“Eighteen booths,” says Mis’ Timothy Toplady, sighing satisfied. “That’s enough to go round the whole Market Square, leaving breathin’ space between.”

We sat looking at the diagram Mis’ Fire-Chief Merriman had made on the dining-room table, with bees-wax and stuff out of her work-basket, and we all sighed satisfied—but tired too. Because, though it looked like the Friendship Village Home-coming was going to be a success—and a peaceful success—yet we see in the same flash that it was going to be an awful back-aching, feet-burning business for us ladies. We were having our fourth committee meeting to Mis’ Sykes’s, and we weren’t more than begun on the thing; and the Home-coming was only six weeks away.

“Just thinking about all the tracking round it means,” says Mis’ Sykes, “I can feel that sick feeling in the back of my throat now, that I feel when I’m over-tired, or got delegates, or have company pounce down on me.”

Mis’ Hubbelthwait looked at her sympathetic.{276} “I know,” she says. “So tired you can taste it. I donno,” she says, “whether home-comings are worth it or not.”

Mis’ Sykes didn’t answer. She was up on her feet, peering out behind the Nottinghams.

“My land o’ life,” she says, “that’s the stalkin’ image of ’Lisbeth Note.”

“Lisbeth Note!” we all said. “Oh, it can’t be!”

It struck me, even then, how united folks are on a piece of gossip. For the Home-coming some had thought have printed invitations and some had thought send out newspapers, some had wanted free supper and some had wanted pay, and so on, item by item of the afternoon. But the minute Lisbeth Note was mentioned, we all burst into one common, spontaneous fraternal horror: “Oh, no. It couldn’t be her.”

“It is!” cries Mis’ Sykes. “It is. She’s turning in there. I thought I heard ’bus wheels in the night. It serves me right. I’d ought to got out and looked.”

We were all crowded to the window by then, looking over toward old Mis’ Note’s, that lived opposite to Mis’ Sykes’s. So we all saw what we saw. And it was that Mis’ Note’s front door opened and a little boy, ’bout four years old, come shouting down the walk toward{277} Lisbeth. And she stooped over and kissed him. And they went in the house together and shut the door.

Then us ladies turned and stared at each other. And Mis’ Sykes says, swallowing unbeknownst in the middle of what she says: “The brazen hussy. She’s brought it back here.”

I donno whether you’ve ever heard a group of immortal beings, women or men, pounce on and mull over that particular bone? If you live somewheres in this world, I guess mebbe you hev—I guess mebbe you hev. I’m never where it happens, that I don’t turn sick and faint all through me. I don’t know how men handles the subject—here in Friendship Village we don’t mention things that has a tang to ’em, in mixed company. Mebbe men is delicate and gentle and chivalrous when they speak of such things. Mebbe that’s one of the places they use the chivalry some feels so afraid is going to die out. But I might as well own up to you that in Friendship Village us women don’t act neither delicate nor decent in such a case.

There was fourteen women in the room that day, every one of ’em except Abigail Arnold and me living what you might call “protected” lives. I mean by that that men had provided them their homes and was earning them their{278} livings, and clothing their children; and they were caring for the man’s house and, in between, training up the children. Then we were all of us further protected by the church, that we all belonged to and helped earn money for. And also we were protected by the town, that we were all respectable, bill-paying, property-owning, pew-renting citizens of. That was us.

And over against us fourteen was Lisbeth—that her father had died when she was a baby, and her mother had worked since she was born, with no place to leave Lisbeth meantime. And Lisbeth herself had been a nice, sweet-dispositioned, confiding little girl, doing odd jobs to our houses and clerking in our stores in the Christmas rush. Till five years ago—she’d gone away. And we all knew why. Her mother had cried her eyes out in most every one of our kitchens, and we were all in full possession of the facts—unless you count in the name of the little child’s father. We didn’t know that. But then, we had so much to do tearing Lisbeth to pieces we didn’t bother a great deal with that. And there that day was the whole fourteen of us, pitching into Lisbeth Note for what she’d done—just like she was fourteen of herself, our own sizes and our own “protectedness,” and meeting us face to face.{279}

“The idear!” says Mis’ Sykes, shaking her head, with her lips disappearing within her face. “Why, she might have been clerking in the post-office store now, a nice, steady, six-dollar-a-week position just exactly like she was when it happened.”

