Chapter XI: The Homecoming 275 (7)

And all at once everybody kind of got up and folded their work, and patted somebody on the elbow; and I see we was feeling a good deal the way we had in the rig the night before; and it come to me, kind of big and dim, that with the job we was doing, we couldn’t possibly nip out at one another, like we would in just regular society. And all I done was to sing out, “Your supper’s ready and the toast’s on the table.” And we all went out, lion and lamb, and helped to set Donnie up on my ironing-stool for a high chair. And it made an awful pleasant few minutes.

We met three afternoons all together to sew for the Toll Gate House. And when we begun to plan to take the things to her, and get the roof mended, we realized we didn’t know her name.

“Ain’t that kind of nice?” says Mis’ Pettibone, dreamy. “And here we’re just as interested in her as if her father’d been our butcher, or something that’d make a real tie.”

“How shall we give these things to her?” says Mis’ Puppy. “Don’t let’s us let it be nasty, same as charity is.”

And it was Mis’ Lockmeyer, her of all the folks under the canopy, that set forward on the edge of her chair and thought of the thing to do. “Ladies,” she says, “there’s one more pair of curtains to hem. Why don’t we get her to one of our houses to hem ’em, and make her spend the day? And get her roof fixed and her ceiling mended and this truck in, and let it all be there when she gets home?”

“That’s what we _will_ do,” says we, with one set of common eyebrows expressing our intention.

We decided that I’d be the one to ask her down, being I was the one that first went in her house, and similar. She said she’d come ready enough, and bring the little girl; and it made it real convenient, because Mr. Dombledon had gone off on one of his two-days tramps and taken Donnie with him. And the living minute I’d started her in sewing on the things we’d saved for her to sew, and set the little girl to playing with some of the things I’d fixed up for Donnie, I was out of the house and making for the Toll Gate.

Land, land, the things we’d found we could spare and that we’d piled in that house--stuff that we hadn’t known we had and that we couldn’t miss if we’d tried, but had hung on to sole and only because we were deformed into economizing that way. Honestly, I believe more folks economizes by keeping old truck around than is extravagant by throwing new stuff away. I don’t stand up for either, but I well know which has the most germs in. What we’d sent we’d cleaned thorough. And it was clean as wax there--but the roof was being mended and the ceiling was being fixed and carpets were going down. And when we got done with it, I tell you that little house looked as cozy as a Pullman car--and I don’t know anything whatever that looks cozier after you’ve set up in the day coach all night. And lions and lambs laying down together on swords and plow-shares were nothing to the way we worked together all day long. We had to jump to keep out of the way of being “been-nice” to so’s to get a chance to be nice ourselves. I liked to be there. I like to think about it since.

At five o’clock, old Mis’ Lockmeyer, dead-tuckered, was standing in the door with a corner of her apron caught up in the band, when Jem drove me away.

“Leave her come out any time now,” she says, “we’re ready for her. Mebbe she’ll be mad but, land--even if she is, I can’t be sorry we done it. It’s been as enjoyable,” she says, “as anything I’ve ever done.”

I looked back at her, and at all the other women back of her and in the windows, and at Mis’ Pettibone and Mis’ Puppy leaning on the same sill, and I nodded; and Mis’ Puppy--well, it was faint and ladylike, but just the same the look that we give each other was far, far more than a squint, and it was bordering on, and right up to, a regular wink.

When I come in sight of my house I was so busy thinking how she’d like hers that I didn’t see for a minute what my front yard had in it. And when I did see, my heart kind of went _plap!_--but a pleasant plap. My front yard looked so exactly the way I’d used to dream of it looking, and it never had. It was little and neat and green, with flowers and a white door-step as usual, but out in front was a little girl, with my clothes-rope doubled up for lines, and she was driving round and round the pansy bed a little boy. Just before I got to the gate, and before they saw me, they dropped the rope and went off around the house hand in hand, like they’d known each other all their days.

“I wish everybody was like that,” thinks I, and went in my front door and through to the dining-room.

And there, sitting on my couch with their arms around each other, was the Toll Gate House lady and my roomer, Mr. Dombledon.

“Well,” says I. “Sudden--but real friendly!”

I see I had to say something, for they didn’t seem real capable of it. And besides, I’d begun to suspicion, deep in the part of the heart that ain’t never surprised at love anywheres.

Mr. Dombledon come over to me--and now his eyes were like the sitting-room with all the curtains up.

“Oh, ma’am!” he says, “how did you know? How did you find out?”

“Know?” I says. “I know less all the time. And I ain’t found out yet. I’m a-waiting for you to tell me.”

“We’re each other’s wife and husband,” says he, neat but shy.

They told me as well as they could, now together, now separate, now both keeping still. I made it out more by means of the air than by means of words, anyhow. But this thing that he said came home to me then, and it’s never left me since:

“Nothin’ come between us,” he says. “No great trouble or sorrow or like that, same as some. It was just every day that wore us out. We got to snappin’ and snarlin’--like you do. We done it at everything--whenever either of us opened our heads, the other one took ’em up on it. We done it because we was tired. And we done it because we didn’t have much to do with--nor no real home. And we done it for no reason too, I guess ... an’ that come to be the oftenest of all. It got hold of us. That was what ailed me that day at your meeting--I’d always run from it now same as I would from the pest. It _is_ the pest.... Well, finally I went off with Donnie and left Pearl with her. Then when I found out she’d come here, I come here too, a-purpose. But I couldn’t go and face her, even then. And it’s been six months. And now we both know.”

