Pg 170] 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[Pg 171] 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[Pg 172] 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[Pg 173] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 174]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 175]

"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 [Pg 176]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 [Pg 177]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.

+ +

[Pg 178]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 179]

"'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[Pg 180] 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 [Pg 181]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[Pg 182] 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.[Pg 183] 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[Pg 184] 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[Pg 185] 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[Pg 186] 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;[Pg 187] 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[Pg 188] 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:—

+ +

[Pg 189]

"'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?'

+ +

[Pg 190]

"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:—

+ +

[Pg 191]

"'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[Pg 192] 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[Pg 193] +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.

+ +

[Pg 194]

"'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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 195]

+ +

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[Pg 196] 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[Pg 197] 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[Pg 198] 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[Pg 199] 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.[Pg 200] 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[Pg 201] 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[Pg 202] 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[Pg 203] 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[Pg 204]—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.

+ +

[Pg 205]

"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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 206]

+ +

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.'

+ +

[Pg 207]

"'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[Pg 208] +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.

+ +

[Pg 209]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 210]

"'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.[Pg 211] 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[Pg 212] 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[Pg 213] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 214]

"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[Pg 215] 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.

+ +

[Pg 216]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 217]

"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[Pg 218] 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[Pg 219] 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'[Pg 220] 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[Pg 221] 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.

+ +

[Pg 222]

"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[Pg 223] 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—'

+ +

[Pg 224]

"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[Pg 225] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 226]

"'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[Pg 227] 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[Pg 228] 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[Pg 229] 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,[Pg 230] 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[Pg 231] 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[Pg 232] 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[Pg 233] 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[Pg 234] 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[Pg 235] 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[Pg 236] 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[Pg 237] 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[Pg 238] 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[Pg 239] 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[Pg 240] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 241]

"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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 242]

+ +

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[Pg 243] 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 [Pg 244]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[Pg 245] 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.

+ +

[Pg 246]

"'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[Pg 247] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 248]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 249]

"'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[Pg 250] 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.

+ +

[Pg 251]

"'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[Pg 252] 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;[Pg 253] 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.

+ +

[Pg 254]

"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.

+ +

[Pg 255]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 256]

"'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[Pg 257] 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,[Pg 258] 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[Pg 259] 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 [Pg 260]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.'

+ +

[Pg 261]

"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[Pg 262] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 263]

"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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 264]

+ +

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[Pg 265] 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 [Pg 266]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[Pg 267] 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.

+ +

[Pg 268]

"'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[Pg 269] 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.

+ +

[Pg 270]

"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[Pg 271] +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!'

+ +

[Pg 272]

"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'[Pg 273] 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[Pg 274] 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[Pg 275] 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[Pg 276] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 277]

"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.'

+ +

[Pg 278]

"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[Pg 279] 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.

+ +

[Pg 280]

"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[Pg 281] 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[Pg 282] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 283]

"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.'

+ +
+ +

[Pg 284]

+ +

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[Pg 285] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 286]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 287]

"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[Pg 288] 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[Pg 289] 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.

+ +

[Pg 290]

"'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[Pg 291] 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,[Pg 292] 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[Pg 293] 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:—

+ +

[Pg 294]

"'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, [Pg 295]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[Pg 296] 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.

+ +

[Pg 297]

"'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,[Pg 298] '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[Pg 299] 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[Pg 300] 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[Pg 301] 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[Pg 302] 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[Pg 303] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 304]

"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[Pg 305] 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[Pg 306] 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[Pg 307] 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[Pg 308] 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 [Pg 309]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[Pg 310] 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[Pg 311] +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[Pg 312] 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,[Pg 313] 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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 314]

+ +

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.

+ +

[Pg 315]

"'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' [Pg 316]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[Pg 317] 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[Pg 318] 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.

+ +

[Pg 319]

"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,[Pg 320] 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.

+ +

[Pg 321]

"'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.[Pg 322] 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[Pg 323] 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.[Pg 324] '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:—

+ +

[Pg 325]

"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[Pg 326] +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.'

+ +

[Pg 327]

"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 53650 ***
+ + diff --git a/old/53650-8.txt b/old/53650-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..db99932 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/53650-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8261 @@ +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 + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MOTHERS TO MEN *** + +***** This file should be named 53650-8.txt or 53650-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/5/3/6/5/53650/ + +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) + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mothers to Men, by Zona Gale
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+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
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+
+
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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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Transcriber's Note:

+A Table of Contents has been added.