“Would you think,” says Mis’ Fire-Chief Merriman, “that living here in Friendship Village with us, anybody could go wrong?”

“Sepulchers in sheep’s clothing—that’s what some folks are,” says little new Mis’ Graves, righteous.

And so on. And on. Hashing it all over again and eating it for cake. And me, I wasn’t silent either. I joined in here and there with a little something I’d heard. Till by the time the meeting adjourned, and we’d all agreed to meet two days later and sew on the bunting for the booths, I went home feeling so sick and hurt and sore and skinned that after dark I up and walked straight down to Lisbeth’s house. Yes. After dark. I was a poor, weak, wavering stick, and I knew it.

Lisbeth came to the door. “Hello, Lisbeth,” I says. “It’s Calliope Marsh. Can I come in?”

“Mother ain’t here, Mis’ Marsh,” she says faint.{280}

“Ain’t she, now?” I says. “I bet she is. I’m going inside to hunt for her.”

And I walked right into the sitting-room and turned and looked at Lisbeth. If she’d been defiant, or acted don’t-care, or tossed her head, or stared at me—I donno’s I’d of had the strength to understand that these might be her poor, pitiful weapons. But as it was, her eyes looked straight into mine for a minute, and then brimmed up full of tears. So I kissed her.

We sat there for an hour in the twilight—an hour I’ll never forget. And then she took me up-stairs to show me the boy.

Think of the prettiest child you know. Think of the prettiest child you ever did know. Now think of him laying asleep, all curls and his cheeks flushed and his lips budded open a little bit. That was Chris. That was Little Christopher—Lisbeth’s little boy.

“Miss Marsh,” Lisbeth says, “I’d rather die than not have him with me. And mother ain’t strong, and she needs me. Do you think I done wrong to come home?”

“Done wrong?” I says. “Done wrong to come home? Don’t them words kind of fight each other in the sentence? Of course you didn’t do wrong. Why,” says I, “Lisbeth, this{281} is Friendship Village’s Home-coming year. It’s Home-coming week next month, you know.”

She looked at me wistful there in the dark beside the child’s bed. “Oh, not for me,” she says. “This house is my home—but this town ain’t any more. It don’t want me.”

“It don’t want me,” I says over to myself, going home. And I looked along at the nice, neat little houses, with the front doors standing open to the spring night, and dishes clattering musical here and there in kitchens, getting washed up, and lights up-stairs where children were being put to bed. And I thought, “Never tell me that this little town don’t want everybody that belongs to it to live in it. The town is true. It’s folks that’s false.” I says that over: “The town is true. It’s folks that’s false. How you going to make them know it?”

When it come my turn to have the Homecoming committee meet to my house, things had begun to get exciting. Acceptances had commenced coming in. I’d emptied out my photograph basket, and we had ’em all in it. It was real fun and heart-warming to read ’em. Miss Sykes was presiding—that woman’ll be one of them that comes back from the grave to do table-rapping. She does so love to call anything to order.{282}

“Judge Eustis Bangs is coming,” says Mis’ Sykes, impressive, looking over the envelopes. “They say his wife don’t think anything in the world of having company in to a meal every week or so.”

“ ‘Used-to’ Bangs coming!” cries Mis’ Holcomb-that-was-Mame Bliss. “He set behind me in school. Land, I ain’t seen him since graduating exercises when he dipped my braid in the inkwell.”

“And Sarah Arthur,” Mis’ Sykes went on. “She’s lady bookkeeper in a big department store in the city, and in with all them four hundred.”

“I always wonder,” says Mis’ Holcomb, looking up and frowning meditative, “four hundred what? Do they mean folks, or millionaires, or what do they mean by that?”

“Oh, why millionaires, of course,” says Mis’ Sykes. “It don’t refer to folks. Look-a-here,” she says next. “Admiral and Mrs. Homer is coming. Why, you know he was only bare born here—he went away before he was three months old. And she’s never been here. But they’re coming now. Ladies! A admiral!”

Mis’ Toplady had been sitting still over in one corner, darning, with her mind on it. But now she dropped her husband’s sock, and looked{283} up. “Admiral,” she says over. “That’s something to do with water fighting, ain’t it? Well, I want to know what they call it that for? I thought we didn’t consider it admiral any more to kill folks, by land or by sea?”