I stood there looking at those two little people, shabby and or’nary-seeming; and I could have said something right past the lump in my throat if only I could of thought how to put it. But I couldn’t--like you can’t. Only--I knew.

“Where is he?” I heard her saying. “Where is he?”

I knew who she meant, and I went and got him. He come running in with his swing-board on him for a breast-plate. And his mother never said a word--she just gathered him up, swing-board and all, and kissed him at the back of his neck, there in the hollow that had been a-waiting for her.

“She made me cookies wiv buttins on!” he give out, for my biography. And it was enough for me.

Mr. Dombledon had his little girl’s hands in his, swinging her arms back and forth, and never saying a word.

Pretty soon I sent ’em off down the road, Donnie and Pearl ahead, they two behind, carrying my ex-roomer’s things. And I knew how, at the Toll Gate House, everything was warm and bright and furnished and _suppered_, waiting for them. And life was nice.

I went and stood out on my porch, looking off acrost my wood lot, thinking. I was thinking about the two of them, and about us women. And I knew I’d been showed the little bit of an edge to something that’s so small it don’t seem like anything, and so sordid we won’t any of us let on it comes near us, and so big it reaches all over the world.

HUMAN

Pretty soon the new-old Christmas will be here. I donno but it’s here now. Here in the village we’ve give out time and again that our Christmas isn’t going to be just trading (not many of us can call it “shopping” yet without stopping to think, any more than we can say “maid” for hired girl, real easy) and just an exchange of useless gifts. So in the “new” way, little by little the old Christmas is being uncovered from under the store-keepers’ Christmas. Till at last we shall have the Christmas of the child in the manger and not of the three kings.

And then we’re going to look back on the romance that Christmas had through the long time when meanings have measured themselves commercial. Just as we look back now on the romance of chivalry. And we’ll remember all the kindness and the humor of the time that’ll be outgrown--even though we wouldn’t have the time come back when we looked for Christmas in things--things--things ... and sometimes found it there.

The week before Christmas, the Friendship Village post-office, near closing, is regular Bedlam. We all stand in line, with our presents done up, while the man at the window weighs everybody else’s, and we almost drop in our tracks. And our manners, times like this, is that we never get out of our place for no one. Not for no one! Only--once we did.

Two nights before Christmas that year I got my next-to-the-last three packages ready and stepped into the post-office with ’em about half-past seven. And at the post-office door I met Mis’ Holcomb-that-was-Mame Bliss. She had a work-bag and a shopping-bag and a suit-case, all of ’em bulging full.

“My land!” I says, “you ain’t going to mail all them?”

“I am, too,” she says, “and I’m that thankful I’m through, and my back aches that hard, I could cry. Twenty-one,” she says, grim, “twenty-one presents I’ve got made out of thought and elbow work, and mighty little money, all ready to mail on time. Now,” says she, “I can breathe.”

“Kin I carry your satchel, Mis’ Holcomb?” says somebody.

We looked down, and there’s little Stubby Mosher, that’s seven, and not much else to say about him. He ain’t no father, nor not much of any brother, except a no-account one in the city; and his mother has just been sent to the Wooster Hospital by the Cemetery Improvement Sodality that is extending our work to include the sick. We’d persuaded her to go there by Stubby’s brother promising to send him to spend Christmas with her. And we were all feeling real tender toward Stubby, because we’d just heard that week that she wasn’t going to get well.

“Well, Stubby,” says Mis’ Holcomb, kind, “yes, I’ll be obliged for a lift, if not a lug. You well?” she asks.

“Yes’m,” says Stubby, acting green, like a boy will when you ask after his health.

He picked up her suit-case and moved over toward the line. It was an awful long line that night, that reached ’way around past the public desk. In ahead of us was ’most everybody we knew--Abigail Arnold and Mis’ Merriman and Libby Liberty and old rich Mis’ Wiswell with a bag of packages looking like they might be jewelry, every one. And every one of them was talking as hard as they could about the Christmas things they couldn’t get done.

“Might as well settle down for a good visit while we’re waiting,” I says to Mis’ Holcomb, and she made her eyebrows sympathize.

No sooner was we stood up, neat and in line, than in come three folks that was total strangers to me and to the village as well. One was a young girl around twenty, with eyes kind of laughing _at_ everything, dressed in blue, with ermine on her hat and an ermine muff as big as one of my spare-room pillows, and three big fresh pink roses on her coat. And one was a youngish fellow, some older than her, in a gray cap, and having no use of his eyes--being they were kept right close on the lady in blue. And the other, I judged, was her father--a nice, jolly, private Santa Claus, in a fur-lined coat. They were in a tearing hurry to get to the general-delivery window, but when they saw the line, and how there was only one window for mail and stamps and all, they fell in behind us, as nice as we was ourselves.

“Let me take you out and you wait in the car, Alison,” says the youngish man, anxious.

“Hadn’t you better, dear?” says her father, careful.

“Why, but I love this!” she says. “Isn’t it _quaint_?” And she laughed again.

Now, I hate that word _quaint_. So does Mis’ Holcomb. It always sounds to us like last year’s styles. So though her and I had been looking at the three strangers--that we saw were merely passing through in an automobile, like the whole country seems to--with some interest, we both turned our backs and went on visiting and listening to the rest.

