Part 2

"'You might have town parties, have the parties in schools and in the town hall,' Insley goes on, 'and talk over the Cemetery that belongs to you all, and talk over the other things besides the Cemetery that belong to you all. Maybe I could help,' he adds, 'though I own up to you now I'm really more fond of folks--speaking by and large--than I am of tombstones.'

"He said a little more to us, about how folks was doing in the world outside the village, and he was so humorous about it that they never knew how something inside him was hopping with hope, like I betted it was, with his young, divine enthusiasm. And when he'd got done he waited, all grave and eager, for somebody to peep up. And it was, as it would be, Silas Sykes who spoke first.

"'It's all right, it's all right,' says he, 'so long as Sodality don't go meddling in the village affairs--petitionin' the council and protestin' an' so on. That gets any community all upset.'

"'That's so,' says Timothy, nodding. 'Meetin', singin' songs, servin' lemonade an' plantin' things in the ground is all right enough. It helps on the fellow feelin' amazin'. But pitchin' in for reforms and things--' Timothy shook his head.

"'As to reforms,' says Insley, 'give me the fellowship, and the reforms will take care of themselves.'

"'Things is quite handy about takin' their course, though,' says Silas, 'so be we don't yank open the cocoons an' buds an' others.'

"'Well,' says Mis' Uppers, 'I can't do much more, Professor. I'm drove to death, as it is. I don't even get time to do my own improvin' round the place.' Mis' Uppers always makes that her final argument. 'Sew for the poor?' I've heard her say. 'Why, I can't even get my own fall sewing done.'

"'Me, too,' and, 'Me, either,' went round the circle. And, 'I can't do a great deal myself,' says Mis' Sykes, 'not till after my niece goes away.'

"I thought, 'I shouldn't think you could tend to much of anything else, not with Miss Beryl Sessions in the house.' That was the Sykes's niece, till then unknown to them, that we'd all of us heard nothing but, since long before she come. But of course I kept still, part because I was expecting an unknown niece of my own in a week or so, and your unknown relatives is quite likely to be glass houses.

"'Another thing,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'don't let's us hold any doin's in this church, kicking up the new cork that the Ladies' Aid has just put down on the floor. It'll all be tracked up in no time, letting in Tom, Dick, and Harry.'

"'Don't let's get the church mixed up in anything outside, for pity's sakes,' says Silas. 'The trustees'll object to our meeting here, if we quit working for a dignified object and go to making things mutual, promiscuous. Churches has got to be church-like.'

"'Well, Silas,' says Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying anything, 'I donno as some of us could bring ourselves to think of Christ as real Christ-like, if he come back the way he use' to be.'

"Insley sat looking round on them all, still with his way of saying good morning on a good day. I wondered if he wasn't wishing that they'd hang on that way to something worth hanging to. For I've always thought, and I think now, that they's a-plenty of stick-to-itiveness in the world; but the trouble is, it's stuck to the wrong thing.

"The talk broke up after that, like somebody had said something in bad taste; and we conversed around in groups, and done our best to make 'way with the refreshments. And Insley set talking to Mis' Eleanor Emmons, the new widow, lately moved in.

"About Mis' Emmons the social judgment of Friendship Village was for the present hanging loose. This was partly because we didn't understand her name.

"'My land, was her husband a felon or a thief or what that she don't use his name?' everybody asked everybody. 'What's she stick her own name in front of his last name like that for? Sneaked out of usin' his Christian name as soon as his back was turned, _I_ call it,' said some. 'My land, I'd use my dead husband's forename if it was Nebuchadnezzar. _My_ opinion, we'd best go slow till she explains herself.'

"But I guess Insley had more confidence.

"'You'll help, I know?' I heard him say to Mis' Emmons.

"'My friend,' she says back, 'whatever I can do I'll do. It's a big job you're talking about, you know.'

"'It's _the_ big job,' says Insley, quiet.

"Pretty soon Mis' Toplady got up on her feet, drawing her shawl up her back.

"'Well,' she says, 'whatever you decide, count on me--I'll always do for chinkin' in. I've got to get home now and set my bread or it won't be up till day _after_ to-morrow. Ready, Timothy? Good night all.'

