"The lonesome little parlour at Mis' Cadoza's was so far past knowing how to act with folks in it, that it never changed expression when we threw open the shutters. Rooms that are used to folks always sort of look up when the shutters are opened; some rooms smile back at you; some say something that you just lose, through not turning round from the window quite quick enough. But Mis' Cadoza's parlour was such a poor folkless thing that it didn't make us any reply at all nor let on to notice the light. It just set there, kind of numb, merely enduring itself.
"'You poor thing,' I thought, 'nobody come in time, did they?'
"Insley picked out a cane-seat rocker that had once known how to behave in company, and drew it to the window. Ain't it nice, no matter what kind of a dumb room you've got into, you can open its window and fit the sky onto the sill, and feel right at home....
"Robin sat there with Chris in her arms, waiting for any stir in the front bedroom. I went in the bedroom, while Dr. Heron told meabout the medicine, and it seemed to me the bare floor and bare walls and dark-coloured bedcovers was got together to suit the haggardy unshaven face on the pillow. Christopher's father never moved. I set in the doorway, so as to watch him, and Insley went with the doctor to the village to bring back some things that was needed. And I felt like we was all the first settlers of somewheres.
"Chris was laying so still in Robin's arms that several times she looked down to see if he was awake. But every time his eyes was wide and dark with that mysterious child look that seems so much like thought. It kind of hurt me to see him doing nothing—that's one of the parts about sickness and dying and some kinds of trouble that always twists something up in my throat: The folks that was so eager and able and flying round the house just being struck still and not able to go on with everyday doings. I know when Lyddy Ember, the dressmaker, died and I looked at her laying there, it seemed to me so surprising that she couldn't hem and fell and cut out with her thumb crooked like she done—and that she didn't know a dart from a gore; her hands looked so much like she knew how yet. It's like being inactive made death or grief double. And it's likeworking or playing around was a kind of life.... The whole house seemed inactive and silence-struck, even to the kitchen where Mis' Cadoza and the little lame boy was.
"Robin set staring into the lilacs that never seemed to bloom, and I wondered what she was thinking and mebbe facing. But when she spoke, it was about the Cadoza kitchen.
"'Miss Marsh,' she says, 'what kind of people must they be that can stay alive in a kitchen like that?'
"'Pioneers,' I says. 'They's a lot of 'em pioneerin' away and not knowing it's time to stop.'
"'But the dirt—' she says.
"'What do you expect?' I says. 'They're emergin' out of dirt. But theyareemergin'.'
"'Don't it seem hopeless?' says she.
"'Oh, I donno,' I says; 'dirt gets to be apples—so be you plant 'em.'
"But the Cadoza kitchenwasfearful. When we come through it, Mis' Cadoza was getting supper, and she'd woke up nameless smells of greasy things. There the bare table was piled with the inevitable mix-up of unwashed dishes that go along with the Mis' Cadozas of this world, so that you wonder how they ever got so much crockery together. There the floorwasn't swept, clothes was drying on a line over the stove, Spudge was eating his supper on the window-sill, and in his bed in the corner lay little Eph, so white and frail and queer-coloured that you felt you was looking on something bound not to last till much after you'd stopped looking. And there was Mis' Cadoza. When we had come through the kitchen, little Eph had said something glad at seeing Insley and hung hold of his hand and told him how he meant to model a clay Patsy, because it was Patsy, the dog, that had gone out in the dark and first brought Insley in to see him.
"'An' when I'm big,' the child says, 'I'm going to make a clayyou, Mr. Insley.'
"Mis' Cadoza had turned round and bared up her crooked teeth.
"'Don't you be impident!' she had said, raspish, throwing her hand out angular.
"Mis' Cadoza was like somebody that hadn't got outside into the daylight ofYet. She was ignorant, blind to life, with some little bit of a corner of her brain working while the rest lay stock-still in her skull; unclean of person, the mother to no end of nameless horrors of habit—and her blood and the blood of some creature like her had been poured into that poor little boy, sickly, bloodless, not ready for the struggle.
