Part 45

Mis' Sturgis in the rocking-chair was waving a corner of her shawl.

"C-canaries!" she cried. "I can rise canary-birds an' sell 'em a dollar apiece in the city. I m-meant to slide out account o' my health, but it was just because I hate to muss 'round b-boilin' eggs for the little ones. I'll raise a couple or two--mebbe more."

"My good land!" came Miss Liddy Ember's piping falsetto; "to think o' my sittin' up, hesitatin', when new dresses just falls off the ends o' my fingers. An' me in my right mind, too."

Dear Doctor June stood up among us, his face shining.

"Bless us," he said. "Didn't I have some spiræa in my hand right while I stood talking to you the other afternoon in my garden? And haven't I got some tricolored Barbary varieties of chrysanthemums, and some hardy roses and one thing and another to make men marvel? And can't I sell 'em in the city at a pretty profit? What I've got in my hand is seeds and slips--I see that plain enough. And my stars, out they go!"

Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Mayor Uppers, even Mis' Postmaster Sykes--ah, they all knew what to do, knew it as if somebody had been saying it over and over, and as if they now first listened.

But Ellen Ember sat crying, her face buried in her hands. And I think that she cannot have understood, even when Doctor June touched her hair and said something of the little leaven which leaveneth the whole lump.

Last, the Reverend Arthur Bliss arose, and there was a sudden hush among us, for it was as if a new spirit shone in his strong young face.

"Dear friends," he said, "dear friends ..." And then, "Lord God," he prayed abruptly, "show me what is that in my hand--thy tool where I had looked for my sword!"

XVII

PUT ON THY BEAUTIFUL GARMENTS

"I donno," Calliope said, as, on her return, we talked about Ellen Ember, "I guess I kind o' believe in craziness."

Calliope's laugh often made me think of a bluebird's note, which is to say, of the laughter of a child. Bluebirds are the little children among birds, as robins are the men, house-wrens the women, scarlet tanagers the unrealities and humming-birds the fairies.

"Only," Calliope added, "I do say you'd ought to hev some sort o' leadin' strap even to craziness, an' that I ain't got an' never had. I guess folks thinks I'm rill lunar when I take the notion. Only thing comforts me, they don't know how lunar I rilly can be."

Then she told me about 'Leven.

"A shroud, to look rill nice," Calliope said, "ought to be made as much as you can like a dress--barrin' t' you can't fit it. Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb an' I made Jennie Crapwell's shroud--it was white mull and a little narrow lace edge on a rill life-like collar. We finished it the noon o' the day after Jennie died,--you know Jennie was Delia's stepsister that they'd run away from--an' I brought it over to my house an' pressed it an' laid it on the back bedroom bed--the room I don't use excep' for company an' hang my clean dresses in the closet of.

"In the afternoon I went up to the City on a few little funeral urrants,--a crape veil for Jennie's mother an' like that,--you know Jennie died first. We wasn't goin' to dress her till the next mornin'--her mother wanted we should leave her till then in her little pink sacque she'd wore, an' the soft lavender cloth they use now spread over her careless. An' we wanted to, too, because sence Mis' Jeweler Sprague died nobody could do up the Dead's hair, an' Jennie wa'n't the exception.

"Mis' Sprague, she'd hed a rill gift that way. She always done folks' hair when they died an' she always got it like life--she owned up how, after she begun doin' it so much, she used to set in church an' in gatherin's and find herself lookin' at the backs of heads to see if they was two puffs or three, an' whether the twist was under to left or over to right--so's she'd know, if the time come. But none of us could get Jennie's to look right. We studied her pictures an' all too, but best we could do we got it all drawed back, abnormal.

"I was 'most all the afternoon in the City, an' it was pretty warm--a hot April followin' on a raw March. I stood waitin' for the six o'clock car an', my grief, I was tired. My feet ached like night in preservin' time. An' I was thinkin' how like a dunce we are to live a life made up mostly of urrants an' feetache followin'. Yet, after all, the right sort o' urrants an' like that is life--an', if they do ache, 'tain't like your feet was your soul. Well, an' just before the car come, up arrove the girl.

"I guess she was towards thirty, but she seemed even older, 'count o' bein' large an' middlin' knowin'. First I see her was a check gingham sleeve reachin' out an' she was elbowed up clost by me. 'Say,' she says, 'couldn't you gimme a nickel? I'm starved hollow.' She didn't look it special--excep' as thin, homely folks always looks sort o' hungry. An' she was homely--kind o' coarse made, more like a shed than a dwellin' house. Her dress an' little flappy cape hed the looks o' bein' held on by her shoulders alone, an' her hands was midnight dirty.

"I was feelin' just tired enough to snap her up.

"'A nickel!' s'I, crisp, 'give you a nickel! An' what you willin' to give me?'

"She looked sort o' surprised an' foolish an' her mouth open.

"'Huh?' s'she, intelligent as the back o' somethin'.

"'You,' I says, 'are some bigger an' some stronger'n me. What you goin' to give me?'

"Well, sir, the way she dropped her arms down sort o' hit at me, it was so kitten helpless. I took that in rather than her silly, sort o' insultin' laugh.

"'I can't do nothin',' she told me--an' all to once I saw how it was, an' that that was what ailed her. I didn't stop to think no more'n as if I didn't hev a brain to my name. 'Well,' I says, 'I'll give you a nickel. Leastways, I'll spend one on you. You take this car,' I says, 'an' come on over to Friendship with me. An' we'll see.'

"She come without a word, like goin' or stayin' was all of a piece to her, an' her relations all dead. When I got her on the car I begun to see what a fool thing I'd done, seemin'ly. An' yet, I donno. I wouldn't 'a' left a month-old baby there on the corner. I'd 'a' bed to 'a' done for that, like you do--I s'pose to keep the world goin'. An' that woman was just as helpless as a month-old. Some are. I s'pose likely," Calliope said thoughtfully, "we got more door-steps than we think, if we get 'em all located.