“I’ve got three more to get presents for,” says Mis’ Merriman in that before-Christmas conversation that everybody takes a hand at, “and what to get them I do _not_ know. Don’t you ever get up a stump about presents?”

“Stump!” says Libby Liberty, “I live on a stump from the time I start till I stick on the last stamp.”

“I’ve got two more on my list,” Mis’ Wiswell says, worried, “and it don’t seem as if I could take another stitch nor buy another spoon, hat-pin _or_ paper-knife. But I know they’ll send me something, both of them.”

I stood looking at us, tired to death with what we’d been a-making, but sending ’em off with a real lot of love and satisfaction wrapped up in ’em, too. And I thought how we covered up Christmas so deep with work that we hardly ever had time to get at the real Christmas down underneath all the stitches. And yet, there we were, having dropped everything else that we were doing, just because it was Christmas week, and coming from all over town with little things we had made, and standing there in line to send ’em off to folks. And I thought of all the other folks in all the other post-offices in the world, doing the self-same thing that night. And I felt all kind of nice and glowing to think I was one of ’em. Only I did begin to wish we were enough civilized to get the glow some other way.

“I guess it’s going to take a long time,” says Mis’ Holcomb, patient. “Stubby, you needn’t wait if you’ve anything else to do.”

“Oh,” says Stubby, important, “I’ve got a present to mail.”

A present to mail! When Sodality had been feeding him for five weeks among us!

Mis’ Holcomb and I exchanged our next two glances.

“What is it, Stubby?” asks Mis’ Holcomb, that is some direct by nature and never denies herself at it.

He looked up kind of shy--he’s a nice little boy, when anybody has any time to pay any attention to him.

“It’s just this,” he said, and took it out from under his coat. It was about as big as a candy box, and he’d wrapped it up himself, and the string was so loose and the paper was so tore that they weren’t going to stay by each other past two stations.

“Mercy!” says Mis’ Holcomb, “leave me tie it up for you.”

She took it. And in order to tie it she had to untie it. And when she done that, what was in it come all untied. And she see, and we both of us see, what was in it. It was a great big pink rose, fresh and real, with a lot of soaking wet paper wrapped round the stem.

“Stubby Mosher!” says Mis’ Holcomb straight out, “where’d _you_ get this?”

He colored up. “I bought it to the greenhouse,” he says. “I’m a-goin’ to shovel paths till the first of March to pay for it. And they gimme one path ahead for postage.”

“Who you sending it to?” says Mis’ Holcomb, blunt--and I kind of wished she wouldn’t, because the folks right round us was beginning to listen.

“To mother,” says Stubby.

Mis’ Holcomb near dropped the box. “My land!” she said, “why didn’t you _take_ it to her? You’re goin’ to-morrow to spend Christmas with her, ain’t you?”

Stubby shook his head and swallowed some.

“I ain’t going,” he told her.

“Ain’t going!” Mis’ Holcomb says. “_Why_ ain’t you goin’, I’d like to know, when you was promised?”

“My brother wrote he can’t,” said Stubby. “He’s had some money to pay. He can’t send me. I----”

He stopped, and looked down on the floor as hard as ever he could, and swallowed like lightning.

“Well, but that’s how we got her to go there,” Mis’ Holcomb says. “We promised her you’d come.”

“My brother wrote he can’t.” Stubby said it over.

Mis’ Holcomb looked at me for just one minute. Then her thoughts took shape in her head, and out.

“How much money has Sodality got in the treasury?” she says to me.

“Forty-six cents,” says I, that’s treasurer and drove to death for a fund for us.

“How much is the fare to Wooster?”

“Three fifty-five each way,” says Stubby, ready, but hopeless.

“My land!” says Mis’ Holcomb, “they ain’t a woman in Sodality that can afford the seven dollars--nor a man in the town’ll see it like we do. And no time to raise nothing. And that poor woman off there....”

She stared out over the crowd, kind of wild.

The line was edging along up to the window, and still talking about it.

“...Elsie and Mame that I haven’t sent a thing to,” Mis’ Merriman was saying. “I just must get out and find something to-morrow, if it does get there late. But I’m sure I donno what....”

“...disappointed me last minute on two Irish crochet collars,” Mis’ Wiswell was holding forth, in her voice that talks like her vocal cords had gone flat, same as car-wheels.

“I’ve got company coming to-morrow, and I just simply will _have_ to let both presents go, if I stay awake all night about it, as stay awake I s’pose I shall.”

Mis’ Holcomb looked over at me steady for a minute, like she’d see a thing she couldn’t name. Then she kind of give it up, and went on tying Stubby’s package. And just then she see what he’d wrote for a Christmas card. It was on a piece of wrapping-paper, and it said:

TO MY MOTHER
I CANT COM
MERY CRISMAS
STUB

“_Merry Christmas!_” Mis’ Holcomb says over like she hadn’t any strength. Then all of a sudden she stood up.

“Stubby,” she says, “you run out a minute, will you? You run over to the grocery and wait for me there a minute--quick. I’ll see to your package.”

He went when she said that.

And swift as a flash, before I could think at all what she meant, Mis’ Holcomb laid Stubby’s present down by her suit-case, and wheeled around and whipped two packages out of her shopping-bag, and faced the line of Friendship Village folks drawn up there to the window, taking their turns.

“Everybody!” she says, loud enough so’s they all heard her, “I’ve got more Christmas presents than I need. I’ll auction off some of ’em--all hand-made--to anybody that’s short of presents. I’ll show ’em to you. Come here and look at ’em, and make a bid.”