“Oh, but he’s an officer,” Mis’ Sykes says worshipful. “He’ll have badges, and like enough pantalettes on his shoulders; and think how nice he’ll look heading the parade!”

Mis’ Toplady kind of bit at her darning-needle, dreamy. “To my mind,” she says, “the only human being that’s fit to head a parade is one that’s just old enough to walk.”

Just then Mis’ Sykes done her most emphatic squeal and pucker, such as, if she was foreign, she would reserve for royalty alone.

“My land,” she says, “Abner Dawes! He’s a-coming. He’s a-coming!”

There couldn’t have been a nicer compliment to any one, my way of thinking, than the little round of smiles and murmurs that run about among us when we heard this.

Abner Dawes had been, thirty years before, a nice, shy man round the village, and we all liked him, because he had such a nice, kind way with him and particularly because he had such a way with children. He used to sing ’em little{284} songs he made up. And some of the little songs got in the paper and got copied in the city paper; and first thing we knew, a big firm sent for Abner, and he’d been gone ever since. We heard of him, now doing his children-songs on the stage, now in a big, beautiful book of children’s songs, with pictures, that had been sent back to the village. And we were prouder of him than ’most anybody we’d got. And here he was coming to the Home-coming.

“We must give him the Principal Place, whatever that is,” says Mis’ Sykes, immediate. And we all agreed. Yes, Abner must have the Principal Place.

We were sewing, that afternoon, on the bunting for Eppleby Holcomb’s store’s booth. Blazing red, it was—ain’t it queer how men loves red? Color of blood and color of fire; but I always think it means they’ll be ready to love not blood of war but blood-brotherhood, and not the torch to burn with, but the torch to light with—when the time comes. Yes, I bet men’s liking red means something, and I like to think it means that. And if it does, Eppleby’ll be first among men, for he didn’t want a stitch of his booth that wasn’t flaming scarlet.

We had the diagram all made out on the table again, so’s to tell what colors would come{285} next to which. And all of a sudden Mis’ Sykes put her finger in the middle of it.

“Do you know what?” she says. “If that tree wasn’t in the middle there, we could have a great big evening bon-fire, with everybody around it.”

“So we could. Wouldn’t that be nice?” says everybody—only me. Because the tree they meant was the Christmas tree, the big evergreen, the living Christmas tree that had stood there in the square, all lit, that last Christmas Eve, with all of us singing round it.

“I can’t ever think of that being in anybody’s way,” I says, and everybody says, “Perhaps not,” and we went on tearing off the lengths of blazing red calico. And me, I set there thinking about what they’d said.

I remember I was still thinking about it, and Mis’ Sykes and I were standing up together measuring off the breadths, when the front door opened. And there was standing Chris, Lisbeth’s little boy. Him and I’d got to be awful good friends almost from the first. He come over to my house quite a lot, and kneeled on a chair side of the table when I was doing my baking, and he brought me in pans of chips. And no little fellow whatever was ever sweeter.{286}

“Hello, dear,” I says now. “Come in, won’t you?”

He stood quiet, eying us. And Mis’ Sykes down she drops the cloth and made a dive for him.

“You darling!” says she—her emphasis coming out in bunches, the way some women’s does when they talk to children. “You darling! Whose little boy are you?”

He looked at her, shy and sweet. “I’m my mamma’s little boy,” he says, ready. “But my papa, he didn’t come—not yet.”

I looked over to Mis’ Sykes, squatting with both arms around the baby. “He’s Lisbeth’s little boy,” I says. “Ain’t he d-e-a-r?”—I spells it.

Mis’ Sykes-drew back, like the little fellow had hit at her. “Mercy!” she says, only—and got up, and went on tearing cloth.

He felt it, like little children do feel ever so much more than we know they feel. I see his little lip begin to curl. I went and whispered that we’d go find an orange in the pantry, and I took him to get it; and then he went off.

When I went back in the sitting-room they all kind of kept still, like they’d been saying things they didn’t mean I should hear. Only that little new Mis’ Morgan Graves, she sat with her back to the door and she was speaking.{287}

“...for one Sunday. But when I found it out, I took Bernie right out of the class. Of course it don’t matter so much now, but when they get older, you can’t be too careful.”

I went and stood back of her chair.

“Oh, yes, you can,” says I. (We try here in Friendship Village not to contradict our guests too flat; but when it’s a committee meeting, of course a hostess feels more free.) “You can be a whole lot too careful,” I went on. “You can be so careful that you act like we wasn’t all seeds in one great big patch of earth, same as we are.”

