Part 8

"'Well,' she says, 'supposin'. Are we runnin' this paper or ain't we? There's nothin' to prevent our writin' editorials about these things, as I see. Our husbands can't very well sue us for libel, because they'd hev to pay it themselves. Nor they can't put us in prison for debt, because who'd get their three meals? I can't see but we're sure of an interestin' paper, anyway.'

"Then she looked over at me sort of sad.

"'Go on, Calliope,' says she, 'you know what you've got to do. Do it,' she says, 'to the bitter end.'

"I knew, and I started out, and I made straight for Silas Sykes, and the post-office store. Silas wan't in the store, it was so early; but he had the floor all sprinkled nice, and the vegetables set out, all uncovered, close to the sidewalk; and everything real tasty and according to grocery-store etiquette. The boy was gone that day. And Silas himself was in the back room, sortin' over prunes.

"'Hello, Calliope,' s'he. 'How's literchoor?'

"'Honest as ever,' I says. 'Same with food?'

"'Who says I ain't honest?' says Silas, straightening up, an' holding all his fingers stiff 'count of being sticky.

"'Why, I donno who,' says I. 'Had anybody ought to? How's business, Silas?'

"'Well,' says he, 'for us that keeps ourselves up with the modern business methods, it's pretty good, I guess.'

"'Do you mean pretty good, Silas, or do you mean pretty paying?' I ask' him.

"Silas put on his best official manner. 'Look at here,' s'e, 'what can I do for you? Did you want to buy somethin' or did you want your mail?'

"'Oh, neither,' I says. 'I want some help from you, Silas, about the paper to-day.'

"My, that give Silas a nice minute. He fairly weltered in satisfaction.

"'Huh,' he says, elegant, 'didn't I tell you you was bitin' off more'n you could chew? Want some assistance from me, do you, in editin' this paper o' yours? Well, I suppose I can help you out a little. What is it you want me to do for you?'

"'We thought we'd like to write you up,' I told him.

"Silas just swelled. For a man in public office, Silas Sykes feels about as presidential as anybody I ever see. If they was to come out from the City and put him on the front page of the morning paper, he's the kind that would wonder why they hadn't done it before.

"'Sketch of my life?' s'e, genial. 'Little outline of my boyhood? Main points in my career?'

"'Well,' I says, 'no. We thought the present'd be about all we'd hev room for. We want to write up your business, Silas,' I says, 'in an advertising way.'

"'Oh!' says Silas, snappy. 'You want me to pay to be wrote up, is that it?'

"'Well,' I says, 'no; not if you don't want to. Of course everybody'll be buried in the Cemetery whether they give anything towards the fund for keeping it kep' up or not.'

"'Lord Heavens,' says Silas, 'I've had that Cemetery fund rammed down my throat till I'm sick o' the thought o' dyin'.'

"That almost made me mad, seeing we was having the disadvantage of doing the work and Silas going to get all the advantages of burial.

"'Feel the same way about some of the Ten Commandments, don't you, Silas?' I says, before I knew it.

"Silas just rared.

"'The Ten Commandments!' says he, 'the Ten Commandments! Who can show me one I ain't a-keepin' like an old sheep. Didn't I honour my father an' mother as long as I had 'em? Did they ever buy anything of me at more than cost? Didn't I give 'em new clothes an' send 'em boxes of oranges an' keep up their life insurance? Do I ever come down to the store on the Sabbath Day? Do I ever distribute the mail then, even if I'm expectin' a letter myself? The Sabbath I locked the cat in, didn't I send the boy down to let it out, for fear I'd be misjudged if I done it? Who do I ever bear false witness against unless I know they've done what I say they've done? I can't kill a fly--an' I'm that tender-hearted that I make the hired girl take the mice out o' the trap because I can't bring myself to do it. So you might go through the whole list an' just find me workin' at 'em an' a-keepin' 'em. What do you mean about the Ten Commandments?' he ends up, ready to burst.

"'Don't ask me,' I says. 'I ain't that familiar with 'em. I didn't know anybody was. Go on about 'em. Take stealing--you hadn't got to that one.'

"'_Stealing_,' says Silas, pompous. 'I don't know what it is.'

"And with that I was up on my feet.

"'I thought you didn't,' says I. 'Us ladies of Sodality have all thought it over an' over again: That you don't know stealing when you see it. No, nor not even when you've done it. Come here, Silas Sykes!' I says.

"I whipped by him into the store, and he followed me, sheer through being dazed, and keeping still through being knocked dumb.

