nsisted of Pat Ryan. Pat was nearly smothered in flowers that year,
being good-natured, and as the work of collecting said flowers involved
a great deal of meeting in the Singer home and dancing in the Singer
attic, which was floored with hard maple that winter, Mrs. Singer had
the girls of the town organized into a Roman phalanx before spring.

Mrs. Payley was triumphantly reelected to the presidency of all her
clubs that winter, but Mrs. Singer organized a public library
association and pulled off a German. Mrs. Payley attended, and when she
tried to patronize Mrs. Singer with her compliments, that clever
infighter beat her to it by explaining the theory of the German to her.
That made Mrs. Payley so mad that the next month she invited the state
president of the Federation of Women's Clubs to visit her, and didn't
ask Mrs. Singer to the tea. The next week Mrs. Singer organized a
Country Club. It only consisted of a two-room pavilion in which picnics
could be held and dances could be pulled off, with long intermissions
for the extraction of slivers from the feet. But it was just as easy to
talk about while you were in town and to refer to in a hushed and
exclusive manner as if it cost a million, and when Mrs. Payley realized
that she could never hope to become exclusive enough to get into it,
though goodness knows she couldn't have been hired to belong to the
foolish thing, she quit speaking to Mrs. Singer, the split became a
chasm, and we began choosing up sides in earnest.

That winter Mrs. Singer seceded from the church which Mrs. Payley ran,
and founded an Episcopal church, taking seven choir members out of the
Congregational church, to say nothing of the organist. All this mixed up
religion in Homeburg that winter until you could scarcely tell it from a
ward caucus.

By spring it was dangerous to show favors to either side, and when the
school election came around, it was fought out between the Payley and
Singer factions. Sally Singer had been given higher marks than Sarah
Payley, and the upshot of it all was that when the Payley side prevailed
at election by nine votes, the superintendent lost his job. He was a
good superintendent and the cause of education didn't get over the jolt
for some years, but justice, of course, had to be done.

The Singers got some satisfaction out of it by electing the school board
treasurer, which took a lot of money out of the First National Bank.
That, of course, got the banks in