id nothing at
all for a little, and the axe did not go on.

"We mustn't tell Mis' Proudfit--yet," she put it, presently, "not till
we can think. I donno's we ever can tell her. The dyin'--an' the
disgrace--an' the other name--an' the hurt about Linda's _needin'
things_ ... Peleg thinks not tell her, too."

"At least," I said, "we can wait, for a little. Until they come home."

I listened while, her task long disregarded, Calliope fitted together
the dates and the meagre facts she knew, and made the sad tally
complete. Then she laid the picture by and stood staring at the
cooking-range flame.

"It ain't enough," she said, "bein'--lit up--ain't enough for folks, is
it? Not without they're some made out o' iron, too, to hold it--like
stoves. An' yet--"

She looked at me with one of her infrequent, passionate doubtings in her
eyes.

"--if Mis' Proudfit an' Clementina had just of been lit too," she said,
"mebbe--"

She got no farther, though I think it was not the opening of the door by
Peleg Bemus that interrupted her. Peleg did not come in. He said
something of the snow on his shoes, and spoke through the door's
opening.

"I'm a-goin to quit work for to-day, Mis' Marsh," he told her. "Seems
like I'm too dead tired to chop."

XV

THE TEA PARTY

As spring came on, and I found myself fairly identified with the life of
Friendship,--or, at any rate, "more one of us," as they said,--I
suggested to Calliope something which had been for some time pleasantly
in my mind: might I, I asked one day, give a tea for her?

"A tea!" she repeated. "For _me_? You know they give me a benefit once
in the basement of the Court House. But a private tea, for me?"

And when she understood that this was what I meant,

"Oh," she said earnestly, "I'd be so glad to come. An' you an' I can
know the tea is for me--if you rilly mean it--but it won't do to say it
so'd it'd get out around. Oh, no, it won't. Not one o' the rest'll come
near if you give it _for_ me--nor if you give it _for_ anybody. Mis'
Proudfit, now, she tried to give a noon lunch on St. Patrick's day for
Mis' Postmaster Sykes, an' the folks she ask' to it got together an'
sent in their regrets. 'We're just as good as Mis' Postmaster Sykes,'
they give out to everybody, 'an' we don't bow down to her like that.' So
Mis' Proudfit she calls it a Shamrock Party an' give it a day later. An'
every one of 'em went. It won't do to say it's _for_ me."

So I contented mys