Chapter V: Part 5

"I tell you, we all walked home feelin' like we'd hed a present--me too, though I knew very well I couldn't hev a light dress, an' I didn't hev any husband. You start out thinkin' them are the two principal things, but you get a-hold o' some others, if you pay attention. Still, I judged the ladies was on the right track, for men is men, say what who will. All but Threat Hubbelthwait. We passed the hotel an' heard him settin' in there by the bar scrapin' away on 'Can A Little Child Like Me?' We took shame to him, an' yet I know we all looked at each other sort of motherly, like he _was_ some little shaver, same as he sung, an' performin' most fool.

"It don't take us ladies long to do things, when our minds is made. Especially it don't when Mis' Timothy Toplady is chairman of the Entertainment Committee, or the Doin' Committee of whatever happens, like she was that time. First, we found out they was plenty enough nun's veilin' in the post-office store, cheap an' wide an' in stock an' all the light shades; an' I bought all the dresses, noons, of the clerk, so Silas wouldn't suspect--me not hevin' any husband to inquire around, like they do. Then we hired the post-office hall, vague, without sayin' for what--an' that pleased Silas that gets the rent. An' then we give the invitations, spectacular, through the _Friendship Daily_ to the Sodality's husbands, for the next Tuesday night. We could do it that quick, not bein' dependent on dressmakers same as some. The ladies was all goin' to make their dresses themselves, an' the dresses wa'n't much to do to make. Nobody bothered a very great deal about how we should make 'em, the principal thing bein' the colour; Mis' Toplady's was blue, like the fashion-plate; Mis' Holcomb's pink, like the woman in the city; Mis' Uppers' green, like the mayor's necktie, an' so on. I made me up a dress out o' the spare-room curtains--white, with a little blue flower in it, an' a new blue ribbon belt. But Mis' Sykes, she went to work an' _rented_ a dress from the city, for that one night. That much she give out about it, an' would give out no more. That woman loves a surprise. She's got a rill pleasant mind, Mis' Sykes has, but one that does enjoy jerkin' other people's minds up, an most anything'll do for the string.

"For all we thought we hed so much time, an' it was so easy to do, the afternoon o' the party we went 'most crazy. We'd got up quite a nice little cold supper--Mis' Hubbelthwait had helped us, she bein' still at large, an' Threat fiddlin'. We planned meat loaf an' salad an' pickles an' jelly, an' scalloped potatoes for the hot dish, an' ice cream an' cake, enough in all for thirty folks: fifteen husbands an' fifteen Sodality, or approximatish. An' we planned to go to the hall in the afternoon an' take our dresses there, an' sly em' up and leave 'em, an' put 'em on after we'd got there that night, so's nobody's husbands should suspect. But when we all came in the afternoon, an' the decoratin' with greens an' festoons of cut paper an' all was to do, there Mis' Toplady, that was to make scalloped potatoes, hadn't got her sleeves in yet, an' she was down to the hall tryin' to do both; an' Mis' Holcomb, that was to make the salad dressing, had got so nervous over her collar that she couldn't tell which edge she'd cut for the top. But the rest of us was ready, an' Mis' Sykes's dress had come from the city, an' we all, Mis' Toplady an' Mame too, hed our dresses in boxes in the post-office hall kitchen cupboards. An' we done the decoratin', an' it looked rill lovely, with the long tables laid ready at each side, an' room for bein' a party left in between 'em.

"Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb left the hall about five o'clock to go home an' lay out Silas's an' Timothy's an' Eppleby's best clothes for 'em--the rest hed done it at noon. Mis' Hubbelthwait was goin' over to the hotel to get some dishes out, an' I went with her to help. The bar was to the back, where Threat set an' slep' an' fiddled, an' Mis' Hubbelthwait was goin' to slip in still an' sly the dishes out to me. A good many of the hotel dishes was her individual weddin' presents, so she didn't think wrong of her conscience.

"We was all five hurryin' along together, rehearsin' all we'd got to do before six-thirty, when we heard a funny sound. We listened, an' we thought they must be testin' the hose. But when we got to Lyddy's shop, where the street kitters off some in a curve, we looked ahead an' we see it wasn't that.

"It's an automobile," says Mis' Toplady. 'My land,' she says, 'it ain't only one. It's two.'

"An' we see it was. There come the two of 'em, ploughin' along through the awful sand of Daphne Street, that was fit for no human locomotive, unless ostriches. When the Proudfits are here, that's the only one in the village with an automobile, they understand the sand, and they'd put on the whole steam and tear right along through it. But strangers would go careful, for fear they'd get stuck, an' so they got it, like you do. An' them two big red cars was comin' slow, the dust like cloaks an' curtains billowin' up behind. They looked quite wild, includin' the seven folks in each one that was laughin' an' callin' out. An' by the time they'd come up to us, us four ladies of the Sodality an' Mis' Hubbelthwait was lined up on the walk watchin' 'em. They stopped an' one of 'em hailed us, leanin' past his driver.

"'I beg your pardon,' he says, 'is this the street to the best hotel?'

"It was Mis' Toplady that answered him, rill collected. 'They's only one street in town,' says she, 'an' they's only one hotel, an' that they ain't now.'

"'Can you tell me how soon there will be one?' says the man. 'By dinner-time, I hope.'