“Well, but, Calliope,” says Mis’ Sykes, “you can’t take that child in. You ain’t any children, or you’d know how a mother feels. An illegitimate child——”

Then I boiled over and sissed on the tip of the stove. “Stop that!” I says. “Chris ain’t any more illegitimate than I am. True, he’s got a illegitimate father bowing around somewheres in polite society. And Lisbeth—well, she’s bore him and she’s raised him and she’s paid his keep for four years, and I ain’t prepared to describe what kind of mother she is by any one word in the dictionary. But the minute you tack that one word on to Chris, well,” says I, “you got me to answer to.”{288}

“But, Calliope!” cries Mis’ Sykes. “You can’t take him in without taking in the mother!”

“No,” says I, “and I’ve took her in already. Is my morals nicked any to speak of? Mind you,” I says, “I ain’t arguin’ with you to take in anybody up till they want to be took in and do right. I’ve got my own ideas on that too, but I ain’t arguing it with you here. All I say now is, Why not take in Lisbeth?”

“Why not put a premium on evil-doing and have done with it?” says Mis’ Fire-Chief Merriman, majestic and deep-toned.

“Well,” I says, “we’ve done that to the father’s evil. Maybe you can tell me why we fixed up his premium so neat?”

“Oh, well,” says Mis’ Sykes, “surely we needn’t argue it. Why, the whole of civilization is on our side and responsible for our way of thinking. You ain’t got no argument, Calliope,” she says. “Besides, it ain’t what any of us thinks that proves it. It’s what’s what that counts.”

“Civilization,” says I. “And time. They’re responsible for a good deal, ain’t they? Wars and martyrdom and burnings and—crucifixion. All done in the immortal name of what’s what. Well, me, I don’t care a cake o’ washing soap what’s what. What’s what ain’t nothing but a{289} foot-bridge anyhow, on over to what’s-going-to-be. And if you tell me that civilization and time can keep going much longer putting a premium on a man’s wrong and putting a penalty on the woman—then I tell you to your face that I’ve got inside information that you ain’t got. Because in the end—in the end, life ain’t that sort.”

“Good for you, Calliope!” says a voice in the door. And when I’d wheeled round, there stood Eppleby Holcomb, come in to see how we were getting along with the cloth for his booth. “Good for you,” he says, grave.

We all felt stark dumb with embarrassment—I guess they hadn’t one of us ever said that much in company with a man present in our lives. In company, with man or men present, we’d talked like life was made up of the pattern of things, and like speaking of warp and woof wasn’t delicate. And we never so much as let on they was any knots—unless it was property knots or like that. But now I had to say something, being I had said something. And besides, I wanted to.

“Do you believe that too, Eppleby?” I ask’ him breathless. “Do any men believe that?”

“Some men do, thank God,” Eppleby says.{290} And his wife, Mame, smiled over to him; and Mis’ Timothy Toplady, she booms out: “Yes, let’s thank God!” And I see that anyhow we four felt one. And “Is this stuff for my blazing booth here?” Eppleby sings out, to relieve the strain. And we all talked at once.

From that day on it seemed as if the whole town took sides about Lisbeth.

Half of ’em talked like Mis’ Sykes, often and abundant. And one-quarter didn’t say much of anything till they were pressed to. And the remaining one-quarter didn’t say anything for fear of offending the other three-fourths, here and there. But some went to see Lisbeth, and sent her in a little something. She didn’t go much of anywheres—she was shy of accepting pity where it would embarrass the givers. But oh my, how she did need friends!

Mame Holcomb was the only one that Lisbeth went to her house by invite. Mame let it be known that she had invited her, and full half of them she’d asked sent in their regrets in consequence. And of them that did go—well, honest, of all the delicate tasks the Lord has intrusted to His blundering children, I think the delicatest is talking to one of us that’s somehow stepped off the track in public.{291}

I heard Mis’ Morgan Graves trying to talk to Lisbeth about like this: “My dear child. How do you get on?”

“Very nice, thank you, Mis’ Graves,” says Lisbeth.

“Is there anything I can do to help you?” the lady pursues, earnest.

“No, Mis’ Graves, nothing—thank you,” says Lisbeth, looking down.

“You know I’d be so willing, so very willing, to do a............