Part 50

"'How can heaven begin,' he says, 'till everybody gets there?'

"Yes, he was a dear little chap. I like to think about him. An' I know when he says that, Calliope just put her arms around him, an' her head down, an' set sort o' rockin' back an' forth. An' she says:--

"'Oh, but I think it begins when we don't know.'

"After a while she took him back to bed, little round face lookin' over her shoulder an' big, wide-apart, lonesome eyes an' little sort o' crooked frown, for all the world like the other Calvert Oldmoxon. Just as she come out an' set down again, we heard the click o' the gate acrost at the corner house where the New People lived, an' it was the New Husband got home. We see his wife's white dress get up to meet him, an' they went in the house together, an' we see 'em standin' by the lamp, lookin' at things. Seems though the whole night was sort o'--gentle.

"All of a sudden Calliope unties her apron.

"'Let's dress up,' she says.

"'Dress up!' I says, laughin' some. 'Why, it must be goin' on half-past eight,' I told her.

"'I don't care if it is,' she says; 'I'm goin' to dress up. It seems as though I must.'

"She went inside, an' I followed her. Calliope an' I hadn't no men folks to dress for, but, bein' dressmakers an' lace folks, we had good things to wear. She put on the best thin dress she had--a gray book-muslin; an' I took down a black lawn o' mine. It was such a beautiful night that I 'most knew what she meant. Sometimes you can't do much but fit yourself in the scenery. But I always thought Calliope fit in no matter what she had on. She was so little an' rosy, an' she always kep' her head up like she was singin'.

"'Now what?' I says. For when you dress up, you can't set home. An' then she says slow--an' you could 'a' knocked me over while I listened:--

"'I've been thinkin',' she says, 'that we ought to go up to Oldmoxon house an see that sick person.'

"'Calliope!' I says, 'for the land. You don't want to be refused in!'

"'I don't know as I do an' I don't know but I do,' she answers me. 'I feel like I wanted to be doin' somethin'.'

"With that she out in the kitchen an' begins to fill a basket. Calliope's music didn't prevent her cookin' good, as it does some. She put in I don't know what all good, an' she had me pick some hollyhocks to take along. An' before I knew it, I was out on Daphne Street in the moonlight headin' for Oldmoxon house here that no foot in Friendship had stepped or set inside of in 'most six months.

"'They won't let us in,' I says, pos'tive.

"'Well,' Calliope says, 'seems though I'd like to walk up there a night like this, anyway.'

"An' I wasn't the one to stop her, bein' I sort o' guessed that what started her off was the New People. Those two livin' so near by--lookin' forward to what they was lookin' forward to--so soon after the boy had come to Calliope, an' all, had took hold of her terrible. She'd spent hours handmakin' the little baby-bonnet she was goin' to give 'em. An' then mebbe it was the night some, too, that made her want to come up around this house--because you could 'most 'a' cut the moonlight with a knife.

"They wa'n't any light in the big hall here when we rung the bell, but they lit up an' let us in. Yes, they actually let us in. Mis' Morgan come to the door herself.

"'Come right in,' she says, cordial. 'Come right upstairs.'

"Calliope says somethin' about our bein' glad they could see us.

"'Oh,' says Mis' Morgan, 'I had orders quite a while ago to let in whoever asked. An' you're the first,' she says. 'You're the first.'

"An' then it come to us that this Mis' Morgan we'd all been tryin' to call on was only what you might name the housekeeper. An' so it turned out she was.

"The whole upper hall was dark, like puttin' a black skirt on over your head. But the room we went in was cheerful, with a fire burnin' up. Only it was awful littered up--old newspapers layin' round, used glasses settin' here an' there, water-pitcher empty, an' the lamp-chimney was smoked up, even. The woman said somethin' about us an' went out an' left us with somebody settin' in a big chair by the fire, sick an' wrapped up. An' when we looked over there, Calliope an' I stopped still. It was a man.

"If it'd been me, I'd 'a' turned round an' got out. But Calliope was as brave as two, an' she spoke up.

"'This must be the invalid,' she says, cheerful. 'We hope we see you at the best.'

"The man stirs some an' looks over at us kind o' eager--he was oldish, an' the firelight bein' in his eyes, he couldn't see us.

"'It isn't anybody to see me, is it?' he asks.

"At that Calliope steps forward--I remember how she looked in her pretty gray dress with some light thing over her head, an' her starched white skirts was rustlin' along under, soundin' so genteel she seemed to me like strangers do. When he see her, the man made to get up, but he was too weak for it.