"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.