"'Isthere any use trying to do anything with anybody like that?' says Robin.
"'Isthere?' says I, but I looked right straight at Christopher. If there wasn't no use trying to do anything with little Eph, with his mother out there in the kitchen, then what was the use of trying to do anything with Chris, with his father here in the front bedroom? Sick will, tainted blood, ruined body—to what were we all saving Chris? Maybe to misery and final defeat and some awful going out.
"'I don't know,' she says, restless. 'Maybe Alex is right....'
"She looked out towards the lilac bushes again, and I knew how all of a sudden they probably dissolved away to be the fine green in the conservatory at Proudfit House, and how she was seeing herself back in the bright room, with its summer of leaves, and before the tea wagon, making tea for Alex lounging in his low chair, begging her not, in heaven's name, to try to teach the wise old world....
" ... I knew well enough how she felt. Every woman in the world knows. In that minute, or I missed my guess, she was finding herself clinging passionate and rebellious to the mere ordered quiet of the life Alex would make for her; to the mere outworn routine, the leisureof long days in pretty rooms, of guests and house parties and all the little happy flummery of hospitality, the doing-nothingness, or the nice tasks, of travelling; the joy of sinking down quiet into the easy ways to do and be. Something of the sheer, clear, mere self-indulgence of the last-notch conservative was sweeping over her, the quiet, the order, the plainsafetyof the unchanging, of going along and going along and leaving things pretty much as they are, expecting them to work themselves out ... the lure of all keeping-stillness. And I knew she was wondering, like women do when they're tired or blue or get a big job to do or see a house like the Cadozas', why, after all, she shouldn't, in Alex's way, make herself as dainty in morals and intellect as she could and if she wanted to 'meddle,' to do so at arm's length, with some of the material that is cheap and abundant—like Chris....
"'Maybe there isn't any use trying to do anything with Chris, either,' I says brutal. 'Mebbe Nature's wayisbest. Mebbe she knows best when to let them die off.'
"Robin's arms kind of shut up on the little kiddie. He looked up.
"'Did you squeeze me on purpose?' he whispered.
"She nodded at him.
"'What for?' he asks.
"'Just loving,' she answered.
"After that, we sat still for a long time. Insley came back with the medicine, and told me what to do if the sick man came to. Then he filled and lit the bracket lamp that seemed to make more shadows than light, and then he stopped beside Robin—as gentle as a woman over a plant—and asked her if she wanted anything. He come through the room several times, and once him and her smiled, for a still greeting, almost as children do. After a while he come with a little basket of food that he had had Abagail put up to the bakery, and we tried to eat a little something, all of us. And all the while the man on the bed lay like he was locked up in some new, thick kind of silence.
"When eight o'clock had gone, we heard what I had been expecting to hear—the first wheels and footsteps on the Plank Road directed towards Proudfit House. And Insley come in, and went over to Robin, and found Chris asleep in her arms, and he took him from her and laid him on the sagging Brussels couch.
"'You must go now,' he says to Robin, with his kind of still authority that wan't ordering nor schoolmastery, nor you-do-as-I-say, but wasjust something that made you want to mind him. 'I'll wake Chris and take him in at the least change—but you must go back at once.'
"And of course I was going to stay. Some of my minds was perfectly willing not to be at the party in any case, and anyhow the rest of them wanted to stay with Chris.
"Insley picked up some little belongings of hers, seeming to know them without being told, and because the time was so queer, and mebbe because death was in the next room, and mebbe for another reason or two, I could guess how, all the while he was answering her friendly questions about the little Cadoza boy—all that while the Personal, thePersonal, like a living thing, hovered just beyond his words. And at last it just naturally came in and possessed what he was saying.
"'I can't thank you enough for coming down here,' he says. 'It's meant everything to Chris—and to me.'
"She glanced up at him with her pretty near boyish frankness, that had in it that night some new element of confidence and charm and just being dear.
"'Don't thank me,' she says, 'it was mine to do, too. And besides, I haven't done anything. And I'm running away!'