"She went towards the door, Timothy following. But before they got to it, it opened, and somebody come in, at the sight of who Mis' Toplady stopped short and the talk of the rest of us fell away. No stranger, much, comes to Friendship Village without our knowing it, and to have a stranger walk unbeknownst into the very lecture-room of the First Church was a thing we never heard of, without he was a book agent or a travelling man.

"Here, though, was a stranger--and such a stranger. She was so unexpected and so dazzling that it shot through my head she was like a star, taking refuge from all the roughness and the rain outside--a star, so it come in my head, using up its leisure on a cloudy night with peepin' in here and there to give out brightness anyway. The rough, dark cheviot that the girl wore was sort of like a piece of storm-cloud clinging about that brightness--a brightness of wind-rosy face and blowy hair, all uncovered. She stood on the threshold, holding her wet umbrella at arm's length out in the entry.

"'I beg your pardon. Are you ready, Aunt Eleanor?' she asked.

"Mis' Eleanor Emmons turned and looked at her.

"'Robin!' she says. 'Why, you must be wet through.'

"'I'm pretty wet,' says the girl, serene, 'I'm so messy I won't come in. I'll just stop out here on the steps. Don't hurry.'

"'Wait a minute,' Mis' Emmons says. 'Stay where you are then, please, Robin, and meet these people.'

"The girl threw the door wide, and she stepped back into the vestibule, where her umbrella had been trailing little puddles; and she stood there against the big, black background of the night and the village, while Mis' Emmons presented her.

"'This is my niece, Miss Sidney,' she told us. 'She has just come to me to-day--for as long as I can keep her. Will you all come to see her?'

"It wasn't much the way Mis' Sykes had done, singing praises of Miss Beryl Sessions for weeks on end before she'd got there; nor the way I was doing, wondering secret about my unknown niece, and what she'd be like. Mis' Emmons introduced her niece like she'd always been one of us. She said our names over, and we went towards her; and Miss Sidney leaned a little inside the frame of the doorway and put out her hand to us all, a hand that didn't have any glove on and that in spite of the rain, was warm.

"'I'm so sorry,' she says, 'I'm afraid I'm disgracing Aunt Eleanor. But I couldn't help it. I love to walk in the rain.'

"'That's what rain is for,' Insley says to her; and I see the two change smiles before Mis' Hubbelthwait's 'Well, I do hope you've got some good high rubbers on your feet' made the girl grave again--a sweet grave, not a stiff grave. You can be grave both ways, and they're as different from each other as soup from hot water.

"'I have, thank you,' she says, 'big storm boots. Did you know,' she adds, 'that somebody else is waiting out here? Somebody's little bit of a beau? And I'm afraid he's gone to sleep.'

"We looked at one another, wondering. Who was waiting for any of us? 'Not me,' one after another says, positive. 'We've all raced home alone from this church since we was born,' Mis' Uppers adds, true enough.

"We was curious, with that curiosity that it's kind of fun to have, and we all crowded forward into the entry. And a little to one side of the shining lamp path was setting a child--a little boy, with a paper bag in his arms.

II

"Who on earth was he, we wondered to ourselves, and we all jostled forward, trying to see down to him, us women lifting up our skirts from the entry wet. He was like a little wad of clothes, bunched up on the top step, but inside them the little fellow was all curled up, sleeping. And we knew he hadn't come for any of us, and he didn't look like he was waiting for anybody in particular.

"Silas fixed up an explanation, ready-done:--

"'He must belong down on the flats,' says Silas. 'The idear of his sleepin' here. I said we'd oughter hev a gate acrost the vestibule.'

"'Roust him up an' start him home,' says Timothy Toplady, adviceful.

"'I will,' says Silas, that always thinks it's his share to do any unclaimed managing; and he brought down his hand towards the child's shoulder. But his hand didn't get that far.

"'Let me wake him up,' says Robin Sidney.

"She laid her umbrella in the wet of the steps and, Silas being surprised into giving way, she stooped over the child. She woke him up neither by speaking to him nor grasping his arm, but she just slipped her hands along his cheeks till her hands met under his chin, and she lifted up his chin, gentle.