"We all felt kind of delicate about answerin' this, an' so Mis' Hubbelthwait herself spoke up. 'Threat's drunk an' fiddlin', she says. 'They's no tellin' when Friendship Village will ever hev a hotel again.'

"Both automobiles was listenin' by then, an' though some of 'em laughed out sort o' rueful, not many of 'em see the funny.

"'Gad,' one of the men says, 'how about the bird an' the bottle we were to send back to Bonner, sittin' by his tire in the desert, a ways back? Don't tell us there's no place,' he says, 'where we can find dinner, twenty-one of us and the three chauf--' that word.

"Mis' Toplady shook her head. 'They ain't a place big enough to seat twenty-one, even if they was the food to feed 'em--' she begun, an' then she stopped an' looked 'round at us, as though she was thinkin' somethin'.

"'Oh, come now,' says the man,--he was good-lookin' an' young, an' merry-seemin',--'Oh, come now,' he said, 'I am sure that the ladies of Friendship could cook things such as never man yet ate. We are sta-arving,' he says, humorous. 'Can't you do something for us? We'll give you,' he winds up, genial, 'two dollars a plate for a good, home-cooking dinner for the twenty-four of us. What do you say?'

"Mis' Toplady whirled toward us sort o' wild. 'Is two dollars times twenty-four, forty-eight dollars?' says she, low.

"An' we see it was, though Mis' Holcomb was still figurin' it out in the palm of her other hand, while we stood gettin' glances out of each other's eyes, an' sendin' 'em, give for take. We see, quick as a flash, what Mis' Toplady was thinkin' about. An' it was about that hall, all festooned with greens an' cut paper, an' the two long tables laid ready, an' the veal loaf an' scalloped potatoes an' ice-cream for thirty. An' when Mis' Sykes, that usually speaks, stood still, an' didn't say one word, but just nodded a little bit, sort o' sad, Mis' Toplady, that was chairman o' the Entertainment Committee, done like she does sometimes--she took the whole thing into her own hands an' just settled it.

"'Why, yes,' she says to 'em, rill pleasant, 'if you want to come up to post-office hall at half-past six,' she says, 'the Friendship Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality will serve you your supper, nice as the nicest, for two dollars a head.'

"'Good!' the men all sings out, an' the women spats their hands soft, an' one of 'em says somethin' to the merry-seemin' man.

"'Oh, yes,' he says then, 'couldn't we all break into this hotel an' floss up a bit before dinner?'

"Mis' Hubbelthwait stepped out towards 'em.

"'I was thinkin' of that,' says she. 'My husband,' she says, dignified, 'is settin' in the bar--practisin' his violin. He--he does that sometimes, an' we--don't bother him. But the bar is at the back. I can let you in, still, the front way to the rooms, if you want. An' I'll be there myself to wait on you.'

"An' that was what they done, somebody takin' one o' the cars back for the other car, an' the rest of us fair breakin' into a run toward post-office hall.

"'My land,' says Mis' Toplady, almost like a groan, 'what _hev_ we done?'

"It _was_ a funny thing to do, we see it afterward. But I tell you, you can't appreciate the influence o' that forty-eight dollars unless you've tried to earn money in a town the size o' Friendship Village. Sodality hardly ever made more than five dollars to its ten-cent entertainments--an' that for a big turn-out on a dry night. An' here was the price of about nine such entertainments give us outright, an' no extra work, an' rill feet-achin' weather. I say it was more than flesh an' blood _or_ wives could stand. We done it automatic, like you contradict when it's necessary.

"But there _was_ the men to reckon with.

"'What'll Timothy--an' Silas--an' Eppleby....' Mis' Toplady says, an' stops, some bothered an' some rill pained.

"I judged, not havin' any husband to be doin' the inquirin', it wasn't polite for me to laugh. But I couldn't hardly help it, thinkin' o' them fifteen hungry men an' the supper et away from 'em, just William Nilly.

"Mis' Sykes, we remembered afterwards, never said a word, but only kep' up with us back to the hall.

"Back to the hall, where the rest o' the Sodality was, we told 'em what we'd done--beginnin' with the forty-eight dollars, like some kind o' weapon. But I tell you, we hadn't reckoned without knowin' our hostesses, head an' heart. An' they went in pell mell, pleased an' glad as we was, an' plannin' like mad.

"The first need was more food to make up that supper to somewheres near two dollars' worth--feedin' your husband is one thing an' gettin' up a two-dollar meal is another. But we collected that all in pretty sudden: leg o' lamb, left from the Holcombs' dinner an' only cut off of one side; the Sykes's roast o' veal, the same; three chickens for soup the Libertys hed just dressed for next day company dinner; big platter of devilled eggs chipped in from Mis' Toplady; a jar o' doughnuts, a steamer o' cookies, a fruit-cake a year old--we just made out our list an' scattered to empty out all our pantries.

"By six o'clock we was back in the hall, an' all the food with us. But nobody hed met nobody's husband yet, an' nobody wanted to. We didn't quite know how we was goin' to do, I guess--but done is done, an' to do takes care of itself.

"'Hadn't we ought to 'a' sent word to the men?' says Mis' Holcomb, for the third or fourth time. 'I sneaked around so's not to pass Eppleby's office, but I declare I feel mean. He'll hev to eat sauce an' plain bread-an'-butter for his supper. An' most o' the men-folks the same. 'Seems though somebody'd ought to send 'em word an' not let 'em come up here, all washed an' dressed.'