"'Look here,' I says, 'here's your counter of bakery stuff--put in to take from Abagail, but no matter about that now. Where do you get it? From the City, with the label stuck on. What's the bakery like where you buy it? It's under a sidewalk and dust dirty, and I happen to know you know it. And look at the bread--not a thing over it, flies promenadin' on the crust, and you counting out change on an apple-pie the other day--I see you do it. Look at your dates, all uncovered and dirt from the street sticking to them like the pattern. Look at your fly-paper, hugged up against your dried-fruit box that's standing wide open. Look at you keeping fish and preserved fruit and canned stuff that you know is against the law--going to start keeping the law quick as you get these sold out, ain't you, Silas? Look at your stuff out there in front, full of street dirt and flies and ready to feed folks. And you keepin' the Ten Commandments like an old sheep--and being a church elder, and you might better climb porches and bust open safes. I s'pose you wonder what I'm sayin' all this to you for?'

"'No, ma'am,' says Silas, like the edge o' something, 'I don't wonder at your sayin' _anything_ to anybody.'

"'I've got more to say,' I says, dry. 'I've only give you a sample. An' the place I'm goin' to say it is _The Friendship Village Evening Daily_, _Extra_, to-night, in a descriptive write-up of you and your store. I thought it might interest you to know.'

"'It's libel--it's libel!' says Silas, arms waving.

"'All right,' says I, liberating a fly accidentally caught on a date. 'Who you going to sue? Your wife, that's the editor? And everybody else's wife, that's doing the same thing to every behind-the-times dealer in town?'

"Silas hung on to that straw.

"'Be they doin' it to the others, too?' he asks.

"Then I told him.

"'Yes,' I says, 'Silas, only--they ain't goin' to start writing up the descriptions till noon. And if you--and they all--want to clean up the temples where you do business and make them fit for the Lord to look down on and a human being to come into, you've got your chance. And seeing your boy is gone to-day, if you'll do it, I'll stay and help you with it--and mebbe make room for some of the main points in your career as well,' says I, sly.

"Silas looked out the door, his arms folded and his beard almost pointing up, he'd made his chin so firm. And just in that minute when I was feeling that all the law and the prophets, and the health of Friendship Village, and the life of people not born, was hanging around that man's neck--or the principle of them, anyway--Silas's eye and mine fell on a strange sight. Across the street, from out Joe Betts's meat market come Joe Betts, and behind him his boy. And Joe begun pointing, and the boy begun taking down quarters of beef hung over the sidewalk. Joe pointed consid'able. And then he clim' up on his meat wagon that stood by the door, and out of the shop I see Mis' Mayor Uppers come, looking ready to drop. And she clim' up to the seat beside him--he reaching down real gentlemanly to help her up. And he headed his horse around on what I guessed was a bee-line for the slaughterhouse.

"Well, sir, at that, Silas Sykes put his hands on his knees and bent over and begun laughing. And he laughed like I ain't seen him since he's got old and begun to believe that life ain't cut after his own plan that he made. And I laughed a little, too, out of sheer being glad that a laugh can settle so many things right in the world. And when he sobered down a little, I says gentle:--

"'Silas, I'll throw out the dates and the dusty lettuce. And we'll hev it done in no time. I'll be glad to get an early start on the write-up. I don't compose very ready,' I told him.

"He was awful funny while we done the work. He was awful still, too. Once when I lit on a piece of salt pork that I knew, first look, was rusty, 'Them folks down on the flats buys it,' he says. 'They like it just as good as new-killed.' 'All right,' s'I, careless, 'I'll make a note of that to shine in my article. It needs humour some,' s'I. Then Silas swore, soft and under his breath, as an elder should, but quite vital. And he took the pork out to the alley barrel, an' I sprinkled ashes on it so's he shouldn't slip out and save it afterwards.

"It was 'leven o'clock when we got done, me having swept out behind the counters myself, and Silas he mopped his face and stood hauling at his collar.

"'I'll get on my white kids now,' s'e, dry. 'I can't go pourin' kerosene an' slicin' cheese in this place barehanded any more. Gosh,' he says, 'I bet when they see it, they'll want to have church in here this comin' Sunday.'

"'No need to be sacrilegious, as I know of, Silas,' s'I, sharp.

"'No need to be livin' at all, as I see,' says Silas, morbid; 'just lay low an' other folks'll step in an' do it for you, real capable.'

"I give him the last word. I thought it was his man's due.