"'Wake up and look at me,' she says.

"The child opened his eyes, with no starting or bewildering, and looked straight up into her face. There was light enough for us all to see that he smiled bright, like one that's real glad some waiting is done. And she spoke to him, not making a point of it and bringing it out like she'd aimed it at him, but just matter-of-fact gentle and commonplace tender.

"'Whose little boy are you?' she ask' him.

"'I'm goin' with whoever wants me to go with 'em,' says the child.

"'But who are you--where do you live?' she says to him. 'You live, don't you--in this town?'

"The child shook his head positive.

"'I lived far,' he told her, 'in that other place. I come up here with my daddy. He says he might not come back to-night.'

"Robin Sidney knelt right down before him on the wet steps.

"'Truly,' she said, 'haven't you any place to go to-night?'

"'Oh, yes,' says the child, 'he says I must go with whoever wants me to go with 'em. Do--do you?'

"At that Miss Sidney looked up at us, swift, and down again. The wind had took hold of a strand of her hair and blew it across her eyes, and she was pushing it away as she got up. And by then Insley was standing before her, back of the little boy, that he suddenly stooped down and picked up in his arms.

"'Let's get inside, shall we?' he says, commanding. 'Let's all go back in and see about him.'

"We went back into the church, even Silas taking orders, though of course that was part curiosity; and Insley sat down with the child on his knee, and held out the child's feet in his hand.

"'He's wet as a rat,' he says. 'Look at his shoes.'

"'Well-a, make him tell his name, why don't you?' says Mis' Sykes, sharp. '_I_ think we'd ought to find out who he is. What's your name, Boy?' she adds, brisk.

"Insley dropped the boy's feet and took a-hold of one of his hands. 'Yes,' he says, hasty, 'we must try to do that.' But he looked right straight over Mis' Sykes's shoulder to where, beyond the others, Robin Sidney was standing. 'He was your friend first,' he said to her. 'You found him.'

"She come and knelt down beside the child where, on Insley's knee, he sat staring round, all wondering and questioning, to the rest of us. But she seemed to forget all about the rest of us, and I loved the way she was with that little strange boy. She kind of put her hands on him, wiping the raindrops off his face, unbuttoning his wet coat, doing a little something to his collar; and every touch was a kind of a little stroke that some women's hands give almost without their knowing it. I loved to watch her, because I'm always as stiff as a board with a child--unless I'm alone with them. Then I ain't.

"'My name's Robin,' she says to the little fellow. 'What's yours, dear?'

"'Christopher,' he says right off. 'First, Christopher. An' then John. An' then Bartlett. Have you only got one name?' he asked her.

"'Yes, I've got two,' she says. 'The rest of mine is Sidney. Where--'

"'Only two?' says the child. 'Why, I've got three.'

"'Only two,' she answers. 'Where did your father go--don't you know that, Christopher?'

"That seemed to make him think of something, and he looked down at his paper bag.

"'First he bringed me these,' he says, and his face lighted up and he held out his bag to her. 'You can have one my cream-puffs,' he offers her, magnificent. I held my breath for fear she wouldn't take it, but she did. 'What fat ones!' she says admiring, and held it in her hand while she asked him more. It was real strange how we stood around, us older women and all, waiting for her to see what she could get out of him. But there wasn't any use. He was to go with whoever asked him to go--that was all he knew.

"Silas Sykes snaps his watch. 'It's gettin' late,' he gives out, with a backward look at nothing in particular. 'Hadn't we best just leave him at the police station? Threat Hubbelthwait and me go right past there.'

"Mis' Toplady, she sweeps round on him, pulling her shawl over her shoulders--one of them gestures of some women that makes it seem like even them that works hard and don't get out much of anywhere has motions left in them that used to be motioned in courts and castles and like that. 'Police station! Silas Sykes,' says she, queenly, 'you put me in mind of a stone wall, you're that sympathizin'.'

"'Well, _we_ can't take him, Amandy,' Timothy Toplady reminds her, hurried. 'We live too far. 'Twouldn't do to walk him 'way there.' Timothy will give, but he wants to give to his own selected poor that he knows about; an' he won't never allow himself no luxuries in givin' here an' there, when something just happens to come up.

