"We could have a baking sale. Or a general cooking sale. Or a bazaar. Or a twenty-five-cent supper," says I.

Mis' Toplady tore off a strip of white cloth so smart it sounded saucy.

"I'm sick to death," she said, "of the whole kit of them. I hate a baking sale like I hate wash-day. We've had them till we can taste them. I know just what every human one of us would bring. Bazaars is death on your feet. And if I sit down to another twenty-five-cent supper—beef loaf, bake' beans, pickles, cabbage salad, piece o' cake—it seems as though I should scream."

"Me too," agrees Mis' Holcomb.

"Me too," I says myself. "Still," I says, "we want a park—and we want to name it Hewitt Park for them that's done so much for the town a'ready. And if we ever have a park, we've got to raise some money. That's flat, ain't it?"

We all allowed that this was flat, and acrost the certainty we faced one another, rocking and sewing in my nice cool sitting-room. The blinds were open,[Pg 131] the muslin curtains were blowing, bees were humming in the yellow-rose bush over the window, and the street lay all empty, except for a load of hay that lumbered by and brushed the low branches of the maples. And somewheres down the block a lawn-mower was going, sleepy.

"Who's that rackin' around so up-stairs?" ask' Mis' Toplady, pretty soon.

Just when she spoke, the little light footstep that had been padding overhead came out in the hall and down my stair.

"It's Miss Mayhew," I told them, just before Miss Mayhew tapped on the open door.

"Come right in—what you knocking for when the door sets ajar?" says I to her.

Miss Mayhew stood in the doorway, her rough short skirt and stout boots and red sweater all saying "I'm going for a walk," even before she did. Only she adds: "I wanted to let you know I don't think I'll get back for supper."

"Such a boarder I never saw," I says. "You don't eat enough for a bird when you're here. And when you ain't, you're off gallivanting over the hills with nothing whatever to eat. And me with a fresh spice-cake just out of the oven for your supper."

"I'm so sorry," Miss Mayhew says, penitent to see.

I laid down my work. "You let me put you up a couple o' pieces to nibble on," says I.

[Pg 132]

"You're so good. May I come too?" Miss Mayhew asks, and smiled bright at the other two women, who smiled back broad and almost tender—Miss Mayhew's smile made you do that.

"I s'pose them writing folks can't stop to think of food," Mis' Toplady says as we went out.

"Look at her lugging a book. What's she want to be bothered with that for?" Mis' Holcomb says.

But that kind of fault-finding don't necessarily mean unkindness. With us it was as natural as a glance.

Out in the kitchen, I, having wrapped two nice slices of spice cake and put them in Miss Mayhew's hand, looked up at her and was shook up considerable to see that her eyes were filled with tears.

I know I'm real blunt when I'm embarrassed or trying to be funny, but when it comes to tears I'm more to home. So I just put my hand on the girl's shoulder and waited for her to speak.

"It's nothing," Miss Mayhew says back to the question I didn't ask. "I—I—" she sobbed out quite open. "I'm all right," she ends, and put up her head like a banner.

To the two women in my sitting-room I didn't say a word of that moment, when I went back to them. But what I did say acted kind of electric.

"Now," says I, "day before yesterday was my sweeping day for the chambers. But I hated to disturb her, she set there scribbling so hard when I stuck[Pg 133] my head in. She ain't been out of the house since. If you'll excuse me, I'll whisk right up there and sweep out now."

The women begun folding their work.

"Why, don't hurry yourselves!" I says. "Sit and visit till I get through, why don't you?"

"Go!" says Mis' Toplady. "We ain't a-going. We're going to help."

"I been dying to get up-stairs in that room ever since I see her fix it up," Miss Holcomb lets out, candid.

Miss Mayhew's room—she'd been renting my front chamber for a month now—was little and bare, but her daintiness was there, like her saying something. And the two women began looking things over—the books, the pictures—"prints," Miss Mayhew called them—the china tea-cups, the silver-topped bottles, and the silver and ivory toilet stuff.

"My, what a homely picture!" Mis' Holcomb says, looking at a scene of a Japanese lady and a mountain.

"What in the world is these forceps for?" says Mis' Toplady, balancing an ivory glove-stretcher with Miss Mayhew's initials on. I knew that it was, because I'd asked her.