"'Well,' says Mis' Toplady, cuttin' cake with her lips shut tight an' talkin' anyway, 'I kind o' thought--leave 'em come up. I bet they'd rather be in it than out of it, every one of 'em, an' who knows they might be some supper left? An' we can all--'

"An' at that Mis' Toplady faces round from cuttin' the cake: 'My land, my land,' she says, sort o' hushed, 'why, doin' this, we can't none of us wear our new dresses!'

"An' at that we looked at each other, each one sort of accusin', an' I guess all our hearts givin' one o' them sickish thumps. An' Mis' Sykes, her that hed been so still, snaps back:--

"'I wondered what you thought I'd rented my dress from the city for at _Three Dollars a night_.'

"I tell you, that made a hush in the middle of the plannin'. We'd forgot all about our own dresses, an' that was bad enough, with the hall all hired an' everything all ready, an' every chance in the world of everybody's husband's findin' out about the dresses before we could get up another Sodality party, same way. But here was Mis' Sykes, three dollars out, an mebbe wouldn't be able to rent her dress again at all.

"'I did want Silas,' Mis' Sykes says then, wistful, 'to see me in that dress. Silas an' I have been married so long,' she says, 'that I often wonder if I seem like a person to him at all. But in that dress from the city, I think I would.'

"We was each an' all ready to cry, an' I dunno but we would hev done it--though we was all ready to serve, too: coffee made, potatoes pipin' hot, veal an' lamb het up an' smellin' rich, chicken soup steamin', an' all. But just that very minute we heard some of 'em comin' in the hall--an' the one 'ready' conquered the other 'ready,' like it will, an' we all made a rush, part curious an' part nerves, to peek through the little servin' window from the kitchen.

"_What_ do you think we saw? It was the automobile folks, hungry an' got there first. In they'd come, women laughin', men jokin', all makin' a lark out o' the whole thing. An' if the women wasn't, every last one of 'em, wearin'--not the clothes they hed come in, but light pink an' light blue an' white an' flowered things, an' all like that.

"Mis' Hubbelthwait burst in on us while we was lookin'. 'They hed things in their trunk at the back o' the automobile,' says she. 'They says they wanted to floss up for dinner, an' floss up they hev. They look like Lyddy's fashion sheets, one an' all.'

"At that Mis' Sykes, a-ceasin' to peek, she drops her tray on the bare floor an' begun untyin' her apron. 'Quick!' she raps out, 'Mis' Hubbelthwait, you go an' set 'em down. An' every one o' you--into them togs of ours! Here's the chance to wear 'em--here an' _now_,' she says, 'an' leave them folks see we know how to do things here in Friendship Village as good as the best.'

"Well, bein' as she had rented the dress, an' three dollars hed to be paid out anyhow, an' bein' as she was president, an' bein' as we was all hankerin' in our hearts, we didn't need much urgin'. We slammed the servin' window shut an' set chairs against both doors, an' we whisked out of our regular dresses like wild.

"'Oh, land--my land, the sleeves--the sleeves ain't in mine!' says Mis' Toplady, sort o' glazed, an' speakin' in a wail. But we encouraged her up to pin 'em in, which she done, an' it couldn't be told from stitches. Poor Mame Holcomb's collar that wasn't on yet we turned in for her V-shape, so's her dress was low, like the best. An' Mis' Uppers, that was seasonin' the chicken soup like none of us could, her we took turns in dressin' in her green. An' I'd got into my spare-room curtains, somehow, just as Mis' Hubbelthwait come shoving at that door.

"'The men--the men!' says she, painful. 'They're all out here--Silas an' Timothy an' Eppleby an' all. They've all heard about it--the automobiles went to the post-office for their mail, an' Silas told 'em enjoyable about Threat, an' the automobiles told him where they was goin' to eat. An' they've come, thinkin' they's enough for all, an' they're out here now.'

"Mis' Toplady groaned a little, agonized an' stifled, but rill firm. 'Tell 'em, then,' says she, 'to come back up here, like men, an' _help_.'

"Then we heard a little rustle, soft an' silky an' kind o' pink-soundin', an' we looked around, an' there, from where she had been dressin' herself over behind the kitchen boiler all alone, Mis' Postmaster Sykes stepped out. My land, if she wasn't in a white dress, a little low in the neck, an' elbow sleeves, an' all covered solid as crust with glitterin' silver spangles.

"'Let's tell 'em ourselves,' she says, 'come on--all of you. Let's take out the first course, an' tell the men what we want 'em to do.'

"We made Mis' Sykes go first, carryin' high the tureen of chicken soup. An' on one side of her walked Mis' Timothy Toplady, in blue, with the wafers, an' on the other Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, in pink, with the radishes. An' neither one of 'em could hardly help lookin' at Mis' Sykes's dress all the way out. An' back of 'em went the rest o' the ladies, all in pink an' blue an' white an' pale green nun's veilin' that they'd made, an' carryin' the water-pitchers an' ice an' celery an' like that. An' me, I hung back in the kitchen watchin' an' lovin' 'em every one--an' almost lovin' Timothy Toplady an' Silas Sykes an' Eppleby when they looked on an' saw.