"He looked off up the road towards where, on its hill, Proudfit House was a-setting, a-glowing in all its windows, a-waiting for her to come, and to have her engagement to another man announced in it, and then to belong up there for ever and ever. He started to say something—I donno whether he knew what or whether he didn't; but anyhow he changed his mind and just opened the door for her, the parlour door that I bet was as surprised to be used as if it had cackled.
"The Proudfit motor had stood waiting at the gate all this while, and as they got out to it, Dr. Heron drove up, and with him was Mis' Hubbelthwait come to enquire. So Robin waited outside to see what Dr. Heron should say when he had seen Chris's father again, and I went to the door to speak to Mis' Hubbelthwait.
"'Liquor's what ails him fast enough,' Mis' Hubbelthwait whispers—Mis' Hubbelthwait would of whispered in the middle of a forty-acre field if somebody had said either birth or death to her. 'Liquor's what ails him. I know 'em. I remember the nice, well-behaved gentleman that come to the hotel and only lived one night after. "Mr. Elder," I says to him, severe, "you needn't to tell me your stomach ain't one livin'pickle, for I know it is!" An' he proved it by dyin' that very night. If he didn't prove it, I don't know what he did prove. "Alcoholism," Dr. Heron called it, but I know it was liquor killed him. No use dressin' up words. An' I miss my guess if this here poor soul ain't the self-same river to cross.'
"She would have come in, but there's no call for the whole town to nurse a sick-bed, I always think—and so she sort of hung around a minute, sympathetic and mum, and then slimpsed off with very little starch to her motions, like when you walk for sick folks. I looked out to where Robin and Insley was waiting by the big Proudfit planet that was going to take her on an orbit of its own; and all of a sudden, with them in front of me and with what was behind me, the awfulgood-bynessof things sort of shut down on me, and I wanted to do something or tell somebody something, I didn't know what, before it was too late; and I run right down to them two.
"'Oh,' I says, scrabblin' some for my words, 'I want to tell you something, both of you. If it means anything to either of you to know that there's a little more to me, for having met both of you—then I want you to know it. And it's true. You both—oh, I donno,' I says, 'whatit is—but you both kind of act like life was a person, and like it wasn't just your dinner to be et.... And I kind of know the person, too....'
"I knew what I meant, but meant things and said things don't often match close. And yet I donno but they understood me. Anyway, they both took hold of a hand of mine, and said some little broke-off thing that I didn't rightly get. But I guess that we all knew that we all knew. And in a minute I went back in the house, feeling like I'd got the best of some time when I might of wished, like we all do, that I'd let somebody know something while then was then.
"When I got inside the door, I see right off by Dr. Heron's face that there'd been some change. And sure enough there was. Chris's father had opened his eyes and had spoke. And I done what I knew Robin would have wanted; I wheeled round and went to the door and told her so.
"'He's come to,' I says, 'and he's just asked for Chris.'
"Sharp off, Robin turned to say something to the man waiting in the automobile. Insley tried to stop her, but she put him by. They come back into the cottage together, and theProudfit automobile started steaming back to Proudfit House without her.
"Once again Robin roused Chris, as she had roused him on the night when he slept on the church porch; she just slipped her hands round his throat and lifted his face, and this time she kissed him.
"'Come with Robin,' she said.
"Chris opened his eyes and for a minute his little senses come struggling through his sleep, and then with them come dread. He looked up in Robin's face, piteous.
"'Did my daddygo out?' he asks, shrill, 'like my mama did?'
"'No, no, dear,' Robin said. 'He wants you to say good-by to him first, you know. Be still and brave, for Robin.'
"There wasn't no way to spare him, because the poor little figure on the bed was saying his name, restless, to restless movements. I was in there by him, fixing him a little something to take.
"'Where's Chris?' the sick man begged. 'Look on the church steps—'
"They took Chris in the room, and Insley lifted him up to Robin's knee on the chair beside the bed.
"'Hello—my nice daddy,' Chris says, inhis little high voice, and smiles adorable. 'I—I—I was waitin' for you all this while.'
