?' at all.

"'Seems like another world than when we met on the street corner, don't
it?' I says.

"'Yes,' she says again, noddin'--an' I thought how she'd stood there on
the sidewalk, hungry an' her hands all black, an' believin' she couldn't
do anything at all. An' it seemed like I hed sort o' scrabbled her up
an' held her over a precipice, an' said to her: 'See the dead. Look at
yourself. Come forth--come forth! Clean up--do somethin' to help,
anything, if it's only tackin' on evergreens an' doin' the Dead's hair
up becomin'--' oh, I s'pose, rilly, I was sayin' to her: 'Put on thy
beautiful garments. Awake. Put on thy strength.' Only it come out some
differ'nt from me than it come from Isaiah.

"I took a-hold of her hand--quite clean by the second day's washin',
though I ain't much given to the same (_not_ meanin' second day's
washin's). I didn't know quite what I was goin' to say, but just then I
looked up Daphne Street, an' I see 'em all sprinkled along comin' from
the funeral--neighbours an' friends an' just folks--an' most of 'em
livin' in Friendship peaceful an'--barrin' slopovers--doin' the level
best they could. Not all of 'em hearin' the Bell, you understand, nor
knowin' it by name if they did hear. But in little ways, an' because it
was secunt nature, just helpin', helpin', helpin' ... Mis'
Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Liddy Ember, Abagail Arnold an' her
husband, that was alive then, hurryin' to open the home bakery to catch
the funeral trade on the funeral's way back, Amanda an' Timothy Toplady
rattlin' by in the wagon an' 'most likely scrappin' over the new
springs ... an' all of 'em salt good at heart.

"''Leven,' I says, out o' the fulness o' the lump in my throat, 'stay
here with us. Find somethin' honest you can do, an' stay here an' do it.
Mebbe,' I told her, 'you could start dressin' the Dead's hair. An'
_help_ us,' I says, 'help us.'

"She looked up in my eyes quick, an' my heart stood still. An' then it
sunk down an' down.

"'I want to go back ...' she says, 'I want to go back ...' but I'm glad
to remember that even for a minute I didn't doubt God's position,
because I remember thinkin' swift that if Him an' I had failed it wasn't
for no inscrutable reason o' His, but He was feelin' just as bad over it
as I was, an' worse.... 'I want to go back,' 'Leven finished up, 'an'
get Big Lil, too.'

"Oh, an' I tell you the song in me just crowded the rest o' me out of
existence. I felt like a psalm