"Mis' Sykes set the soup down in front o' the merry-seemin' man for him to serve it. An' then she crossed over an' spoke to Silas, an' swep' up ahead of him in that spangly dress, the other ladies followin' an' noddin' bright when they passed the men, an' motionin' 'em toward the back o' the hall. An' back the men all come into the kitchen, followin' as they was asked to do, an' orderly through bein' dazed. Silas an' Timothy an' Eppleby was first, an' Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Toplady an' Mame went up to 'em together.

"I'll never forget that minute. I thought the men was goin' to burst out characteristic an' the whole time be tart, an' I shut both doors an' the servin' window careful. An' instead o' that, them three men stood there just smilin' a little an lookin' surprised an' agreeable; an' the other husbands, either takin' the cue or feelin' the same, done likewise, too. An' when Mame Bliss says, sort o' tremblin'--Eppleby bein' the gentlest husband in Friendship Village, an' known to be: 'How do you like us, Eppleby?' Eppleby just nods an' wrinkles up his eyes an' smiles at her, like he meant lots more. An' he says, 'Why didn't you never wear that dress before, Mame?'

"An' 'Well, Timothy?' says Mis' Toplady, sort o' masterful, an' fully expectin' to hev to master. But Timothy Toplady, he just rubs his hands an' looks at her sort o' wonderin', an' he says, 'Blisterin' Benson, you look as good as the city folks, Amandy--all light, an' loose made, an' stylish--'

"But Silas Sykes, he just stood lookin' at his wife an' lookin'. Of course she _did_ hev the advantage, bein' her spangles shone so. An' Silas looked at her an' looked, just as if her bein' his wife didn't make him admire her any the less. An' Mis' Sykes, she was rill pink an' pleased an' breathless, an' I guess she could see she seemed like a person to Silas, the way she'd wanted to.

"It all went off splendid. The men stayed an' dished in the kitchen an' helped carry away from the tables--the forty-eight dollars completin' their respect--an' we ladies done the servin'. An' I tell you, we served 'em with an air, 'count o' bein' well dressed, like they was, an' knowin' it. An' we knew the automobile folks appreciated it--we could tell by the way they kep' lookin' at us. But of course we all understood Mis' Sykes looked the best, an' we let her do all the most prominent things--bringin' in the first dish of everything an' like that, so's they could hev a good look.

"When it was over, the merry-seemin' man stood up an' made a little speech o' thanks, rill courteous an' sweet, an' like he knew how to act. An' when he was through we, one an' all, nudged Mis' Sykes to reply, an' she done so, the two tables listenin', an' the Sodality standin' in between, an' the Sodality's husbands crowdin' in both kitchen doors to listen.

"Mis' Sykes says, rill dignified, an' the light catchin' in her spangles: 'We're all very much obliged, I'm sure, for our forty-eight dollars clear. An' we think perhaps you'd like to know what the money is goin' toward. It's goin',' she says, 'towards the pavin' of the main street of our little city.'

"Silas Sykes was lookin' out the servin' window like it was a box. 'What's that?' says he, more of him comin' out of the window, 'what's _that_ you say?'

"An' they was a little wave o' moves an' murmurs all around him like when somethin' is goin' to happen an' nobody knows what; an' I know the Sodality caught its breath, for, as Mis' Toplady always says, the dear land knows what men _will_ do.

"With that up springs the merry-seemin' man, his face all beamin', an' he says loud an' clear an' drowndin' out everything else: 'Hear, hear! Likewise, here an' now. I move that we as one man, an' that man's automobile having lately come up the main street of Friendship Village--do ourself contribute to this most worthy end. Get to work,' says he. 'Think civic thoughts!'

"He slid the last roll off its plate, an' he laid somethin' in paper money on it, an' he started it down the table. An' every man of 'em done as he done. An' I tell you, when we see Mis' Hubbelthwait's bread plate pilin' with bills, an' knew what it was for, we couldn't help--the whole Sodality couldn't help--steppin' forwards, close to the table, an' standin' there an' holdin' our breaths. An' the men, back there in the kitchen, they hushed up when they see the money, an' they kep' hushed. Land, land, it was a great minute! I like to think about it.

"An' when the plate come back to the merry-seemin' man, he took it an' he come over towards us with it in his hand, an' we nudged Mis' Sykes to take the money. An' she just lifted up the glitter part of her skirt an' spread it out an' he dropped the whole rustlin' heap on to the spangles. An' the rest of us all clapped our hands, hard as we could, an' right while we was doin' it we heard somethin' else--deeper an' more manly than us. An' there was the men streamin' out o' the kitchen doors, an' Silas Sykes high in the servin' window--an' every one of 'em was clappin', too.

"I tell you, we was glad an' grateful. An' we was grateful, too, when afterwards they was plenty enough supper left for the men-folks. An' when we all set down together around that table, Mis' Sykes at the head an' the plate o' bills for a centrepiece, Mis' Toplady leaned back, hot an' tired, an' seein' if both her sleeves was still pinned in place, an' she says what we was all thinkin':--

"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'we can pave streets an' dress in the light shades even if we ain't young, like the run o' the fashion-plates. Ain't it like comin' to life again?' she says."