They looked at her for a minute, perfectly blank; and she was beginning to undo one of ’em.... And then all of a sudden I see her plan, what it was; and I walked right over beside of her.

“Don’t you leave her undo ’em!” I calls out. “It’s for Stubby Mosher,” I says, “that can’t go, after all, to his mother in the Wooster Hospital, that’s going to die--count of his brother not sending him the money. She can’t get well--we know that since last week. They’s only forty-six cents in Sodality treasury. Let’s us buy Mis’ Holcomb’s presents that she’s made and is willing to auction off! Unsight-unseen let us buy ’em! I bid fifty cents.”

The line had kind of wavered and broke, and was looking away from itself towards us. The man at the window had stopped weighing and had his head close up, looking out.

Everybody was hushed dumb for a minute. Then it kind of got to Mis’ Wiswell--that’s had so much trouble that things ’most always get to her easy--and she says out:

“Oh, land! _Is it?_ Why, I bid seventy-five then.”

“Eighty!” says I, reckless, to egg her on.

Then Libby Liberty kind of come to, and bid ninety, though everybody knew the most she has is egg-money--and finally it, whatever it was, went to Mis’ Wiswell for a dollar.

“Is it a present would do for ladies?” she says, when she made her final bid. “I donno, though, as that matters. One dollar!”

Well, then Mis’ Holcomb up with another present, and Mis’ Merriman started that one, and though dazed a little yet--some folks daze so terrible easy if you go off an inch from their stamping-ground!--the rest of us, including Abigail Arnold that hadn’t ought to have bid at all, got that one up to another dollar, and it went to Mis’ Merriman for that. But the next package stuck at fifty cents--not from lack of willingness, I know, but from sheer lack of ways--and it was just going at that when I whispered to Mis’ Holcomb:

“What’s in this one?”

“Towel with crochet work set in each end and no initial,” she says.

“Really?” says a voice behind me.

And there was the young lady in blue, with the ermine and the roses. And I see all of a sudden that she didn’t look to be laughing at us at all, but her eyes were bright, and she was kind of flushed up, and it come to me that she would have bidded before, only she was sort of watching us--mebbe because she thought we were _quaint_. But I didn’t have time to bother with that thought much, not then.

“I’ll give two dollars for that,” she says.

“Done!” says Mis’ Holcomb, real auctioneer-like, and with her cheeks red, and her hat on one ear, and her hand going up and down. “Now this one--who’ll bid on this one?” says she, putting up another. “How much for this? How much----”

“How much is the fare to where he’s going?” says somebody else strange, and there was the youngish fellow speaking, that was with her with the roses.

“Seven-ten round trip to Wooster,” says Mis’ Holcomb, instant.

“Why, then, I bid three-ten for whatever you have there,” he says laughing.

But Mis’ Holcomb, instead of flaming up because now the whole money for Stubby’s fare was raised, just stood there looking at that youngish man, mournful all over her face.

“It’s a hand-embroidered dressing-sack,” she says melancholy. “You don’t never want that!”

“Yes--yes, I do,” he says, still laughing, “yes, I do. It’s a straight bid.”

“Oh, my land!” says Mis’ Holcomb, her voice slipping, “then we’ve got it. We’ve got it all right here!”

But while she was a-saying it, a big, deep voice boomed out all over her and the rest that was exclaiming.

“Ticket to where?” says the private-Santa-Claus-looking man in the fur coat.

“Wooster, this state,” says I, being Mis’ Holcomb was almost speechless.

“Well, now,” says the private Santa Claus, “don’t we go pretty close to Wooster? Where’s that map we wore out? Well, I know we go pretty close to Wooster. Why can’t we take your Master Stubby to Wooster in the car? We’re going on to-night--if we ever get to that general-delivery window,” he ends in a growl.

And _that_ was the time the line made way--the line that never moves for no one. And the Santa Claus man went up and got his mail.

And while he was a-doing it, I run out after Stubby, setting on a barrel in the grocery, happy with three cranberries they’d give him. And as I come back in the door with him, I see Mis’ Holcomb just showing his rose to the young lady with the ermine and the roses. And then I see for sure by the young lady’s eyes that she wasn’t the way I’d thought she was--laughing _at_ us. Why, her eyes were as soft and understanding as if she didn’t have a cent to her name. And I donno but more so.

“Oh, father,” I heard her say, “I’m glad we came in for the mail ourselves! _What_ if we hadn’t?”

And I concluded I didn’t mind that word _quaint_ half as much as I thought I did.

Every last one of the line went out of the post-office to see Stubby off, and the man at the window, he came too. They had a big warm coat they put the little boy into, and we wrapped up his rose and put that in the car, so’s it would get there sooner and save the postage, same time, and they tucked him away as snug as a bug in a rug, his little face just shining out for joy.

“Oh, and you can buy your presents back now,” says Libby Liberty to Mis’ Holcomb right in the middle of it.

“No, sir,” says Mis’ Holcomb, proud. “A bargain is a bargain, and I made mine.” And then she thought of something. “Oh,” she says, leaning forward to the window of the car, “don’t you want to sell your presents back again?”

“No!” they all told her together. “We made a straight bid, you know.”

“_Then_,” says Mis’ Holcomb, “let’s us give Stubby the money to put in his pocket and take the one-way fare to his mother!”