"His father put out his hand, awful awkward, and took the child's arm about the elbow. I'll never forget the way the man's face looked. It didn't lookedused, somehow—it looked all sort of bare and barren, and like it hadn't been occupied. I remember once seeing a brand-new house that had burned down before anybody had ever lived in it, and some of it stuck up in the street, nice new doors, nice hardwood stairway, new brick chimney, and everything else all blackened and spoiled and done for, before ever it had been lived in. That was what Chris's father's face made me think of. The outline was young, and the eyes was young—young and burning—but there was the man's face, all spoiled and done for, without ever having been used for a face at all.
"'Hello, sonny,' he says, weak. 'Got a good home?'
"'He's in a good home, with good people, Mr. Bartlett,' Insley told him.
"'For keeps?' Chris's father asks, his eyes burning at Insley's over the boy's head.
"'We shall look after him somehow, among us,' Robin says. 'Don't worry about him, Mr. Bartlett. He's all right.'
"The father's look turned toward her and it sort of lingered there a minute. And then it lit up a little—he didn't smile or change expression, but his look lit up some.
"'You're the kind of a one I meant,' he says. 'I wanted he should have a good home. I—I done pretty good for you, didn't I, Chris?' he says.
"Chris leaned way over and pulled at his sleeve. 'You—you—you come in our house, too,' he says.
"'No, sonny, no,' says the man. 'I guess mebbe I'm—goin' somewheres else. But I done well by you, didn't I? Your ma and I always meant you should hev a good home. I'm glad—if you've got it. It's nicer than bein' with me—ain't it? Ain't it?'
"Chris, on Robin's knee, was leaning forward on the bed, his hand patting and pulling at his father's hand.
"'If you was here, then it is,' the child says.
"At that his father smiled—and that was the first real, real look that had come into his face. And he looked around slow to the rest of us.
"'I wasn't never the kind to hev a kid,' he says. 'The drink had me—had me hard. I knew I'd got to find somebody to show him—about growin' up. I'm glad you're goin' to.'
"He shut his eyes and Chris threw himself forward and patted his face.
"'Daddy!' he cried, 'I wanted to tell you—I had that hot ice-cream an'—an'—an' tea on a litty wagon....'
"Robin drew him back, hushed him, looked up questioning to Insley. And while we all set there, not knowing whether to leave or to stay, the man opened his eyes, wide and dark.
"'I wish't it had been different,' he said. 'Oh—God....'
"Chris leans right over, eager, towards him.
"'Didn't he say anything back?' he says.
"'I guess so,' the man says, thick. 'I guess if you're a good boy, he did.' Then he turned his head and looked straight at Robin. 'Don't you forget about his throat, will you?' he says. 'It—gets—sore—awful—easy....'
"He stopped talking, with a funny upsetting sound in his voice. It struck me then, like it has since, how frightful it was that neither him nor Chris thought of kissing each other—like neither one had brought the other up to know how. And yet Chris kissed all of us when we asked him—just like something away back in him knew how, without being brought up to know.
"He knew how to cry, though, without nobringing up, like folks do. As Robin come with him out of the room, Chris hid his face in her skirts, crying miserable. She set down by the window with him in her arms, and Insley went and stood side of them, not saying anything. I see them so, while Dr. Heron and I was busy for a minute in the bedroom. Then we come out and shut the door—ain't it strange, how one minute it takes so many people around the bed, and next minute, there's the one that was the one left in there all alone, able to take care of itself.
"Dr. Heron went away, and Robin still set there, holding Chris. All of a sudden he put up his face.
"'Robin,' he says, 'did—did my daddy leave me a letter?'
"'A letter?' she repeated.
"'To tell me what to do,' says the child. 'Like before. On the church steps.'
"'No—why, no, Chris,' she answers him. 'He didn't have to do that, you know.'
"His eyes was holding hers, like he wanted so much to understand.
"'Then how'll I know?' he asks, simple.