XI

UNDERN

I have a guest who is the best of the three kinds of welcome guests. Of these some are like a new rug which, however fine and unobtrusive it be, at first changes the character of your room so that when you enter you are less conscious of the room than of the rug. Some guests are like flowers on the table, leaving the room as it was save for their sweet, novel presence. And some guests are like a prized new book, unread, from which you simply cannot keep away. Of these last is my guest whom my neighbour calls the New Lady.

My neighbour and Elfa and Miggy and Little Child and I have all been busy preparing for her. Elfa has an almost pathetic fondness for "company,"--I think it is that she leads such a lonely life in the little kitchen-prison that she welcomes even the companionship of more-voices-in-the-next-room. I have tried to do what I can for Elfa, but you never help people very much when you only try to do what you can. It must lie nearer the heart than that. And I perfectly understand that the magazines and trifles of finery which I give to her, and the flowers I set on the kitchen clock shelf, and the talks which, since my neighbour's unconscious rebuke, I have contrived with her, are about as effectual as any merely ameliorative means of dealing with a social malady. For Elfa is suffering from a distinct form of the social malady, and not being able to fathom it, she knows merely that she is lonely. So she has borrowed fellowship from her anticipation of my guest and of those who next week will come down from the town; and I know, though she does not know, that her jars of fresh-fried cakes and cookies, her fine brown bread and her bowl of salad-dressing, are her utmost expression of longing to adjust the social balance and give to herself companionship, even a kind of household.

Little Child to-day came, bringing me a few first sweet peas and Bless-your-Heart, Bless-your-Heart being her kitten, and as nearly pink as a cat can be and be still a cat.

"To lay in the New Lady's room," she remarked, bestowing these things impartially upon me.

Later, my neighbour came across the lawns with a plate of currant tarts and a quarter of a jelly cake.

"Here," she said, "I don't know whether you like tarts or not. They're more for children, I always think. I always bake 'em, and the little round child fried cakes, too, and I put frosting faces on the cookies, and such things. It makes my husband and I seem more like a family," she explained, "and that's why I always set the dining-room table. As long as we ain't any little folks running around, I always tell him that him and I would be eating meat and potatoes on the kitchen drop-leaf like savages if I didn't pretend there was more of us, and bake up for 'em."

Miggy alone does not take wholly kindly to the New Lady idea, though I assure her that our mornings are to remain undisturbed.

"Of course," she observed, while in the New Lady's honour she gathered up strewn papers, "I know I'll like her because she's your friend. But I don't know what folks want to visit for. Don't you s'pose that's why the angels don't come back--because they know everything, and they know what a lot of extra work they'd make us?"

In Miggy the tribal sense seems to have run itself out. Of the sanctity of the individual she discerns much; but of the wider sanctities she has no clear knowledge. Most relationships she seems to regard, like the love of Peter, as "drawbacks," save only her indefinite consciousness of that one who is "not quite her sister"--the little vague Margaret. And this, I think, will be the leaven. Perhaps it is the universal leaven, this consciousness.

I was glad that the New Lady was to arrive in the afternoon. Sometimes I think that the village afternoon is the best time of all. It is no wonder that they used to call that time "undern." If they had not done so, the word must have grown of its own will--perhaps it did come to life with no past, an immaculate thing, so like its meaning that it could not help being here among us. I know very well that Sir John Mandeville and others used "undern" to mean the third hour, or about nine in the morning, but that may have been because at first not every one recognized the word. Many a fairy thing wanders for a long time on earth, patiently putting up with other connotations than its own. Opportunism, the subconscious mind, personality, evolution itself,--all these are still seeking their full incarnations in idea. No wonder "undern" was forced for a long while to mean morning. But nine o'clock in the morning! How, after all, was that possible? You have only to say it over--undern, undern, undern,--to be heavenly drowsy with summer afternoon. The north of England recognized this at last and put the word where it belongs; and I have, too, the authority of the lady of Golden Wing:--

"Undern cometh after noon,
Golden Wings will be here soon...."

One can hardly stop saying that, once one is started. I should like to go on with it all down the page.

I was thinking of these things as I drove to the station alone to meet the New Lady. The time had taken on for me that pleasant, unlike-itself aspect which time bears in any mild excitement, so that if in the moment of reading a particularly charming letter one can remember to glance up and look the room in the face, one may catch its _other_ expression, the expression which it has when one is not looking. So now I caught this look in the village and an air of Something-different-is-going-to-happen, such as we experience on holidays. Next week, when the New Lady's friends come down to us for two days, I dare say, if I can remember to look for it, that the village will have another expression still. Yet there will be the same quiet undern--though for me it is never a commonplace time. Indeed, usually I am in the most delighted embarrassment how to spend it. In the mornings now--Miggy being willing--I work, morning in the true democracy being the work time; afternoon the time for recreation and the more specialized forms of service _and_ a little rest; the evening for delight, including the delight of others. Not every one in the village accepts my afternoon and evening classifications. I am constantly coming on people making preserves after mid-day, and if I see a light in a kitchen window after nine at night I know that somebody is ironing in the cool of the day. But usually my division of time is the general division, save that--as in the true democracy--service is not always recognized as service. Our afternoons may be spent in cutting carpet rags, or in hemming linen, or sewing articles for an imminent bazaar, and this is likely to be denominated "gettin' through little odd jobs," and accounted in a measure a self-indulgence. And if evening delight takes the form of gardening and later a flame of nasturtiums or dahlias is carried to a friend, nobody dreams that this is not a pleasant self-indulgence too, and it is so regarded. With these things true is it not as if a certain hope abroad in the world gave news of itself?