And that was what they done. And the big car rolled off down Daphne Street, with Stubby in it going like a king.

And when we all got back in the post-office, what do you s’pose? There was the crocheted towel and the hand-embroidered dressing-sack slipped back all safe into Mis’ Holcomb’s shopping-bag!

But she wouldn’t take the other things back--she would not, no matter what Mis’ Wiswell and Mis’ Merriman said.

“I can crochet a couple of things to-morrow like lightning,” says Mis’ Holcomb. “You don’t want me to be done out of my share in Stubby’s Christmas, do you?” she asks ’em.

And we all stood there, talking and laughing and going over it and clean forgetting all about the United States mails, till the man at the window called out:

“‘Leven minutes and a quarter before the mail closes!”

We all started back to the window, but nobody could remember just exactly where anybody was standing before, and they all wanted everybody to go up first and step in ahead of them. And the line, instead of being a line with some of ’em ahead of others and all trying to hurry, was just a little group, with each giving everybody their turn, peaceful and good-willing. And all of a sudden it was like Christmas had come, up through all the work and the stitches, and was right there in the Friendship Village post-office with us.

“Goodness!” says Mis’ Holcomb in my ear, “I was wore to the bone getting ready my Christmas things. But now I’m real rested.”

“So am I,” I says.

And so was every one of us, I know, falling back into line there by the window. All rested, and not feeling hurried nor nothing: only human.

THE HOME-COMING

“Eighteen booths,” says Mis’ Timothy Toplady, sighing satisfied. “That’s enough to go round the whole Market Square, leaving breathin’ space between.”

We sat looking at the diagram Mis’ Fire-Chief Merriman had made on the dining-room table, with bees-wax and stuff out of her work-basket, and we all sighed satisfied--but tired too. Because, though it looked like the Friendship Village Home-coming was going to be a success--and a peaceful success--yet we see in the same flash that it was going to be an awful back-aching, feet-burning business for us ladies. We were having our fourth committee meeting to Mis’ Sykes’s, and we weren’t more than begun on the thing; and the Home-coming was only six weeks away.

“Just thinking about all the tracking round it means,” says Mis’ Sykes, “I can feel that sick feeling in the back of my throat _now_, that I feel when I’m over-tired, or got delegates, or have company pounce down on me.”

Mis’ Hubbelthwait looked at her sympathetic. “I know,” she says. “So tired you can taste it. I donno,” she says, “whether home-comings are worth it or not.”

Mis’ Sykes didn’t answer. She was up on her feet, peering out behind the Nottinghams.

“My land o’ life,” she says, “that’s the stalkin’ image of ’Lisbeth Note.”

“Lisbeth _Note_!” we all said. “Oh, it can’t be!”

It struck me, even then, how united folks are on a piece of gossip. For the Home-coming some had thought have printed invitations and some had thought send out newspapers, some had wanted free supper and some had wanted pay, and so on, item by item of the afternoon. But the minute Lisbeth Note was mentioned, we all burst into one common, spontaneous fraternal horror: “_Oh, no._ It couldn’t be her.”

“It is!” cries Mis’ Sykes. “It is. She’s turning in there. I thought I heard ’bus wheels in the night. It serves me right. I’d ought to got out and looked.”

We were all crowded to the window by then, looking over toward old Mis’ Note’s, that lived opposite to Mis’ Sykes’s. So we all saw what we saw. And it was that Mis’ Note’s front door opened and a little boy, ’bout four years old, come shouting down the walk toward Lisbeth. And she stooped over and kissed him. And they went in the house together and shut the door.

Then us ladies turned and stared at each other. And Mis’ Sykes says, swallowing unbeknownst in the middle of what she says: “The brazen hussy. She’s brought it back here.”

I donno whether you’ve ever heard a group of immortal beings, women or men, pounce on and mull over _that_ particular bone? If you live somewheres in this world, I guess mebbe you hev--I guess mebbe you hev. I’m never where it happens, that I don’t turn sick and faint all through me. I don’t know how men handles the subject--here in Friendship Village we don’t mention things that has a tang to ’em, in mixed company. Mebbe men is delicate and gentle and chivalrous when they speak of such things. Mebbe that’s one of the places they use the chivalry some feels so afraid is going to die out. But I might as well own up to you that in Friendship Village us women don’t act neither delicate nor decent in such a case.

There was fourteen women in the room that day, every one of ’em except Abigail Arnold and me living what you might call “protected” lives. I mean by that that men had provided them their homes and was earning them their livings, and clothing their children; and they were caring for the man’s house and, in between, training up the children. Then we were all of us further protected by the church, that we all belonged to and helped earn money for. And also we were protected by the town, that we were all respectable, bill-paying, property-owning, pew-renting citizens of. That was us.

And over against us fourteen was Lisbeth--that her father had died when she was a baby, and her mother had worked since she was born, with no place to leave Lisbeth meantime. And Lisbeth herself had been a nice, sweet-dispositioned, confiding little girl, doing odd jobs to our houses and clerking in our stores in the Christmas rush. Till five years ago--she’d gone away. And we all knew why. Her mother had cried her eyes out in most every one of our kitchens, and we were all in full possession of the facts--unless you count in the name of the little child’s father. We didn’t know that. But then, we had so much to do tearing Lisbeth to pieces we didn’t bother a great deal with that. And there that day was the whole fourteen of us, pitching into Lisbeth Note for what she’d done--just like she was fourteen of herself, our own sizes and our own “protectedness,” and meeting us face to face.