"What she wants of a dust-cap I dunno," Mis' Holcomb contributes, pointing to the little lace and ribbon cap hanging beside the toilet-table.

[Pg 134]

And I'd wondered that myself. She put it on for breakfast, like she was going to do some work; then she never done a thing the whole morning, only wrote.

Then all of a sudden was when I come out with something surprising.

"Why," says I, "it's gone!"

"What's gone?" they says. And I was looking so hard I couldn't answer—bureau, chest of drawers, bookshelves, I looked on all of them. "It ain't here anywhere," says I, "and he was that handsome—"

I told them about the photograph, as well as I could. It was always standing on the bureau, right close up by the glass—a man's picture that always made me want to say: "Well, you look just exactly the way you ought to look. And I believe you are it." He looked like what you mean when you say "man" when you're young—big and dark and frank and boyish and manly, with eyes that give their truth to you and count on having yours back again. That kind.

"Land," I says. "I'd leave a picture like that up in my room no matter what occurred between me and the one the picture was the picture of. I couldn't take it down."

But now it was down, though I remembered seeing it stand there every time I'd dusted ever since Miss Mayhew had come, up till this day. And when[Pg 135] I'd told the women all about it, they couldn't recover from looking. They looked so energetic that finally Mis' Toplady pulled out the wardrobe a little mite and peeked behind it.

"I thought mebbe it'd got itself stuck in here," she explains, bringing her head back with a great streak of dust on her cheek—and I didn't take it as any reflection whatever on my housekeeping. I've always believed that there's some furniture that the dust just rises out of, in the night, like cream—and of those the backs of wardrobes are chief.

Then she shoved the wardrobe in place, and the door that I'd fixed at the top with a little wob of newspaper so it would stay shut, all of a sudden swung open, and the other one followed suit. We three stood staring at what was inside. For my wardrobe, that had never had anything in it better than my best black silk, was hung full of pink and blue and rose and white and lavender clothes. Dresses they were, some with little scraps of shining trimming on, and all of them not like anything any of us had ever seen, outside of fashion books—if any.

"My land!" says I, sitting down on the edge of the fresh-made bed—a thing I never do in my right senses.

"Party clothes!" says Mis' Holcomb, kind of awelike. "Ball-gowns," she says it over, to make them sound as grand as they looked.

[Pg 136]

"Why, mercy me," Mis' Toplady says, standing close up and staring. "She's an actress, that's what she is. Them's stage clothes."

"Actress nothing," I says, "nor they ain't ball dresses—not all anyway. They're just light colors, for afternoon wear, the most of them—but like we don't wear here in this town, 'long of being so durable-minded."

"Have you ever seen her wear any of 'em?" demands Mis' Toplady.

"I can't say I ever have," I says, "but she likely ain't done so because she don't want to do different from us. That," says I, "is the lady of it."

Mis' Holcomb leaned close and looked at the things through her glasses.

"I think she'd ought to wear them here," she says. "I'd dearly love to look at things like that. Nobody ever wore things here like that since the Hewitts went away. We'd all love to see them. We don't see things like that any too often. I s'pose—I s'pose, ladies," says she, hesitating, "I s'pose it wouldn't do for us to look at them any closer up to, would it?"

We knew it wouldn't—not, that is, to the point of touching. But we all came and stood by the wardrobe door and looked as close up to as we durst.

"My," says Mis' Toplady, "how Mis' Sykes would admire to see these. And Mis' Hubbelthwait. And Mis' Sturgis. And Mis' Merriman."

[Pg 137]

And then she went on, real low:

"Why, ladies," she says, "why couldn't we have an exhibit—a loan exhibit? And put all those clothes on dress-makers' forms in somebody's parlor—"

"And charge admission!" says I. "Instead of a bazaar or a supper or a baking sale—"

"And get each lady that's got them to put up her best dress too," says Mis' Holcomb. "Mis' Sykes has never had a chance to wear her navy-blue velvet in this town once, and she's had it three years. I presume she'd be glad to get a chance to show it off that way."

"And Mis' Sturgis her black silk that she had dressmaker made in the city," says I, "when she went to her relation's funeral. She's never had it on her back but the once—it had too much jet on it for anything but formal—and that once was to the funeral, and then it was so cold in the church she had to keep her coat on over it. She's often told me about it, and she's real bitter about it, for her."