Near the Pump pasture I came on Nicholas Moor--who rings the Catholic bell and is interested in celluloid--and who my neighbour had told me would doubtless come to me, bringing his little sheaf of "writin's." I had not yet met him, though I had seen in the daily paper a vagrant poem or two over his name--I remember a helpless lyric which made me think of a gorgeous green and gold beetle lying on its back, unable to recover its legs, but for all that flashing certain isolated iridescent colours. My heart ached for Nicholas, and when I saw him now going across the pasture his loneliness was like a gap in things, one of the places where two world-edges do not quite meet. There are so many pleasant ways to do and the boy seemed to know how to do none of them. How can he be lonely in the village? For myself, if I decide of an afternoon to take my work and pay a visit, I am in a pleasant quandary as to which way to turn. If I go to the west end of Daphne Street, there are at least five families among whom to choose, the other four of whom will wonder why I did not come to them. Think of knowing five families in two blocks who would welcome one's coming and even feel a little flattering bitterness if one chose the other four! If I take a cross street, I am in the same difficulty. And if I wish to go to the house of one of my neighbours, my motives clash so seriously that I often sit on my porch and call to whoever chances to be in sight to come to me. Do you wonder that, in town, the moment I open my address book I feel smothered? I recover and enjoy town as much as anybody, but sometimes in a stuffy coupé, hurrying to get a half-dozen of the pleasantest calls "done," I surprise a companion by saying: would now that it were undern on Daphne Street!

I told this to the New Lady as we drove from the station. The New Lady is an exquisite little Someone, so little that it is as if she had been drawn quickly, in a single delicate curving line, and then left, lest another stroke should change her. She understands the things that I say in the way that I mean them; she is the way that you always think the people whom you meet are going to be, though they so seldom are; like May, she is expectation come alive. What she says fits in all the crannies of what you did not say and have always known, or else have never thought of before and now never can forget. She laughs when she should laugh, and never, never when somebody else should laugh alone. When you tell her that you have walked eight miles and back, she says "_And back!_" with just the proper intonation of homage. She never tells a story upon the heels of your own little jest so swiftly that it cannot triumphantly escape. When you try to tell her something that you have not quite worked out, she nods a little and you see that she meant it before you did. She enters every moment by its gate and not over its wall, though she frequently wings her way in instead of walking. Also, she is good to look at and her gowns are as meet as the clouds to the sky--and no less distracting than the clouds are at their very best. There is no possible excuse for my saying so much about her, but I like to talk of her. And I like to talk to her as I did when we left the station and I was rambling on about undern.

The New Lady looked about with a breath of content.

"No wonder," she said, "you like to pretend Birthday, in New York."

It is true that when I am there where, next to the village, I like best to live, I am fond of this pretence. It is like the children's game of "Choosing" before shop windows, only it is extensive and not, as cream puffs and dolls and crumpets in the windows dictate to the children, purely intensive. Seeing this man and that woman in the subway or the tea-room or the café or the car, I find myself wondering if it is by any chance their birthdays; and if it is, I am always wishing to deal out poor little gifts at which I fancy they would hardly look. To the lithe idle blond woman, elbows on table; to the heavy-lidded, engagement-burdened gentlewoman; to the busy, high-eyebrowed man in a cab; to the tired, slow-winking gentleman in his motor; to the thick-handed labourer hanging to his strap, I find myself longing to distribute these gifts: a breakfast on our screened-in porch in the village, with morning-glories on the table; a full-throated call of my oriole--a June call, not the isolated reminiscent call of August; an hour of watering the lawn while robins try to bathe in the spray; a morning of pouring melted paraffin on the crimson tops of moulds of currant jelly; a yellow afternoon of going with me to "take my work and stay for supper." I dare say that none of my chosen beneficiaries would accept; but if I could pop from a magic purse a crop of caps and fit folk, willy nilly, I wonder if afterward, even if they remembered nothing of what had occurred, they might not find life a little different.

"If it was my birthday," said the New Lady, "I would choose to be driven straight away through that meadow, as if I had on wings."

That is the way she is, the New Lady. Lacking wings of her own she gives them to many a situation. Straightway I drove down into the Pump pasture and across it, springy soil and circus-trodden turf and mullein stalks and ten-inch high oak trees.

"Let's let down the bars," said the New Lady, "and drive into that next meadow. If it _is_ a sea, as it looks, it will be glad of your company."

It was not a sea, for as we drove through the lush grass the yellow and purple people of the meadow came marching to meet us, as dignified as garden flowers, save that you knew, all the time, that wild hearts were beating beneath the rainbow tassels. It was a meadow with things to say, but with finger on lip--as a meadow should be and as a spirit must be. The meadow seemed to wish to say: "It is all very pleasant for you there in the village to admire one another's wings, but the real romance is in the flight." I wondered if it were not so that it had happened--that one day a part of the village had got tired waiting, and had broken off and become something free, of which the meadow was the body and its secret was the spirit. But then the presence of the New Lady always sets me wondering things like this.

