he had not done
this to poor little Mrs. Ricker."

"Would--would you give me the lief to say that?" Calliope asked
demurely.

I had no objection in the world to any one knowing my opinion of Mis'
Postmaster Sykes's proceeding,--"one of her preposterousnesses,"
Calliope called it,--and I said so, and set off for Mrs. Ricker's, while
Calliope herself flew somewhere else on some last mission. And, "Mis'
Sykes'd ought to be showed," she called to me over-shoulder. "That
woman's got a sinful pride. She'd wear fur in August to prove she could
afford to hev moths!"

The Ricker parlour was a garden which sloped gently, as a garden should,
for the house was old and the parlour floor sagged toward the entrance
so that the front of the organ was propped on wooden blocks. The room
was bedizened with flowers, in dishes, tins, and gallon jars, so that it
seemed some way an alien thing, like a prune horse. On the lamp shelf
was the huge white carnation pillow, across which the hostess had
inscribed "welcom," in stems.

Within ten minutes of the appointed hour all those who had been pleased
to accept were in the rooms, and Mrs. Ricker and Kitton and I, standing
among the funeral flowers, received the guests while Calliope, hovering
at the door, gave the key with: "Ain't you heard? Emerel's a bride
instead of a debbytant. Ain't it a rill joke? Married to-night an' we're
here to celebrate. Throw off your things." Then she hopelessly involved
them in a presentation to me, and between us we contrived to elide Mrs.
Ricker and Kitton from all save her perfunctory office, until her voice
and lips ceased their trembling. Poor little hostess, in her starched
lawn which had seemed to her adequate for her unpretentious role of
mother! All her humour and independence and self-possession had left
her, and in their stead, on what was to have been her great night, had
settled only the immemorial wistfulness.

Although I did not then foresee it, the guests that evening were
destined to point me to many meanings, like sketches in the note-book of
a patient Pen. I am fond of remembering them as I saw them first: the
Topladys, that great Mis' Amanda, ponderous, majestic, and suggesting
black grosgrain, her beaming way of whole-hearted approval not quite
masking the critical, house-wife glances which she continually cast; and
little Timothy, her husband, who, in company, went quite out of his head
and could think of nothing to say save "Blisterin' B