Part 3 (1/2)

”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 do for. Since the Cadozas went, we ain't known which way to look for poor. Mis' Ricker gettin' her fortune so puts her beyond the wolf. An' Peleg Bemus, you can't _get_ him to take anything. No, I don't know of anybody real decently poor.”

”An' n.o.body sick?” Calliope pressed her wistfully.

”Well, there's Mis' Crawford,” admitted Mis' Uppers; ”she had a spell o'

lumbago two weeks ago, but I see her pa.s.s the house to-day. Mis' Brady was laid up with toothache, too, but the _Daily_ last night said she'd had it out. An' Mis' Doctor Helman did have one o' her stomach attacks this week, an' Elzabella got out her dyin' dishes an' her dyin' linen from the still-room--you know how Mis' Doctor always brings out her nice things when she's sick, so't if she should die an' the neighbours come in, it'd all be s.h.i.+pshape. But she got better this time an' helped put 'em back. I declare it's hard to get up anything in the charity line here.”

Calliope sat smiling a little, and I knew that it was because of her secret certainty that ”some o' the hunger” would come her way, to be fed.

”I can't help thinkin',” she said quietly, ”that we'll find somebody.

An' I tell you what: if we do, can I count on you to help some?”

Mis' Mayor Uppers flushed with quick pleasure.

”Me, Calliope?” she said. And I remembered that they had told me how the Friends.h.i.+p Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality had been unable to tempt Mis' Uppers to a single meeting since the mayor ran away. ”Oh, but I couldn't though,” she said wistfully.

”No need to go to the table if you don't want,” Calliope told her. ”Just bake up somethin' for us an' bring it over. Make a couple o' your cherry pies--did you get hold of any cherries to put up this year? Well, a couple o' your cherry pies an' a batch o' your nice drop sponge cakes,”

she directed. ”Could you?”

Mis' Mayor Uppers looked up with a kind of light in her eyes.

”Why, yes,” she said, ”I could, I guess. I'll bake 'em Thanksgivin'

mornin'. I--I was wonderin' how I'd put in the day.”

When we stepped out in the snow again, Calliope's face was s.h.i.+ning.

Sometimes now, when my faith is weak in any good thing, I remember her look that November morning. But all that I thought then was how I was being entertained that lonely day.

The dear Liberty sisters were next, Lucy and Viny and Libbie Liberty. We went to the side door,--there were houses in Friends.h.i.+p whose front doors we tacitly understood that we were never expected to use,--and we found the sisters down cellar, with shawls over their heads, feeding their hens through the cellar window, opening on the gla.s.sed-in coop under the porch.

In Friends.h.i.+p it is a point of etiquette for a morning caller never to interrupt the employment of a hostess. So we obeyed the summons of the Liberty sisters to ”come right down”; and we sat on a firkin and an inverted tub while Calliope told her plan and the hens fought for delectable morsels.

”My grief!” said Libbie Liberty, tartly, ”where you goin' to _get_ your sick an' poor?”

Mis' Viny, balancing on the window ledge to reach for eggs, looked back at us.

”Friends.h.i.+p's so comfortable that way,” she said, ”I don't see how you can get up much of anything.”

And little Miss Lucy, kneeling on the floor of the cellar to measure more feed, said without looking up:--

”You know, since mother died we ain't never done anything for holidays.

No--we can't seem to want to think about Thanksgiving or Christmas or like that.”

They all turned their grave lined faces toward us.

”We want to let the holidays just slip by without noticin',” Miss Viny told us. ”Seems like it hurts less that way.”

Libbie Liberty smiled wanly.

”Don't you know,” she said, ”when you hold your hand still in hot water, you don't feel how hot the water really is? But when you move around in it some, it begins to burn you. Well, when we let Thanksgiving an'