"When I got back to the office, Libby Liberty an' Mis' Toplady was there before me. They was both setting on high stools up to the file shelf, with their feet tucked up, an' the reason was that Viney Liberty was mopping the floor. She had a big pail of suds and her skirt pinned up, and she was just lathering them boards. Mis' Sykes at the main desk was still labouring over her editorials, breathing hard, the boards steaming soap all around her.

"'I couldn't stand it,' Viney says. 'How a man can mould public opinion in a place where the floor is pot-black gets me. My land, my ash house is a dinin' room side of this room, an' the window was a regular gray frost with dust. Ain't men the funniest lot of folks?' she says.

"'Funny,' says I, 'but awful amiable if you kind of sing their key-note to 'em.'

"Mis' Sykes pulled my skirt.

"'How was he?' she asks in a pale voice.

"'He was crusty,' says I, triumphant, 'but he's beat.'

"She never smiled. 'Calliope Marsh,' says she, cold, 'if you've sassed my husband, I'll never forgive you.'

"I tell you, men may be some funny, and often are. But women is odd as Dick's hatband and I don't know but odder.

"'How'd you get on?' I says to Mis' Toplady and the Libertys. The Libertys they handed out a list on two sheets, both sides with sums ranging from ten to fifty cents towards a shelf library for public use; but Mis' Toplady, the tears was near streaming down her cheeks.

"'Rob Henney,' she says, mournful, 'gimme to understand he'd see me in--some place he hadn't ought to of spoke of to me, nor to no one--before I could get in his milk sheds.'

"'What did you say to him?' I ask', sympathetic.

"'I t-told him,' says Mis' Toplady, 'that lookin' for me wouldn't be the only reason he'd hev for goin' there. And then he said some more. He said he'd be in here this afternoon to stop his subscription off.'

"'So you didn't get a thing?' I says, grieving for her, but Mis' Toplady, she bridled through her tears.

"'I got a column!' she flashed out. 'I put in about the sheds, that the whole town knows, anyway, an' I put in what he said to me. An' I'm goin' to read it to him when he comes in. An' after that he can take his pick about havin' it published, or else cleanin' up an' allowin' Sodality to inspect him reg'lar.'

"By just before twelve o'clock we was all back in the office, Mis' Fire Chief, Mis' Uppers, fresh from the slaughterhouse, and so on, all but Mame Holcomb that was out seeing to the circulation. And I tell you we set to work in earnest, some of us to the desks, and some of us working on their laps, and everybody hurrying hectic. The office was awful hot--Mis' Sturgis had built up a little light fire to heat up her beef broth, and she was stirring it, her shawl folded about her, in between writing receipts. But it made it real confusing, all of us doing our best so hard, and wanting to tell each other what had happened, and seeing about spelling and all.

"'Land, land,' says Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'you'd ought to _see_ the Carters' back door. They wan't nobody to home there, so I just took a look, anyway, bein' it was for Sodality, so. They ain't no real garbage pail--'

"'Who said, "Give me Liberty or give me Death?"' ask' Mis' Sykes, looking up kind o' glassy. 'Was it Daniel Webster or Daniel Boone?'

"'Ladies,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, when we'd settled down on Daniel Boone, 'if I ever do a crime, I won't stop short at stealin' somebody's cow an' goin' to calaboose. I'll do a whole beef corner, or some real United States sin, an' get put in a place that's clean. Why over to the calaboose--'

"'Ugh!' says Mis' Uppers, 'don't say "beef" when I'm where I can hear. I donno what I'll do without my steak, but do it I will. Ladies, the cleanest of us is soundin' brass an' tinklin' cannibals. Why do they call 'em _tinklin'_ cannibals?' she wondered to us all.

"'Oh--,' wailed Mis' Sturgis in the rocking-chair, 'some of you ladies give me your salad dressing receipt. Mine is real good on salad, but on paper it don't sound fit to eat. I don't seem to have no book-style about me to-day.'

"'How do you spell _embarrass_?' asked Libby Liberty. 'Is it an _r_ an' two _s_'s or two _r_'s and an _s_?'

"'It's two _s_'s at the end, so it must be one _r_,' volunteers Mis' Sykes. 'That used to mix me up some, too.'

"Just then up come Abagail Arnold bringing the noon lunch, and she had the sandwiches and the eggs not only, but a pot of hot coffee thrown in, and a basket of doughnuts, sugared. She set them out on Mis' Sykes's desk, and we all laid down our pencils and drew up on our high stools and swing chairs, Mis' Sturgis and all, and nothing in the line of food had ever looked so welcoming.

