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.