"Why," I said to her suddenly, "spring has gone! I wonder how that happened. I have been waiting really to get hold of spring, and here it is June."

"June-and-a-half," assented the New Lady, and touched the lines so that we came to a standstill in the shade of a cottonwood.

"This way," she said--and added softly, as one who would not revive a sadness, her own idea of the matter.

"Where did Spring die? I did not hear her go
Down the soft lane she painted. All flower still
She moved among her emblems on the hill
Touching away their burden of old snow.
Was it on some great down where long winds flow
That the wild spirit of Spring went out to fill
The eyes of Summer? Did a daffodil
Lift the pale urn remote where she lies low?

"Oh, not as other moments did she die,
That woman-season, outlined like a rose.
Before the banner of Autumn's scarlet bough
The Summer fell; and Winter, with a cry,
Wed with March wind. Spring did not die like those;
But vaguely, as if Love had prompted, 'Now.'"

The New Lady's theory does not agree with that of Little Child. I am in doubt which to accept. But I like to think about both.

And when the New Lady had said the faint requiem, we drove on again and the next moment had almost run down Nicholas Moor, lying face downward in the lush grass.

I recognized him at once, but of course the New Lady did not do so, and she leaned from the cart, thoroughly alarmed at the boy's posture and, as he looked up, at his pallor.

"Oh, what is the matter?" she cried, and her voice was so heavenly pitying that one would have been willing to have most things the matter only to hear her.

Nicholas Moor scrambled awkwardly to his feet, and stood abashed, looking as strangely detached from the moment as if he had fallen from a frame and left the rest of the picture behind.

"Nothing. I just like to be here," he was surprised into saying.

The New Lady sat down and smiled. And her smile was even more captivating than had been her late alarm.

"So do I," she told him heartily. "So do I. What do you like about it, _best_?"

I do not think that any one had ever before spoken to Nicholas so simply, and he answered, chord for chord.

"I guess--I guess I like it just on account of its being the way it is," he said.

"That is a very, very nice reason," the New Lady commented. "Again, so do I."

We left him, I remember, looking about as if he were seeing it all for the first time.

As we drove away I told my New Lady about Nicholas, and she looked along her own thought and shook her head.

"There must be hundreds of them," she said, "and some are poets. But most of them are only lonesome. I wonder which Nicholas is?"

We lingered out-of-doors as long as we might, because the touch of the outdoors was so companioning that to go indoors was a distinct good-by. Is it so with you that some Days, be they never so sunny, yet walk with you in a definite reserve and seem to be looking somewhere else; while other Days come to you like another way of being yourself and will not let you go? I know that some will put it down to mood and not to the Day at all; but, do what I will, I cannot credit this.

It was after five o'clock when we drove into the village, and all Daphne Street was watering its lawns. Of those who were watering some pretended not to see us, but I understood that this they accounted the etiquette due to a new arrival. Some bowed with an excess of cordiality, and this I understood to be the pleasant thought that they would show my guest how friendly we all are. And some laid down the hose and came to the sidewalk's edge to meet the New Lady then and there.

Of these were Mis' Postmaster Sykes an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss and my neighbour.

"Pleased to meet you, I'm sure," Mis' Postmaster Sykes said graciously to the New Lady. "I must say it seems good to see a strange face now an' then. I s'pose you feel all travel dust an' mussed up?"

And at Mis' Holcomb's hitching post:--

"Pleased to meet you," said Mis' Holcomb. "I was saying to Eppleby that I wondered if you'd come. Eppleby says, 'I donno, but like enough they've went for a ride somewheres.' Lovely day, ain't it? Been to the cemetery?"

I said that we had not been there yet, and,

"Since it's kept up it makes a real nice thing to show folks," Mis' Holcomb said. "I s'pose you wouldn't come inside for a bite of supper, would you?"

My neighbour--bless her!--had on a black wool dress to do honour to my guest.

"It's nice for the neighbours to see company comin' and goin'," she said cordially, "though of course we don't have any of the extra work. But I guess everybody likes extra work of _this_ kind."

And as we drove away:--

"Good-by," she cried, "I hope you'll have a good night's rest and a good breakfast."

When I looked at the New Lady I saw her eyes ever so slightly misted.

"Spring didn't die," she said--as Little Child had said. "Spring knew how to keep alive. It got down in these people's hearts."

Yes, the New Lady is a wholly satisfactory guest. She even pretended not to notice Peter's father who, as we alighted, came singing by, and bowed to us, his barren old face lighted with a smile, as a vacant room is lighted, revealing the waste. If I had some one staying with me who had smiled at Peter's father or--at any one, or who did not see the village as it is, I think I should be tempted to do as my neighbour did to me that morning: pick three carnation pinks for her and watch her go away.

XII

THE WAY THE WORLD IS

Was it not inevitable that poor, lonely Nicholas Moor should have sought out my New Lady? A night or two after her arrival he saw her again, at a supper in the church "lecture-room." He was bringing in a great freezer of ice-cream and when she greeted him he had all but dropped the freezer. Then a certain, big obvious deacon whose garden adjoined my own had come importantly and snatched the burden away, and the boy had stood, shamefast, trying to say something; but his face was lighted as at a summons. So the New Lady had divined his tragedy, the loneliness which his shyness masked as some constant plight of confusion.

