and had thoughts of her own about these
things, and the work in the world there was to do.

She had cleaned up and set things going at Mrs. Scarup's; she
learned something in doing that, beyond what she knew when she set
about it; her thoughts began to shape themselves to a theory; and
the theory took to itself a text and a confirmation and a command.

"Go down and be a neighbor to them that have fallen among thieves."

Luclarion came to a resolution in this time of May, when everybody
was making plans and the spring-cleaning was all done.

She came to Mrs. Ripwinkley one morning, when she was folding away
winter clothes, and pinning them up in newspapers, with camphor-gum;
and she said to her, without a bit of preface,--Luclarion hated
prefaces,--

"Mrs. Ripwinkley, I'm going to swarm!"

Mrs. Ripwinkley looked up in utter surprise; what else could she do?

"Of course 'm, when you set up a Beehive, you must have expected it;
it's the natural way of things; they ain't good for much unless they
do. I've thought it all over; I'll stay and see you all off, first,
if you want me to, and then--I'll swarm."

"Well," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, assenting in full faith, beforehand;
for Mrs. Ripwinkley, if I need now to tell you of it, was not an
ordinary woman, and did not take things in an ordinary selfish way,
but grasped right hold of the inward right and truth of them, and
believed in it; sometimes before she could quite see it; and she
never had any doubt of Luclarion Grapp. "Well! And now tell me all
about it."

"You see," said Luclarion, sitting down in a chair by the window, as
Mrs. Ripwinkley suspended her occupation and took one by the
bedside, "there's places in this town that folks leave and give up.
As the Lord might have left and give up the world, because there was
dirt and wickedness in it; only He didn't. There's places where it
ain't genteel, nor yet respectable, to live; and so those places
grow more disrespectable and miserable every day. They're left to
themselves. What I think is, they hadn't ought to be. There's one
clean spot down there now, in the very middle of the worst dirt.
And it ain't bad to live in. _That's_ started. Now, what I think is,
that somebody ought to start another, even if its only a little one.
Somebody ought to just go there and _live_, and show 'em how, just
as I took and showed Mrs. Scarup, and she's been living ever since,
instead of scratching along. If some of them folks ha