+ +
+ +
cover
+ +
+ +

MOTHERS TO MEN

+ +
+ +
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

+ +
+ +

CONTENTS

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + +
CHAPTER     PAGE
MOTHERS TO MEN1
I13
II28
III37
IV64
V95
VI130
VII169
VIII195
IX206
X242
XI264
XII284
XIII314
+ +
+ +

[Pg 1]

+ +

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."

+ +

[Pg 2]

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.

+ +

[Pg 3]

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.

+ +

[Pg 4]

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.

+ +

[Pg 5]

"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[Pg 6] 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[Pg 7] 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[Pg 8] +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?"[Pg 9]... 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[Pg 10] 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.

+ +

[Pg 11]

"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—"

+ +

[Pg 12]

"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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 13]

+ +

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.'

+ +

[Pg 14]

"'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[Pg 15] 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,[Pg 16] 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[Pg 17] 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[Pg 18] 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,[Pg 19] 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 [Pg 20]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[Pg 21] 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. [Pg 22]'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[Pg 23] 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 [Pg 24]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.[Pg 25] 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.

+ +

[Pg 26]

"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[Pg 27] 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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 28]

+ +

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[Pg 29] +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[Pg 30] 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.[Pg 31] '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?'

+ +

[Pg 32]

"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'.'

+ +

[Pg 33]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 34]

"'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[Pg 35] 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.[Pg 36] '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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 37]

+ +

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[Pg 38] 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.

+ +

[Pg 39]

"'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[Pg 40] 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[Pg 41] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 42]

"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[Pg 43] 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.

+ +

[Pg 44]

" ... 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[Pg 45] 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.

+ +

[Pg 46]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 47]

"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.

+ +

[Pg 48]

"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,[Pg 49] 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.

+ +

[Pg 50]

"'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'[Pg 51] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 52]

"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[Pg 53] +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.

+ +

[Pg 54]

"'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[Pg 55] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 56]

"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.

+ +

[Pg 57]

"'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[Pg 58] 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,[Pg 59] 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[Pg 60] 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,[Pg 61] 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,[Pg 62] '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[Pg 63] 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.'

+ +
+ +

[Pg 64]

+ +

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[Pg 65] 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[Pg 66] 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[Pg 67] 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[Pg 68] 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[Pg 69] 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[Pg 70] 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[Pg 71] 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[Pg 72] 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 [Pg 73]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.'

+ +

[Pg 74]

"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.'

+ +

[Pg 75]

"'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,[Pg 76] 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.

+ +

[Pg 77]

"'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[Pg 78] 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[Pg 79] 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[Pg 80] 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[Pg 81] 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[Pg 82] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 83]

"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[Pg 84] 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[Pg 85] 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[Pg 86] 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.

+ +

[Pg 87]

"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[Pg 88] 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[Pg 89] 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[Pg 90] 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[Pg 91] 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[Pg 92] 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.[Pg 93] 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[Pg 94] 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.'

+ +
+ +

[Pg 95]

+ +

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[Pg 96] 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 [Pg 97]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 [Pg 98]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[Pg 99] 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[Pg 100] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 101]

"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[Pg 102] 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[Pg 103] 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[Pg 104] +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.

+ +

[Pg 105]

"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[Pg 106] 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[Pg 107] 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[Pg 108] 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.

+ +

[Pg 109]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 110]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 111]

"'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[Pg 112] 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[Pg 113] 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[Pg 114] 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?'[Pg 115] 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.

+ +

[Pg 116]

"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[Pg 117] 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[Pg 118] 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,[Pg 119] 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[Pg 120] +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.

+ +

[Pg 121]

"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[Pg 122]—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,[Pg 123] 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.

+ +

[Pg 124]

"'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,'[Pg 125] 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[Pg 126] 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[Pg 127] 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[Pg 128] 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[Pg 129] 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?'

+ +
+ +

[Pg 130]

+ +

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.

+ +

[Pg 131]

"'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[Pg 132] 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 [Pg 133]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.

+ +

[Pg 134]

"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.

+ +

[Pg 135]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 136]

"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[Pg 137] +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' [Pg 138]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.'

+ +

[Pg 139]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 140]

"'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[Pg 141] +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[Pg 142] 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'[Pg 143] 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.

+ +

[Pg 144]

"'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?'

+ +

[Pg 145]

"'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.[Pg 146] 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[Pg 147] 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[Pg 148] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 149]

"'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, [Pg 150]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[Pg 151] 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.[Pg 152] 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[Pg 153] 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[Pg 154] 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—'

+ +

[Pg 155]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 156]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 157]

"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[Pg 158] 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[Pg 159] 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?

