comes to, money an' labor, too.
I've just been through it, lookin' on, an' I wouldn't do it not if the
church never see a brush o' paint nor a shingle, an' we had to play on a
jew's-harp 'stead of a melodeon. No!"

Ann Bartlett gave a little murmur here.

"I never heard of anybody's bringin' a jew's-harp into the
meetin'-house," she said, as a kind of official protest. "I guess we
could get us some kind of a melodeon, 'fore we done such a thing as
that."

Isabel was going on in that persuasive voice; it seemed to call the town
to her to do her bidding.

"No, we ain't goin' to do it their way. We're goin' to do it our way.
They've set out to see how young they can be. Le' 's see 'f we can't
beat 'em seein' how old we can be. Le' 's dress up like the oldest that
ever was, an' act as if we liked it."

The electrifying meaning ran over them like a wave. They caught the
splendid significance of it. They were to offer, in the guise of
jesting, their big protest against the folly of sickening over youth by
showing how fearlessly they were dancing on toward age. It was more than
bravado, more than repudiation of the cowards who hesitated at the
onward step. It was loyal and passionate upholding of the state of those
who were already old, and of those who had continued their beneficent
lives into the time when there is no pleasure in the years, and yet had
given honor and blessing through them all. They fell to laughing
together, and two or three cried a little on the heels of merriment.

"I dunno what mother'd say," whispered Hannah Call, whose mother, old
and yet regnant as the best housekeeper in town and a repository of all
the most valuable recipes, had died that year. "I guess she'd say we was
possessed."

"We be," said Isabel recklessly. "That's the only fun there is, bein'
possessed. If you ain't one way, you'd better be another. It's the
way's the only thing to see to."

"I said I was sick o' paint an' powder," said Caddie. "Well, so I be,
but I'll put flour in my hair so 't's as white as the drifted snow. I've
got aunt Hope's gre't horn spe'tacles."

"I guess I could borrer one o' gramma Ellsworth's gounds," said Mrs.
Pray. A light rarely seen there had come into her dull eyes. Isabel,
with that prescience she had about the minds of people, knew what it
meant. Mrs. Pray, though she was contemplating the garb of eld, was
unconsciously going back to youth and the joy of playing. "She ain't
quite my figger, b