"'Oh, the eatableness of nice refreshments!' says Mis' Toplady, sighing.

"'This is when it ain't victuals, its viands,' says Mis' Sykes, showing pleased.

"But well do I remember, we wasn't started to eat, and Abagail still doing the pouring, when the composing room door opened--I donno _why_ they called it that, for we done the composing in the office, and they only got out the paper in there--and in come the foreman, with an apron of bed-ticking. He was Riddy Styles, that we all knew him.

"'Excuse me,' he says, hesitating, 'but us fellows thought we'd ought to mention that we can't get no paper out by quittin' time if we don't get a-hold of some copy pretty quick.'

"'Copy o' what?' says Mis' Sykes, our editor.

"'Why, copy,' says Riddy. 'Stuff for the paper.'

"Mis' Sykes looked at him, majestic.

"'_Stuff_,' she says. 'You will please to speak,' she says, 'more respectfully than that to us ladies, Mr. Styles.'

"'It was meant right,' says Riddy, stubborn. 'It's the word we always use.'

"'It ain't the word you use, not with us,' says Mis' Sykes, womanly.

"'Well,' says Riddy, 'we'd ought to get to settin' up _somethin'_ by half past twelve, if we start in on the dictionary.'

"Then he went off to his dinner, and the other men with him, and Mis' Sykes leaned back limp.

"'I been writin' steady,' she says, 'since half past eight o'clock this mornin', an' I've only got one page an' one-half composed.'

"We ask' each other around, and none of us was no more then started, let be it was Mis' Toplady, that had got in first.

"'Le's us leave our lunch,' says Mis' Sykes, then. 'Le's us leave it un-et. Abagail, you put it back in the basket an' pour the coffee into the pot. An' le's us _write_. Wouldn't we all rather hev one of our sick headaches,' she says, firm, 'than mebbe make ourselves the Laughing Stock? Ladies, I ask you.'

"An' we woulded, one and all. Sick headaches don't last long, but laughed-at has regular right down eternal life.

"Ain't it strange how slow the writing muscles and such is, that you don't use often? Pitting cherries, splitting squash, peeling potatoes, slicing apples, making change at church suppers,--us ladies is lightning at 'em all. But getting idees down on paper--I declare if it ain't more like waiting around for your bread to raise on a cold morning. Still when you're worried, you can press forward more than normal, and among us we had quite some material ready for Riddy and the men when they came back. But not Mis' Sykes. She wan't getting on at all.

"'If I could only _talk_ it,' she says, grieving, 'or I donno if I could even do that. What I want to say is in me, rarin' around my head like life, an' yet I can't get it out no more'n money out of a tin bank. I shall disgrace Sodality,' she says, wild.

"'Cheer up,' says Libby Liberty, soothing. 'Nobody ever reads the editorials, anyway. I ain't read one in years.'

"'You tend to your article,' snaps Mis' Sykes.

"I had got my write-up of Silas all turned in to Riddy, and I was looking longing at Abagail's basket, when, banging the door, in come somebody breathing like raging, and it was Rob Henney, that I guess we'd all forgot about except it was Mis' Toplady that was waiting for him.

"Rob Henney always talks like he was long distance.

"'I come in,' he says, blustering, 'I come in to quit off my subscription to this fool paper, that a lot o' fool women--'

"Mis' Sykes looks up at him out from under her hand that her head was resting on.

"'Go on out o' here, Mr. Henney,' she says sharp to him, 'an' quit your subscription quiet. Can't you see you're disturbing us?' she says.

"With that Mis' Toplady wheeled around on her high stool and looked at him, calm as a clock.

"'Rob Henney,' says she, 'you come over here. I'll read you what I've wrote about you,' she told him.

"The piece begun like this:--

"'Rob Henney, our esteemed fellow-townsman and milkman, was talked with this morning on his cow sheds. The reporter said to same that what was wanting would be visiting the stables, churn, cans, pans, and like that, being death is milked out of most cows if they are not kept clean and inspected regular for signs of consumption. Mr. Henney replied as follows:

"'First: That his cows had never been inspected because nothing of that kind had ever been necessary.

"'Second: That he was in the milk business for a living, and did the town expect him to keep it in milk for its health?

"'Third: That folks had been drinking milk since milk begun, and if the Lord saw fit to call them home, why not through milk, or even through consumption, as well as through pneumonia and others?

"'Fourth: That he would see the reporter--a lady--in the lake-that-burneth-with-fire before his sheds and churn and pans and cans should be put in the paper.

