Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality was meetin'
that afternoon with Mis' Toplady, an' I could cut acrost their
pasture--" Calliope nodded toward the little Toplady house and the big
Toplady barn--"an' that's what I done. An' when I got near enough to the
house to tell, I see by the light in the parlour that they was still
there. An' I know when I got into the room, full as I was o' news o'
them little children an' the wreck an' the two killed an' all them that
was hurt--there was the Sodality settlin' whether the lamb's wool
comforter for the bazaar should be tied with pink for daintiness or
brown for durability.

"'_Dainty!_' says I, when I got my breath. 'They's sides to life makes
me want to pinch that word right out o' the dictionary same as I would a
bug,' I says.

"That was funny, too,"--Calliope added thoughtfully, "because I like
that word, speakin' o' food an' ways to do things. But some folks get to
livin' the word same's if it was the law.

"I guess they thought I was crazy," she went on, "but I wasn't long
makin' 'em understand. An' I tell you, the way they took it made me love
'em all. If you want to love folks, just you get in some kind o'
respectable trouble in Friendship, an' you'll see so much lovableness
that the trouble'll kind o' spindle out an' leave nothin' but the love
doin' business. My land, the Sodality went at the situation head first,
like it was somethin' to get acrost before dark. An' so it was.

"I remember Mis' Photographer Sturgis: 'There!' she says, 'most cryin'.
'If ever I take only a pint o' milk, I'm sure as sure to want more
before the day's out. None of us is on good terms with each other's
milkman. _Where_ we goin' to get the milk,' she says, 'for them poor
little things?'

"'Where?' says Mis' Toplady--you know how big an' comfortable an'
settled she is--'_Where?_ Well, you needn't to think o' where. I expect
the Jersey won't be milked till I go an' milk her,' she says, 'but she
gives six quarts, nights, right along now, an' sometimes seven. Now
about the bread.'

"Mis' Postmaster Sykes use' to set sponge twice a week, an' she offered
five loaves out o' her six baked that day. Mis' Holcomb had two loaves
o' brown bread an' a crock o' sour cream cookies. An' Libbie Liberty
bursts out that they'd got up their courage an' killed an' boiled two o'
their chickens the day before an' none o' the girls'd been able to touch
a mouthful, bein' they'd raised the hens from egg