"'Land, he may of come from where there's disease--you can't tell,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I think we'd ought to go slow.'

"'Yes,' says two-three others, 'we'd best go slow. Why, his father may be looking for him.'

"Mis' Eleanor Emmons spoke up serene.

"'While we're going slow,' she says, 'I think I'll just take him home and get his feet dry. I live the nearest. Mr. Sykes, you might report him at the police station as you go by, in case someone is looking for him. And if nobody inquires, he can sleep on my couch beside my grate fire to-night. Can't he, Robin?'

"'I'd love it,' says the girl.

"'Excellent,' says Insley, and set the little boy on his feet.

"But when he done that, the child suddenly swung round and caught Miss Sidney's arm and looked up in her face; and his little nose was screwed up alarming.

"'What _is_ it--what's the matter, Christopher?' she ask' him. And the rest of us that had begun moving to go, stopped to listen. And in that little stillness Christopher told us:--

"'Oh,' he says, 'it's that hole near my biggest toe. My biggest toe went right through that hole. And it's _chokin'_ me.'

"Just exactly as if a hand had kind of touched us all, a nice little stir went round among us women. And with that, Insley, who had been standing there so big and strong and able and willing, and waiting for a chance to take hold, he just simply put his hands on his knees and stooped over and made his back right for the little fellow to climb up on. The child knew what it was for, soon enough--we see somebody somewheres must of been doing it for him before, for he scrambled right up, laughing, and Miss Sidney helping him. And a kind of a little ripple, that wan't no true words, run round among us all. Most women and some men is strong on ripples of this sort, but when it comes right down to doing something in consequence, we ain't so handy.

"'Leave me come along and help take care of him a little while,' I says; and I thought it was because I was ashamed of myself and trying to make up for not offering before. But I think really what was the matter with me was that I just plain wanted to go along with that little boy.

"'I'm your automobile,' says Insley to the little fellow, and he laughed out, delighted, hanging onto his paper sack.

"'If you'll give me the big umbrella, Aunt Eleanor,' says Miss Sidney on the church steps, 'I'll try to keep the rain off the automobile and the passenger.'

"The rain had just about stopped when we four started down Daphne Street. The elms and maples along the sidewalk was dripping soft, and everybody's gardens was laying still, like something new had happened to them. It smelled good, and like everything outdoors was going to start all over again and be something else, sweeter.

"When we got most to Mis' Emmon's gate, I stopped stock still, looking at something shining on the hill. It was Proudfit House, lit up from top to bottom--the big house on the hill that had stood there, blind and dark, for months on end.

"'Why, some of the Proudfits must of come home,' I says out loud.

"Mis' Emmons answered up, all unexpected to me, for I never knew she knew the Proudfits. 'Mr. Alex Proudfit is coming on to-morrow,' she says. And I sort of resented her that was so near a stranger in the village hearing this about Alex Proudfit before I did, that had known him since he was in knickerbockers.

"'Am I keeping the rain off you two people?' Miss Sidney asks as, at the corner, we all turned our backs on Proudfit House.

"'Nobody,' Insley says--and his voice was always as smooth and round as wheels running along under his words, 'nobody ever kept the rain off as you are keeping it off, Miss Sidney.'

"And, 'I did walked all that way--in that rain,' says Christopher, sleepy, in his automobile's collar.

III

"If it was anyways damp or chilly, Mis' Emmons always had a little blaze in the grate--not a heat blaze, but just a Come-here blaze. And going into her little what-she-called living-room at night, I always thought was like pushing open some door of the dark to find a sort of cubby-corner hollowed out from the bigger dark for tending the homey fire. That rainy night we went in from the street almost right onto the hearth. And it was as pleasant as taking the first mouthful of something.

"Insley, with Christopher still on his back, stood on the rug in front of the door and looked round him.

"'How jolly it always looks here, Mrs. Emmons,' he says. 'I never saw such a hearty place.'