"'Below is how the sheds, churn, pans, and cans look to-day....' And I tell you, Mis' Toplady, she didn't spare no words. When she meant What, she said What, elaborate.

"I didn't know for a minute but we'd hev to mop Rob up off the clean floor. But Mis' Toplady she never forgot who she was.

"'Either that goes in the paper to-night,' she says, 'or you'll clean up your milk surroundin's--pick your choice. An' Sodality's through with you if you don't, besides.'

"'Put it in print! Put it in print, if you dast!' yells Rob, wind-milling his arms some.

"'No need to make an earthquake o' yourself,' Mis' Toplady points out to him, serene.

"And at that Rob adds a word intending to express a cussing idee, and he outs and down the stairs. And Mis' Toplady starts to take her article right in to Riddy. But in the door she met Riddy, hurrying into the office again. I never see anybody before that looked both red and haggard, but Riddy did. He come right to the point:--

"'Some of you ladies has got to quit handing in--news,' he says, scrabbling for a word to please Mis' Sykes. 'We're up to our eyes in here now. An' there ain't enough room in the paper, either, not without you get out eight pages or else run a supplement or else throw away the whole patent inside. An' those ways, we ain't got enough type even if we had time to burn.'

"Mis' Sykes pushed back her green shade, looking just _chased_.

"'What does he mean?' she says. 'Can't he tend to his type and things with us doing all the work?'

"Riddy took this real nettlish.

"'I mean,' s'he, clear but brutal, 'you got to cut your stuff somewheres to the tune of a couple o' columns.'

"Well, it's hard to pick out which colour you'll take when you have a new dress only once in every so seldom; or which of your hens you'll kill when you know your chickens like you know your own mind; but these are nothing to the time we had deciding on what to omit out of the paper that night. And the decision hurt us even more than the deciding, for what we left out was Mis' Sturgis's two women's columns.

"'We _can't_ leave out meat nor milk nor cleanliness nor the library,' says Mis' Toplady, reasonable, 'because them are the things we live by. An' so with the other write-ups we got planned. But receipts and patterns an' moth balls is only kind o' decorations, seems though. Besides, we all know about 'em, an' it's time we stopped talkin' about 'em, anyway.'

"Mis' Sturgis she cried a little on the corner of her shawl.

"'The receipts an' patterns an' moth balls is so w-womanly,' she says.

"Mis' Toplady whirled round at her.

"'If you know anything more womanly than conquerin' dirt an' disease an' the-dead-that-needn't-die,' s'she, 'I'll roll up my sleeves an' be into it. But it won't be eyelet embroidery nor yet boiled frostin'!'

"After that they wrote in hasty peace, though four o'clock come racing across the day like a runaway horse, and us not out of its way. And a few minutes past, when Riddy was waiting in the door for Mis' Sykes's last page, somebody most knocked him over, and there come Mis' Holcomb, our circulation editor, purple and white, like a ghost.

"'Lock the door--lock it!' she says. 'I've bolted the one to the foot of the stairs. Lock both outside ones an' lay yourselves low!' s'she.

"Riddy an' I done the locking, me well knowing Mis' Holcomb couldn't give a false alarm no more than a map could.

"'What is it?' we says, pressing Mis' Holcomb to speak, that couldn't even breathe.

"'Oh, ladies,' says Mis' Holcomb, 'they've rejoined us, or whatever it is they do. I mean they're going to rejoin us from gettin' out to-night's paper. The sheriff or the coroner or whoever it is they have, is comin' with injunctions--_is_ that like handcuffs, do you know? An' it's Rob Henney's doin'. Eppleby told me. An' I run down the alley an' beat 'em to it. They're most here. Let's us slap into print what's wrote an' be ready with the papers the livin' minute we can.'

"Mis' Sykes had shoved her green shade onto the back of her head, and her crimping pins was all showing forth.

"'What good'll it do us to get the paper _out_?' says she, in a numb voice. 'We can't distribute 'em around to no one with the sheriff to the front door with them things to put on us.'

"Then Mis' Holcomb smiled, with her eyes shut, where she sat, breathing so hard it showed through.

"'I come in the coal door, at the alley,' s'she. 'They'll never think o' that. Besides, the crowd'll be in front an' the carrier boys too, an' they'll want to show off out there. An' Eppleby knows--he told me to come in that way--an' he'll keep 'em interested out in front. Le's us each take the papers, an' out the coal door, an' distribute 'em around, ourselves, without the boys, an' collect in the money same time.'