Mis' Toplady flushed up. "I've got," she said, "that lavender silk dressing gown my nephew sent me from Japan. It's never been out of its box since it come, nine years ago, except when I've took somebody up-chamber to show it to them. Do you think—"

"Of course we'll have it," I said, "and, Mis' [Pg 138]Toplady, your wedding-dress that you've saved, with the white raspberry buttons. And there's Mis' Merriman's silk-embroidered long-shawl—oh, ladies," I says, "won't it be nice to see some elegant clothes wore for once here in the village, even if it's only on dressmaker's forms?"

"So be Miss Mayhew'll only let us take hers," says Mis' Holcomb, longing.

We planned the whole thing out, sitting up there till plump six o'clock when the whistle blew, and not a scratch of sweeping done in the chamber yet. The ladies both flew for home then, and I went at the sweeping, being I was too excited to eat anyway, and I planned like lightning the whole time. And I made up my mind to arrange with Miss Mayhew that night.

I'd had my supper and was rocking on the front porch when she came home. The moon was shining up the street, and the maple leaves were all moving pleasant, and their shadows were moving pleasant, too, as if they were independent. Everybody's windows were open, and somewhere down the block some young folks were singing an old-fashioned love-song—I saw Miss Mayhew stand at the gate and listen after she had come inside. Then she came up the walk slow.

"Good evening and glad you're back," said I. "Ain't this a night?"

She stood on the bottom step, looking the moon in[Pg 139] the face. The air was sweet with my yellow roses—it was almost as if the moonlight and they were the same color and both sweet-smelling. And her a picture in that yellow frame.

"Oh, it is—it is," she says, and she sighs.

"This," I says, "isn't a night to sigh on."

"No," she says, "it isn't—is it? I won't do it again."

"Sit down," I says, "I want to ask you something."

So then I told her how her wardrobe door had happened to swing open, and what we wanted to do.

"—we don't see any too many pretty things here in the village," I said, "and I'd kind of like to do it, even if we didn't make a cent of money out of it for the park."

She didn't say anything—she just sat with her head turned away from me, looking down the street.

"—us ladies," I said, "we don't dress very much. We can't. We've all had a hard time to get together just what we've had to have. But we all like pretty things. I s'pose most all of us used to think we were going to have them, and these things of yours kind of make me think of the way I use' to think, when I was a girl, I'd have things some day. Of course now I know it don't make a mite of difference whether anybody ever had them or not—there's other things and more of them. But still,[Pg 140] now and then you kind of hanker. You kind of hanker," I told her.

Still she didn't say anything. I thought mebbe I'd offended her.

"We wouldn't touch them, you know," I said. "We'd only just come and look. But if you'd mind it any—"

Then she looked up at me, and I saw that her eyes were brimming over with tears.

"Mind!" she said. "Why, no—no! If you can really use those things of mine. But they're not nice things, you know."

"Well," I says, "I dunno as us ladies would know that. But you do love light things when you've had to go around dressed dark, either 'count of economy or 'count of being afraid of getting talked about. Or both."

She got up and leaned and kissed me, light. Wasn't that a funny thing to do? But I loved her for it.

"Anything I own," she says, "is yours to use just the way you want to use it."

"You're just as sweet as you are pretty," I told her, "and more I dunno who could say about no one."

I lay awake most all night planning it, like you will. I spent most of the next day tracking round seeing folks about it. And everybody pitched in to work, both on account of needing the money for[Pg 141] the little park us ladies had set our hearts on, and on account of being glad to have some place, at last, to show what clothes we'd got to some one, even if it was nobody but each other.

"Oh," says Mis' Holcomb, "I was thinking only the other day if only somebody'd get married. You know we ain't had an evening party in this town in years—not since the Hewitts went away. But I couldn't think of a soul likely to have a big evening wedding for their daughter but the Mortons, and little Abbie Morton, she's only 'leven. It'd take another good six years before we could get asked to that. And I did want to get a real chance to wear my dress before I made it over."

"The Prices might have a wedding for Mamie," says Mis' Toplady, reflective. "Like enough with a catyier and all that. But I dunno's Mamie's ever had a beau in her life."

We were to have the exhibit—the Art and Loan Dress Exhibit, we called it—at my house, and I tell you it was fun getti............