"Come and see me sometime," she had impulsively bidden him. "Do you know where I am staying?"

Did he know that! Since he had seen her in the meadow had he known anything else? And after some days of hard trying he came one night, arriving within the dusk as behind a wall. Even in the twilight, when he was once under the poplars, he did not know what way to look. To seem to look straight along the road was unnatural. To seem to look out across the opposite fields was hypocrisy. To look at the house which held the New Lady was unthinkable. So, as he went in at the gate and up the fern-bordered walk, he examined the back of his hand--near, and then a little farther away. As he reached the steps he was absorbedly studying his thumb.

From a place of soft light, shed through a pink box shade on the table, and of scattered willow chairs and the big leaves of plants, the New Lady came toward him.

"You did come!" she said. "I thought you wouldn't, really."

With the utmost effort Nicholas detached one hand from his hat brim and gave it her. From head to foot he was conscious, not of the touch of her hand, little and soft, but of the bigness and coarseness of his own hand.

"I hated to come like everything," he said.

At this of course she laughed, and she went back to her willow chair and motioned him to his. He got upon it, crimson and wretched.

"As much as that!" she observed.

"You know I wanted to come awfully, too," he modified it, "but I dreaded it--like sixty. I--I can't explain...." he stumbled.

"Don't," said the New Lady, lightly, and took pity on him and rang a little bell.

She thought again how fine and distinguished he was, as he had seemed to her on the day when she had first spoken to him. He sat staring at her, trying to realize that he was on the veranda with her, hearing the sound of the little bell she had rung. He had wanted something like this, wistfully, passionately. Miserable as he was, he rested in the moment as within arms. And the time seemed distilled in that little silver bell-sound and the intimacy of waiting with her for some one to come.

He knew that some one with a light footfall did come to the veranda. He heard the New Lady call her Elfa. But he saw only her hands, plump and capable and shaped like his own, moving among the glasses. After which his whole being became absorbed in creditably receiving the tall, cool tumbler on the tray which the capable hands held out to him. A period of suspended intelligence ensued, until he set the empty glass on the table. Then the little maid had gone, and the New Lady, sipping her own glass, was talking to him.

"You were lying on the grass that day," she said, "as if you understood grass. Not many do understand about grass, and almost nobody understands the country. People say, 'Come, let us go into the country,' and when they get there is it the country they want at all? No, it is the country sports, the country home,--everything but the real country. They play match games. They make expeditions, climb things in a stated time, put in a day at a stated place. I often think that they must go home leaving the country aghast that they could have come and gone and paid so little heed to it. Presently we are going to have some charming people out here who will do the same thing."

So she talked, asking him nothing, even her eyes leaving him free. It seemed to him, tense and alert and ill at ease as he listened, that he, too, was talking to her. From the pressing practicalities, the self-important deacon, the people who did not trouble to talk to him, his world abruptly escaped, and in that world he walked, an escaped thing too, forgetful even of the little roll of verses which he had dared to bring.

Yet when she paused, he looked out at her shrinkingly from under his need to reply. He did not look at her face, but he looked at her hands, so little that each time he saw them they were a new surprise and alien to him. He looked away from them to the friendliness of her smile. And when he heard himself saying detached, irrelevant things, he again fell to studying one of his own hands, big and coarse and brown. Oh, he thought, the difference between her and him was so hopelessly the difference in their hands.

In an absurdly short time the need to be gone was upon him; but of this he could not speak, and he sat half unconscious of what she was saying, because of his groping for the means to get away. Clearly, he must not interrupt her to say that he must go. Neither could he reply to what she said by announcing his intention. And yet when he answered what she said, straightway her exquisite voice went on with its speech to him. How, he wondered, does anybody ever get away from anywhere? If only something would happen, so that he could slip within it as within doors, and take his leave.

Something did happen. By way of the garden, and so to a side door, there arrived those whose garden adjoined,--the big, obvious, self-important deacon, and behind him Three Light Gowns. The little maid Elfa came showing them through the house, in the pleasant custom of the village. And when the New Lady, with pretty, expected murmurings, rose to meet them, Nicholas got to his feet confronting the crisis of saying good-by, and the moment closed upon him like a vise. He heard his voice falter among the other voices, he saw himself under the necessity to take her hand and the deacon's hand, and the hands, so to speak, of the Three Light Gowns; and this he did as in a kind of unpractised bewildering minuet.

And then he found his eyes on a level with eyes that he had not seen before--blue eyes, gentle, watching, wide--and a fresh, friendly little face under soft hair. It was Elfa, taking away the empty glasses. And the boy, in his dire need to ease the instant, abruptly and inexplicably held out his hand to her too. She blushed, sent a frightened look to the New Lady, and took the hand in hers that was plump and capable, with its strong, round wrist. And the little maid, being now in an embarrassment like his own, the two hands clung for a moment, as if they had each the need.

"Good night," she said, trembling.

"Good night," said the New Lady, very gently.

"Oh, _good night_!" burst from the boy as he fled away.

It was Elfa who admitted him at his next coming. The screened porch was once more in soft light from the square rose shade, and the place had the usual pleasant, haunted air of the settings of potentialities. As if potentiality were a gift of enchantment to human folk.