"I donno whether you've ever noticed the difference in the way women bustle around? Most nice women do bustle when something comes up that needs it. Some does it light and lifty, like fairies going around on missions; and some does it kind of crackling and nervous, like goblins on business. Mis' Emmons was the first kind, and it was real contagious. You caught it yourself and begun pulling chairs around and seeing to windows and sort of settling away down deep into the minute. She begun doing that way now, seeing to the fire and the lamp-shade and the sofa, and wanting everybody to be dry and comfortable, instant.

"'You are so good-natured to like my room,' she says. 'I furnished it for ten cents--yes, not much more. The whole effect is just colour,' she says. 'What I have to do without in quality I go and wheedle out of the spectrum. What _should_ we do without the rainbow? And what in the world am I going to put on that child?'

"Insley let Christopher down on the rug by the door, and there he stood, dripping, patient, holding his paper bag, and not looking up and around him, same as a child will in a strange room, but just looking hard at the nice, red, warm blaze. Miss Sidney come and stooped over him, with that same little way of touching him, like loving.

"'Let's go and be dry now,' she says, 'and then let's see what we can find in the pantry.'

"The little fellow, he just laughed out, soft and delicious, with his head turned away and without saying anything.

"'I never said such a successful thing,' says Miss Sidney, and led him upstairs where we could hear Mis' Emmons bustling around cosey.

"Mr. Insley and I sat down by the fire. I remember I looked over towards him and felt sort of nervous, he was so good looking and so silent. A good-looking _talking_ man I ain't afraid of, because I can either admire or despise him immediate, and either way it gives me something to do answering back. But one that's still, it takes longer to make out, and it don't give you no occupation for your impressions. And Insley, besides being still, was so good looking that it surprised me every new time I see him. I always wanted to say: Have you been looking like that all the time since I last saw you, and how _do_ you keep it up?

"He had a face and a body that showed a good many men looking out of 'em at you, and all of 'em was men you'd like to of known. There was scholars that understood a lot, and gentlemen that acted easy, and outdoor men that had pioneered through hard things and had took their joy of the open. All of them had worked hard at him--and had give him his strength and his merriness and his big, broad shoulders and his nice, friendly boyishness, and his eyes that could see considerably more than was set before them. By his own care he had knit his body close to life, and I know he had knit his spirit close to it, too. As I looked over at him that night, my being nervous sort of swelled up into a lump in my throat and I wanted to say inside me: O God, ain't it nice, ain't it nice that you've got some folks like him?

"He glanced over to me, kind of whimsical.

"'Are you in favour of folks or tombstones?' he asks, with his eyebrows flickering up.

"'Me?' I says. 'Well, I don't want to be clannish, but I do lean a good deal towards folks.'

"'You knew what I meant to-night?' he says.

"'Yes,' I answered, 'I knew.'

"'I thought you did,' he says grave.

"Then he lapsed into keeping still again and so did I, me through not quite knowing what to say, and him--well, I wasn't sure, but I thought he acted a good deal as if he had something nice to think about. I've seen that look on people's faces sometimes, and it always makes me feel a little surer that I'm a human being. I wondered if it was his new work he was turning over, or his liking the child's being cared for, or the mere nice minute, there by the grate fire. Then a door upstairs shut, and somebody come down and into the room, and when he got up, his look sort of centred in that new minute.

"It was Miss Sidney that come in, and she set down by the fire like something pleased her.

"'Aunt Eleanor is going to decorate Christopher herself,' she says. 'She believes that she alone can do whatever comes up in this life to be done, and usually she's right.'

"Insley stood looking at her for a minute before he set down again. She had her big black cloak off by then, and she was wearing a dress-for-in-the-house that was all rosy. She wasn't anything of the star any longer. She was something more than a star. I always think one of the nicest commonplace minutes in a woman's everyday is when she comes back from somewheres outside the house where she's been, and sets down by the fire, or by a window, or just plain in the middle of the room. They always talk about pigeons 'homing'; I wish't they kept that word for women. It seems like it's so exactly what they _do_ do.

"'I love the people,' Miss Sidney went on, 'that always feel that way--that if something they're interested in is going to be really well done, then they must do it themselves.'

"Insley always knew just what anybody meant--I'd noticed that about him. His mind never left what you'd said floating round, loose ends in the room, without your knowing whether it was going to be caught and tied; but he just nipped right onto your remark and _tied it in the right place_.