“The _idear_!” says Mis’ Sykes, shaking her head, with her lips disappearing within her face. “Why, she might have been clerking in the post-office store now, a nice, steady, six-dollar-a-week position just exactly like she was when it happened.”

“Would you think,” says Mis’ Fire-Chief Merriman, “that living here in Friendship Village with us, anybody _could_ go wrong?”

“Sepulchers in sheep’s clothing--that’s what some folks are,” says little new Mis’ Graves, righteous.

And so on. And on. Hashing it all over again and eating it for cake. And me, I wasn’t silent either. I joined in here and there with a little something I’d heard. Till by the time the meeting adjourned, and we’d all agreed to meet two days later and sew on the bunting for the booths, I went home feeling so sick and hurt and sore and skinned that after dark I up and walked straight down to Lisbeth’s house. Yes. After dark. I was a poor, weak, wavering stick, and I knew it.

Lisbeth came to the door. “Hello, Lisbeth,” I says. “It’s Calliope Marsh. Can I come in?”

“Mother ain’t here, Mis’ Marsh,” she says faint.

“Ain’t she, now?” I says. “I bet she is. I’m going inside to hunt for her.”

And I walked right into the sitting-room and turned and looked at Lisbeth. If she’d been defiant, or acted don’t-care, or tossed her head, or stared at me--I donno’s I’d of had the strength to understand that these might be her poor, pitiful weapons. But as it was, her eyes looked straight into mine for a minute, and then brimmed up full of tears. So I kissed her.

We sat there for an hour in the twilight--an hour I’ll never forget. And then she took me up-stairs to show me the boy.

Think of the prettiest child you know. Think of the prettiest child you ever did know. Now think of him laying asleep, all curls and his cheeks flushed and his lips budded open a little bit. That was Chris. That was Little Christopher--Lisbeth’s little boy.

“Miss Marsh,” Lisbeth says, “I’d rather die than not have him with me. And mother ain’t strong, and she needs me. Do you think I done wrong to come home?”

“Done wrong?” I says. “Done wrong to come home? Don’t them words kind of fight each other in the sentence? Of course you didn’t do wrong. Why,” says I, “Lisbeth, this is Friendship Village’s Home-coming year. It’s Home-coming week next month, you know.”

She looked at me wistful there in the dark beside the child’s bed. “Oh, not for me,” she says. “This house is my home--but this town ain’t any more. It don’t want me.”

“It don’t want me,” I says over to myself, going home. And I looked along at the nice, neat little houses, with the front doors standing open to the spring night, and dishes clattering musical here and there in kitchens, getting washed up, and lights up-stairs where children were being put to bed. And I thought, “Never tell me that this little town don’t want everybody that belongs to it to live in it. The town is true. It’s folks that’s false.” I says that over: “The town is true. It’s folks that’s false. How you going to make them know it?”

* * * * *

When it come my turn to have the Homecoming committee meet to my house, things had begun to get exciting. Acceptances had commenced coming in. I’d emptied out my photograph basket, and we had ’em all in it. It was real fun and heart-warming to read ’em. Miss Sykes was presiding--that woman’ll be one of them that comes back from the grave to do table-rapping. She does so love to call anything to order.

“Judge Eustis Bangs is coming,” says Mis’ Sykes, impressive, looking over the envelopes. “They say his wife don’t think anything in the world of having company in to a meal every week or so.”

“‘Used-to’ Bangs coming!” cries Mis’ Holcomb-that-was-Mame Bliss. “He set behind me in school. Land, I ain’t seen him since graduating exercises when he dipped my braid in the inkwell.”

“And Sarah Arthur,” Mis’ Sykes went on. “She’s lady bookkeeper in a big department store in the city, and in with all them four hundred.”

“I always wonder,” says Mis’ Holcomb, looking up and frowning meditative, “four hundred _what_? Do they mean folks, or millionaires, or what do they mean by that?”

“Oh, why millionaires, of course,” says Mis’ Sykes. “It don’t refer to _folks_. Look-a-here,” she says next. “Admiral and Mrs. Homer is coming. Why, you know he was only bare born here--he went away before he was three months old. And she’s never been here. But they’re coming now. Ladies! A admiral!”

Mis’ Toplady had been sitting still over in one corner, darning, with her mind on it. But now she dropped her husband’s sock, and looked up. “Admiral,” she says over. “That’s something to do with water fighting, ain’t it? Well, I want to know what they call it that for? I thought we didn’t consider it admiral any more to kill folks, by land or by sea?”

“Oh, but he’s an officer,” Mis’ Sykes says worshipful. “He’ll have badges, and like enough pantalettes on his shoulders; and think how nice he’ll look heading the parade!”

Mis’ Toplady kind of bit at her darning-needle, dreamy. “To my mind,” she says, “the only human being that’s fit to head a parade is one that’s just old enough to walk.”

Just then Mis’ Sykes done her most emphatic squeal and pucker, such as, if she was foreign, she would reserve for royalty alone.

“My land,” she says, “Abner Dawes! He’s a-coming. He’s a-_coming_!”

There couldn’t have been a nicer compliment to any one, my way of thinking, than the little round of smiles and murmurs that run about among us when we heard this.

