d us by lettin' us hev nobody
to do for.' An' then it come to me that if we was to get up the
dinner,--with all the misery an' hunger they is in the world,--God in
His goodness would let some of it come our way to be fed. 'In the
wilderness a cedar,' you know--as Liddy Ember an' I was always tellin'
each other when we kep' shop together. An' so to-day I said to myself
I'd go to work an' get up the dinner an' trust there'd be eaters for
it."

"Why, Calliope," I said, "Calliope!"

"I ain't got much to do with, myself," she added apologetically;
"the most I've got in my sullar, I guess, is a gallon jar o'
watermelon pickles. I could give that. You don't think it sounds
irreverent--connectin' God with a big dinner, so?" she asked anxiously.

And, at my reply:--

"Well, then," she said briskly, "let's step in an' see a few folks that
might be able to tell us of somebody to do for. Let's ask Mis' Mayor
Uppers an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, an' the Liberty girls."

Because I was lonely and idle, and because I dreaded inexpressibly going
back to my still house, I went with her. Her ways were a kind of
entertainment, and I remember that I believed my leisure to be infinite.

We turned first toward the big shuttered house of Mis' Mayor Uppers, to
whom, although her husband had been a year ago removed from office,
discredited, and had not since been seen in Friendship, we yet gave her
old proud title, as if she had been Former Lady Mayoress. For the
present mayor, Authority Hubblethwaite, was, as Calliope said,
"unconnect'."

I watched Mis' Uppers in some curiosity while Calliope explained that
she was planning a dinner for the poor and sick,--"the lame and the sick
that's comfortable enough off to eat,"--and could she suggest some poor
and sick to ask? Mis' Uppers was like a vinegar cruet of mine, slim and
tall, with a little grotesquely puckered face for a stopper, as if the
whole known world were sour.

"I'm sure," she said humbly, "it's a nice i-dea. But I declare, I'm put
to it to suggest. We ain't got nobody sick nor nobody poor in
Friendship, you know."

"Don't you know of anybody kind o' hard up? Or somebody that, if they
ain't down sick, feels sort o' spindlin'?" Calliope asked anxiously.

Mis' Uppers thought, rocking a little and running a pin in and out of a
fold of her skirt.

"No," she said at length, "I don't know a soul. I think the church'd
give a good deal if a real poor family'd come here to