to come into His world unprovided
with some means of making it better. Only, let us get outside our bazaar
and chicken-pie faculties. Now what can we each do?"

We sat still for a little, tentatively murmuring; and then Mis'
Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss stood up by the sweet-alyssum urn.

"Speakin' of what we can do," she said, "doin' ain't easy. Not when
you're well along in years. Your ways seem to stiffen up some. When I
was a girl, I could 'a' been quite an elocutionist if I could 'a' had
lessons. I had a reg'lar born sense o' givin' gestures. But I never
took. An' now I declare I don't know of anything I could do. It's the
same way, I guess, with quite a number of us."

Mis' Postmaster Sykes was in the arm-chair, and she sat still, queenly.

"I could do some o' my embroidery," she observed, "but it's quite
expensive stuff, an' I don't know whether it would sell rill well here
in Friendship. I'd be 'most afraid to risk. An' I don't do enough
cookin', myself, to what-you-might-say know how, any more."

"Same with my sewing," observed Mis' Doctor Helman; "I put it all out
now. I don't know as I could sew up a seam. That's the trouble, hiring
everything done so."

Those who did not hire everything done preserved a respectful silence.
And Doctor June looked up in the elm trees.

"The Lord," he said, "spoke to Moses out of the burning bush. The Lord
said unto Moses, 'What is that in thine hand?' Moses had, you remember,
nothing but a rod in his hand. But it was enough to let the people know
that God had been with him--that the Lord had appeared unto him. Suppose
the glory of the Lord, here in the garden, should ask us now, as it does
ask, 'What is that in thine hand?' What have we got?"

There was silence again, and we looked at one another doubtfully.

"Land, Doctor!" said Libbie Liberty then, "I been tryin' for two years
to earn a new parlour carpet, an' I ain't had nothin' in my hand to earn
with. So I keep on sayin' I _like_ an old Brussels carpet--they're so
easy to sweep."

"My!" said Abigail Arnold, "I declare, I'd be real put to it to try to
make extry money. 'Bout the only thing the Lord seems to 'a' put in my
hand is time. I've got oodles o' that, layin' 'round loose."

Mis' Photographer Sturgis was in the big garden chair, wrapped in a
shawl, her feet on an inverted flower-pot.

"I'm tryin' to think," she said, looking sidewise at the ground. "I
donno's I know how I could earn a cent, convenient. I