Abner Dawes had been, thirty years before, a nice, shy man round the village, and we all liked him, because he had such a nice, kind way with him and particularly because he had such a way with children. He used to sing ’em little songs he made up. And some of the little songs got in the paper and got copied in the city paper; and first thing we knew, a big firm sent for Abner, and he’d been gone ever since. We heard of him, now doing his children-songs on the stage, now in a big, beautiful book of children’s songs, with pictures, that had been sent back to the village. And we were prouder of him than ’most anybody we’d got. And here he was coming to the Home-coming.

“We must give him the Principal Place, whatever that is,” says Mis’ Sykes, immediate. And we all agreed. Yes, Abner must have the Principal Place.

We were sewing, that afternoon, on the bunting for Eppleby Holcomb’s store’s booth. Blazing red, it was--ain’t it queer how men loves red? Color of blood and color of fire; but I always think it means they’ll be ready to love not blood of war but blood-brotherhood, and not the torch to burn with, but the torch to light with--when the time comes. Yes, I bet men’s liking red means something, and I like to think it means that. And if it does, Eppleby’ll be first among men, for he didn’t want a stitch of his booth that wasn’t flaming scarlet.

We had the diagram all made out on the table again, so’s to tell what colors would come next to which. And all of a sudden Mis’ Sykes put her finger in the middle of it.

“Do you know what?” she says. “If that tree wasn’t in the middle there, we could have a great big evening bon-fire, with everybody around it.”

“So we could. Wouldn’t that be nice?” says everybody--only me. Because the tree they meant was the Christmas tree, the big evergreen, the living Christmas tree that had stood there in the square, all lit, that last Christmas Eve, with all of us singing round it.

“I can’t ever think of that being in anybody’s way,” I says, and everybody says, “Perhaps not,” and we went on tearing off the lengths of blazing red calico. And me, I set there thinking about what they’d said.

I remember I was still thinking about it, and Mis’ Sykes and I were standing up together measuring off the breadths, when the front door opened. And there was standing Chris, Lisbeth’s little boy. Him and I’d got to be awful good friends almost from the first. He come over to my house quite a lot, and kneeled on a chair side of the table when I was doing my baking, and he brought me in pans of chips. And no little fellow whatever was ever sweeter.

“Hello, dear,” I says now. “Come in, won’t you?”

He stood quiet, eying us. And Mis’ Sykes down she drops the cloth and made a dive for him.

“You darling!” says she--her emphasis coming out in bunches, the way some women’s does when they talk to children. “You darling! _Whose_ little boy are you?”

He looked at her, shy and sweet. “I’m my mamma’s little boy,” he says, ready. “But my papa, he didn’t come--not yet.”

I looked over to Mis’ Sykes, squatting with both arms around the baby. “He’s Lisbeth’s little boy,” I says. “Ain’t he d-e-a-r?”--I spells it.

Mis’ Sykes-drew back, like the little fellow had hit at her. “Mercy!” she says, only--and got up, and went on tearing cloth.

He felt it, like little children do feel ever so much more than we know they feel. I see his little lip begin to curl. I went and whispered that we’d go find an orange in the pantry, and I took him to get it; and then he went off.

When I went back in the sitting-room they all kind of kept still, like they’d been saying things they didn’t mean I should hear. Only that little new Mis’ Morgan Graves, she sat with her back to the door and she was speaking.

“...for one Sunday. But when I found it out, I took Bernie right out of the class. Of course it don’t matter so much now, but when they get older, you can’t be too careful.”

I went and stood back of her chair.

“Oh, yes, you can,” says I. (We try here in Friendship Village not to contradict our guests too flat; but when it’s a committee meeting, of course a hostess feels more free.) “You can be a whole lot too careful,” I went on. “You can be so careful that you act like we wasn’t all seeds in one great big patch of earth, same as we are.”

“Well, but, Calliope,” says Mis’ Sykes, “you can’t take that child in. You ain’t any children, or you’d know how a mother feels. An illegitimate child----”

Then I boiled over and sissed on the tip of the stove. “Stop that!” I says. “Chris ain’t any more illegitimate than I am. True, he’s got a illegitimate father bowing around somewheres in polite society. And Lisbeth--well, she’s bore him and she’s raised him and she’s paid his keep for four years, and I ain’t prepared to describe what kind of mother she is by any one word in the dictionary. But the minute you tack that one word on to Chris, well,” says I, “you got me to answer to.”

“But, Calliope!” cries Mis’ Sykes. “You can’t take _him_ in without taking in the mother!”

“No,” says I, “and I’ve took her in already. Is my morals nicked any to speak of? Mind you,” I says, “I ain’t arguin’ with you to take in anybody up till they want to be took in and do right. I’ve got my own ideas on that too, but I ain’t arguing it with you here. All I say now is, Why _not_ take in Lisbeth?”

“Why not put a premium on evil-doing and have done with it?” says Mis’ Fire-Chief Merriman, majestic and deep-toned.

“Well,” I says, “we’ve done that to the father’s evil. Maybe you can tell me why we fixed up his premium so neat?”

“Oh, well,” says Mis’ Sykes, “surely we needn’t argue it. Why, the whole of civilization is on our side and responsible for our way of thinking. You ain’t got no argument, Calliope,” she says. “Besides, it ain’t what any of us thinks that proves it. It’s what’s what that counts.”