"It seemed to me it was like a glass, magnifying living, had suddenly been laid on life. Here he was, in the world, with no 'letter' to tell him what to do.
"All she done was just to lay her cheek right close to his cheek.
"'Robin is going to tell you what to do,' she says, 'till you are big enough to know.'
"Insley stood there looking at her, and his face was like something had just uncovered it. And the minute seemed real and simple and almost old—as if it had begun to be long, long before. It was kind of as if Robin's will was the will of all women, away back for ever and ever in time, to pour into the world their power of life and of spirit, through a child.
"Insley went out in the kitchen to see Mis' Cadoza about some arrangements—if 'Arrangements' means funerals, it always seems like the word was spelt different and stiffer—and we was setting there in that sudden, awful idleness that comes on after, when there was the noise of an automobile on the Plank Road, and it stopped to the cottage and Alex Proudfit come springing up to the front door. He pushed it open and come in the room, and he seemed to put the minute in capitals, with his voice and his looks and his clothes. I never see clothes so black and so white and so just-so as Alex Proudfit's could be, and that night they was more just-so than usual. That night, his hands, with theirthick, strange ring, and his dark, kind ofevenface was like some fancy picture of a knight and a lover. But his face never seemed to me to be made very much a-purpose and just for him. It was rather like a good sample of a good brand, and like a good sample of any other good brand would have done him just as well. His face didn't fit him inevitable, like a cork to a bottle. It was laid on more arbitrary, like a window on a landscape, and you could have seen the landscape through any other window just as well, or better.
"'Robin!' he said, 'why did you let the car come back without you? We've been frantic with anxiety.'
"She told him in a word or two what had happened, and he received it with his impressions just about half-and-half: one-half relief that the matter was well over and one-half anxiety for her to hurry up. Everyone was at the house, everyone was wondering. Mrs. Emmons was anxious.... 'My poor Robin, you've overtaxed your strength,' he ends. 'You'll look worn and not yourself to-night. It's too bad of it. Come, for heaven's sake, let's be out of this. Come, Calliope....'
He asked her if she had anything to bring, and he gathered up what she told him was hers. Igot ready, too, so's to go up to Proudfit House to put Chris to bed and set by him awhile. And just as I was going out to let Insley know we was leaving, the door to the other room opened and there stood Mis' Cadoza. I see she'd twisted her hair over fresh and she'd put on a collar. I remember now the way I felt when she spoke.
"'I've got the coffee pot on and some batter stirred up,' says she, kind of shame-faced. 'I thought mebbe some hot pan-cakes and somethin' hot to drink'd go good—with Mr. Insley an' all of you.'
"Alex started to say something—heaven knows what—but Robin went right straight up to Mis' Cadoza—and afterwards I thought back to how Robin didn't make the mistake of being too grateful.
"'How I'd like them!' she says, matter-of-fact. 'But I've got a lot of people waiting for me, and I oughtn't to keep them....'
"Insley spoke up from where he was over on the edge of little Eph's bed, and I noticed Mis' Cadoza had tried to neaten up the kitchen some, and she'd set the table with oil-cloth and some clean dishes.
"'I was afraid you'd all stay,' he says, 'and I do want all the pan-cakes. Hurry on—you're keeping back our supper.'
"He nodded to Alex, smiled with us, and come and saw us out the door. Mis' Cadoza come too, and Robin and I shook hands with her for goodnight. And as Mis' Cadoza stood there in her own door, seeing us off, and going to be hostess out in her own kitchen, I wondered to myself if it was having a collar on, or what it was, that give her a kind of pretty near dignity.
"I got in the front seat of the car. Chris was back in the tonneau between Robin and Alex, and as we started he tried to tell Alex what had happened.
"'My—my—my daddy——' he says.
"'Poor little cuss,' says Alex. 'But how extremely well for the child, Robin, that the beggar died. Heavens, how I hate your going in these ghastly places. My poor Robin, what an experience forto-night! For our to-night....'
"She made a sudden move, abrupt as a bird springing free of something that's holding it. She spoke low, but I heard every word of it.