+ +

[Pg 160]

"'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[Pg 161] 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, [Pg 162]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 [Pg 163]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'[Pg 164] +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[Pg 165] 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[Pg 166] 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[Pg 167] 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[Pg 168] 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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 169]

+ +

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.[Pg 170] 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[Pg 171] 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[Pg 172] 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[Pg 173] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 174]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 175]

"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 [Pg 176]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 [Pg 177]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.

+ +

[Pg 178]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 179]

"'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[Pg 180] 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 [Pg 181]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[Pg 182] 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.[Pg 183] 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[Pg 184] 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[Pg 185] 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[Pg 186] 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;[Pg 187] 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[Pg 188] 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:—

+ +

[Pg 189]

"'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?'

+ +

[Pg 190]

"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:—

+ +

[Pg 191]

"'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[Pg 192] 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[Pg 193] +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.

+ +

[Pg 194]

"'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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 195]

+ +

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[Pg 196] 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[Pg 197] 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[Pg 198] 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[Pg 199] 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.[Pg 200] 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[Pg 201] 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[Pg 202] 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[Pg 203] 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[Pg 204]—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.

+ +

[Pg 205]

"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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 206]

+ +

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.'

+ +

[Pg 207]

"'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[Pg 208] +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.

+ +

[Pg 209]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 210]

"'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.[Pg 211] 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[Pg 212] 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[Pg 213] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 214]

"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[Pg 215] 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.

+ +

[Pg 216]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 217]

"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[Pg 218] 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[Pg 219] 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'[Pg 220] 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[Pg 221] 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.

+ +

[Pg 222]

"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[Pg 223] 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—'

+ +

[Pg 224]

"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[Pg 225] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 226]

"'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[Pg 227] 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[Pg 228] 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[Pg 229] 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,[Pg 230] 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[Pg 231] 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[Pg 232] 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[Pg 233] 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[Pg 234] 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[Pg 235] 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[Pg 236] 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[Pg 237] 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[Pg 238] 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[Pg 239] 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[Pg 240] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 241]

"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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 242]

+ +

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[Pg 243] 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 [Pg 244]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[Pg 245] 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.

+ +

[Pg 246]

"'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[Pg 247] 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?'

+ +

[Pg 248]

"'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.'

+ +

[Pg 249]

"'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[Pg 250] 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.

+ +

[Pg 251]

"'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[Pg 252] 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;[Pg 253] 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.

+ +

[Pg 254]

"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.

+ +

[Pg 255]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 256]

"'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[Pg 257] 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,[Pg 258] 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[Pg 259] 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 [Pg 260]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.'

+ +

[Pg 261]

"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[Pg 262] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 263]

"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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 264]

+ +

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[Pg 265] 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 [Pg 266]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[Pg 267] 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.

+ +

[Pg 268]

"'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[Pg 269] 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.

+ +

[Pg 270]

"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[Pg 271] +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!'

+ +

[Pg 272]

"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'[Pg 273] 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[Pg 274] 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[Pg 275] 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[Pg 276] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 277]

"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.'

+ +

[Pg 278]

"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[Pg 279] 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.

+ +

[Pg 280]

"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[Pg 281] 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[Pg 282] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 283]

"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.'

+ +
+ +

[Pg 284]

+ +

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[Pg 285] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 286]

"'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.

+ +

[Pg 287]

"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[Pg 288] 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[Pg 289] 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.

+ +

[Pg 290]

"'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[Pg 291] 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,[Pg 292] 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[Pg 293] 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:—

+ +

[Pg 294]

"'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, [Pg 295]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[Pg 296] 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.

+ +

[Pg 297]

"'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,[Pg 298] '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[Pg 299] 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[Pg 300] 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[Pg 301] 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[Pg 302] 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[Pg 303] 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.'

+ +

[Pg 304]

"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[Pg 305] 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[Pg 306] 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[Pg 307] 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[Pg 308] 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 [Pg 309]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[Pg 310] 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[Pg 311] +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[Pg 312] 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,[Pg 313] 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.

+ +
+ +

[Pg 314]

+ +

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.

+ +

[Pg 315]

"'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' [Pg 316]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[Pg 317] 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[Pg 318] 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.

+ +

[Pg 319]

"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,[Pg 320] 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.

+ +

[Pg 321]

"'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.[Pg 322] 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[Pg 323] 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.[Pg 324] '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:—

+ +

[Pg 325]

"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[Pg 326] +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.'

+ +

[Pg 327]

"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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