ly, "a grate fire upstairs! It's one of
the things that never seems real to me, like a tower on a house. I'd as
soon think o' havin' a grate fire up a tree an' settin' there, as in my
chamber. Anyway, when it comes Winter, upstairs in Friendship is just a
place where you go after something in the bureau draw' an' come down
again as quick as you can. I s'pose you got an invite to the party?"

"Yes," I said, "and you will go, Calliope?"

But instead of answering me:--

"My land!" she said, "think of it! A party like that, an' not a
low-necked waist in town, nor a swallow-tail! An' only two weeks to do
anything in, an' only Liddy Ember for dressmaker, an' it takes her two
weeks to make a dress. I guess Mis' Postmaster Sykes has got her. They
say she read her invite in the post-office with one hand an' snapped up
that tobacco-brown net in the post-office store window with the other,
an' out an' up to Liddy's an' hired her before she was up from the
breakfast table. So she gets the town new dress. Mis' Sykes is terrible
quick-moved."

"What will you wear, Calliope?" I asked.

"Me--I never wear anything but henriettas," she said. "I think the
plainer-faced you are, the simpler you'd ought to be dressed. I use' to
fix up terrible ruffled, but when I see I was reg'lar plain-faced I
stuck to henriettas, mostly gray--"

"Calliope," I said resolutely, "you don't mean you're not going to the
Proudfit party?"

She clasped her hands and held them, palms outward, over her mouth, and
her eyes twinkled above them.

"No, sir," she said, "I can't go. You'll laugh at me!" she defended.
"Don't you tell!" she warned. And finally she told me.

"Day before yesterday," she said, "I went into the City. An' I come out
on the trolley. An' I donno what possessed me,--I ain't done it for
months,--but when we crossed the start of the Plank Road, I got off an'
went up an' visited the Old Ladies' Home. You know I've always thought,"
she broke off, "--well, you know I ain't a rill lot to do with, an' I
always had an i-dee that mebbe sometime, when I got older, I might--"

I nodded, and she went on.

"Well, I walked around among 'em up there--canary birds an' plants an'
footstools--an' the whole thing fixed up so cheerful that it's pitiful.
Red wall-paper an' flowered curtains an' such, all fair yellin' at you,
'We're cheerful--cheerful--cheerful!' till I like to run. An' it come
over me, bein' so near Christmas an' all, what would they do o