"'Alex,' she said, 'we've made a mistake, you and I. But it isn't too late to mend it now.'
"'I hope, Calliope,' said Postmaster Silas Sykes to me, 'that you ain't in favour of women suffrage.'
"'No, Silas,' says I, 'I ain't.'
"And I felt all over me a kind of a nice wild joy at saying a thing that I knew a male creature would approve of.
"Silas was delivering the groceries himself that day, and accepting of a glass of milk in my kitchen doorway. And on my kitchen stoop Letty Ames—that had come home in time for the Proudfit party—was a-sitting, a-stitching away on a violet muslin breakfast-cap. It was the next day after the party and my regular wash-day and I was glad to be back in my own house, washing quiet, with Emerel Daniel to help me.
"'At school,' says Letty, 'everybody was for it.'
"'I know it,' says Silas, gloomy. 'The schools is goin' to the dogs, hot-foot. Women suffrage, tinkerin' pupils' teeth, cremation—I don't knowwhat-all their holdin' out for. In my day they stuck to 'rithmetic and toed the crack.'
"'That isn't up to date, Mr. Sykes,' says Letty, to get Silas riled.
"It done it. He waved his left arm, angular.
"'Bein' up to date is bein' up to the devil,' he begun, raspish, when I cut in, hasty and peaceful.
"'By the way, Silas,' I says, 'speaking of dates, it ain't more'n ayearpast the time you aldermen was going to clear out Black Hollow, is it? Ain't you going to get it donethisspring?'
"'Oh, dum it, no,' Silas says. 'They're all after us now to get to pavin' that new street.'
"'That street off there in the marsh. I know they are,' I says innocent. 'Your cousin's makin' the blocks, ain't he, Silas?'
"Just then, in from the shed where she was doing my washing come Emerel Daniel—a poor little thing that looked like nothing but breath with the skin drawn over it—and she was crying.
"'Oh, Miss Marsh,' she says, 'I guess you'll have to leave me go home. I left little Otie so sick—I hadn't ought to of left him—only I did want the fifty cents....'
"'Otie!' I says. 'I thought Otie was getting better.'
"'I've kept sayin' so because I was ashamed to let folks know,' Emerel says, 'an' me leavin' him to work. But I had to have the money—'
"'Land,' I says, 'of course you did. Go on home. Silas'll take you in the delivery wagon, won't you, Silas? You're going right that way, ain't you?'
"'I wasn't,' says Silas, 'but I can go round that way to oblige.' That's just exactly how Silas is.
"'Emerel,' I says, 'when you go by the Hollow, you tell Silas what you was tellin' me—about the smells from there into your house. Silas,' I says, 'that hole could be filled up with sand-bar sand dirt cheap, now while the river's low, and you know it.'
"'Woman—' Silas begins excitable.
"'Of course you can't,' I saved him the trouble, 'not while the council is running pavement halfway acrost the swamp to graft off'n the Wooden Block folks. That's all, Silas. I know you, head and heart,' I says, some direct.
"'You don't understand city dealin's no more'n—Who-a!' Silas yells, pretending his delivery horse needed him, and lit down the walk, Emerel following. Silas reminds me of the place in the atmosphere where a citizen ought to be, and ain't.
"Emerel had left the clothes in the bluing water, so I stood and talked with Letty a minute, stitching away on her muslin breakfast-cap.
"'I'd be for women voting just because Silas isn't,' she says, feminine.
"'In them words,' says I to her, 'is some of why women shouldn't do it. The most of 'em reason,' I says, 'like rabbits!'
"Letty sort of straightened up and looked at me, gentle. She just graduated from the Indian Mound School and, in spite of yourself, you notice what she says. 'You're mistaken, Miss Marsh,' says she, 'I believe in women voting because we're folks and mothers, and we can't bring up our children with men taking things away from 'em that we know they'd ought to have. I want to bring up my children by my votes as well as by my prayers,' says she.
"'Yourchildren!' says I.