“Civilization,” says I. “And time. They’re responsible for a good deal, ain’t they? Wars and martyrdom and burnings and--crucifixion. All done in the immortal name of what’s what. Well, me, I don’t care a cake o’ washing soap what’s what. What’s what ain’t nothing but a foot-bridge anyhow, on over to what’s-going-to-be. And if you tell me that civilization and time can keep going much longer putting a premium on a man’s wrong and putting a penalty on the woman--then I tell you to your face that I’ve got inside information that you ain’t got. Because in the end--in the end, _life ain’t that sort_.”

“Good for you, Calliope!” says a voice in the door. And when I’d wheeled round, there stood Eppleby Holcomb, come in to see how we were getting along with the cloth for his booth. “Good for you,” he says, grave.

We all felt stark dumb with embarrassment--I guess they hadn’t one of us ever said that much in company with a man present in our lives. In company, with man or men present, we’d talked like life was made up of the pattern of things, and like speaking of warp and woof wasn’t delicate. And we never so much as let on they _was_ any knots--unless it was property knots or like that. But now I had to say something, being I had said something. And besides, I wanted to.

“Do you believe that too, Eppleby?” I ask’ him breathless. “Do any men believe that?”

“Some men do, thank God,” Eppleby says. And his wife, Mame, smiled over to him; and Mis’ Timothy Toplady, she booms out: “Yes, _let’s_ thank God!” And I see that anyhow we four felt one. And “Is this stuff for my blazing booth here?” Eppleby sings out, to relieve the strain. And we all talked at once.

* * * * *

From that day on it seemed as if the whole town took sides about Lisbeth.

Half of ’em talked like Mis’ Sykes, often and abundant. And one-quarter didn’t say much of anything till they were pressed to. And the remaining one-quarter didn’t say anything for fear of offending the other three-fourths, here and there. But some went to see Lisbeth, and sent her in a little something. She didn’t go much of anywheres--she was shy of accepting pity where it would embarrass the givers. But oh my, how she did need friends!

Mame Holcomb was the only one that Lisbeth went to her house by invite. Mame let it be known that she had invited her, and full half of them she’d asked sent in their regrets in consequence. And of them that did go--well, honest, of all the delicate tasks the Lord has intrusted to His blundering children, I think the delicatest is talking to one of us that’s somehow stepped off the track in public.

I heard Mis’ Morgan Graves trying to talk to Lisbeth about like this: “My _dear_ child. _How_ do you get on?”

“Very nice, thank you, Mis’ Graves,” says Lisbeth.

“Is there _any_thing I can do to help you?” the lady pursues, earnest.

“No, Mis’ Graves, nothing--thank you,” says Lisbeth, looking down.

“You know I’d be so willing, so _very_ willing, to do all I could at any time. You feel that about me, don’t you?”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Lisbeth, beginning to turn fire red.

“Promise,” says Mis’ Graves, “to let me know if you ever need a friend----”

And I couldn’t stand it a minute longer. “That’s you, Mis’ Graves,” I broke in hearty. “And it’s what I’ve been wanting to say to you for ever so long. You’re a good soul. Whenever you need a friend, just come to me. Will you?”

She looked kind of dazed, and three-fourths indignant. “Why ...” she begun.

And I says: “And you’d let me come to you if I need a friend, wouldn’t you? I thought so. Well, now, here’s three of us good friends, and showing it only when it’s needed. Let’s us three go and set down together for refreshments, sha’n’t we?”

Lisbeth looked up at me like a dog that I’d patted. I donno but Mis’ Graves thought I was impertinent. I donno but I was. But I like to be--like that. Oh, anything but the “protected” women that go cooing and humming and pooring around a girl like Lisbeth, and doing it in the name of friendliness. Friendliness isn’t that. And if you don’t know what it is different from that, then go out into the crowd of the world, stripped and hungry and dumb and by yourself, and wait till it comes to you. It’ll come! God sees to that. And it’s worth everything. For if you die without finding it out, you die without knowing life.

After that day, none of us invited Lisbeth in company. We see it was kinder not to.

But the little boy--the little boy. There wasn’t any way of protecting him. And it never entered Lisbeth’s head at first that she was going to be struck at through him. She sent him to Sunday-school, and everything was all right there, except Mis’ Graves taking her little boy out of the class he was in, and Lisbeth didn’t know that. Then she sent him to day school, in the baby room. And Mis’ Sykes’s little grandchild went there--Artie Barling; and I guess he must have heard his mother and Mis’ Sykes talking--anyway at recess he shouts out when they was playing:

“Everybody that was born in the house be on my side!”

They all went rushing over to his side, Christopher too.

“Naw!” Artie says to him. “_Not_ youse. Youse was borned _outside_. My gramma says so.”

So Chris went home, crying, with that. And then Lisbeth begun to understand. I went in to see her one afternoon, and found her working out in the little patch of her mother’s garden. When she see me she set down by the hollyhocks she was transplanting and looked up at me, just numb.

“Miss Marsh,” she says, “it’s God punishing me, I s’pose, but----”

“No, Lisbeth,” I says. “No. The real punishment ain’t this. This is just folks punishing you. Don’t never mistake the one for the other, will you?”

* * * * *

Acceptances to the Home-coming kept flowing in like mad--all the folks we’d most wanted to come was a-coming, them and their families. I begun to get warm all through me, and to go round singing, and to wake up feeling something grand was going to happen and, when I was busy, to know there was something nice, just over the edge of my job, sitting there rosy, waiting to be thought about. It worked on us all that way. It was a good deal like being in love. I donno but it was being in love. In love with folks.