"I donno if you've ever noticed that look come in a girl's face when she speaks of her children that are going to be sometime? Up to that minute I'd 'a' thought Letty's words was brazen. But when I see how she looked when she said it, I sort of turned my eyes away, kind of half reverent. We didn't speak so when I was a girl. The most we ever heard mentioned like that was when our mothers showed us our first baby dressand told us that was forourbaby—and then we always looked away, squeamish.
"'That's kind of nice,' I says, slow, 'your owning up, out loud that way, that maybe you might possibly have—have one, sometime.'
"'My mother has talked to me about it since I began to know—everything,' Letty said.
"That struck awful near home.
"'I always wisht,' I says, 'I'd talked with my mother—like that. I always wisht I'd had her tell me about the night I was born. I think everybody ought to know about that. But I remember when she begun to speak about it, I always kind of shied off. I should think it would of hurt her. But then,' I says, 'I never had any of my own. So it don't matter.'
"'Oh, yes, you have, Miss Marsh,' says Letty.
"I looked at her, blank.
"'Every child that's born belongs to you,' says Letty to me, solemn.
"'Go on,' says I, to draw her out. 'I wouldn't own most of the little jackanapesses.'
"'But youdo,' says Letty, 'and so do I! So does every woman, mother or not.'
"She set the little violet muslin cap on her head to try it, and swept up and made me a little bow. Pretty as a picture she looked, and ready for loving.... I always wonder if thingsain't sometimes arranged to happen in patterns, same as crystals. For why else should it be that at that instant minute young Elbert Sykes, Silas's son, that was home for the party and a little longer, come up to my door with a note from his mother—and see Letty in the violet cap, bowing like a rose?
"While they was a-talking easy, like young folks knows how to do nowdays, I read the note; and it was about what had started Silas to talking suffrage. Mis' Sykes had opened her house to a suffrage meeting that evening, and Mis' Martin Lacy from the City was a-going to talk, and would I go over?
"'Land, yes,' I says to Elbert. 'Tell her I'll come, just for something to do. I wonder if I can bring Letty, too?'
"'Mother'd be proud, I know,' says Elbert, looking at her like words, and them words a-praising. They had used to play together when they was little, but school had come in and kind of made them over.
"'So,' says he to Letty, bantering, 'you're in favour of women voting, are you?'
"She broke off her thread and looked up at him.
"'Of course I am,' she says, giving a cunning little kitten nod that run all down her shoulders.
"'So you think,' says Elbert, 'that you're just as strong as I am—to carry things along? Mind you, I don't say as clever. You're easily that. But put it at juststrong.'
"She done the little nod again, nicer than the first time.
"'You talk like folks voted with their muscles,' says she. 'Well, I guess some men do, judging by the results.'
"He laughed, but he went on.
"'And you think,' he says, 'that you would be just as wonderful in public life as you would be in your home—your very own home?'
"Letty put the last stitch in her muslin cap and she set it on her head—all cloudy and rose-budded, and land, land, she was lovely when she looked up.
"'Surely,' she says from under the ruffle, with a little one-cornered smile.
"He laughed right into her eyes. 'I don't believe you think so,' he says, triumphant. And all of a sudden there come a-sticking up its head in his face the regular man look—I can't rightly name it, but every woman in the world knows it when she sees it—a kind of anI'm the one of us two but don't let's stop pretending it's youlook.
"When she see it, what do you suppose Lettydone? First she looked down. Then she blushed. Then she shrugged up one shoulder and laughed, sort of little and low and soft.And she kept still.She was about as much like the dignified woman that had just been talking to me about women's duty as a bow of blue ribbon is like my work apron. And as plain as the blue on the sky, I see thatshe liked the minute when she let Elbert beat her—liked it, with a sort of a glow and a quiver.
"He laughed again, and, 'You stay just the the way you are,' he says, and he contrived to make them common words sort of flow all over her like petting.
"That evening, when we marched into the Sykes's house to the meeting, he spoke to her like that again. The men was invited to the meeting, too, but Mis' Sykes let it be known that they needn't to come till the coffee and sandwiches, thus escaping the speech. Mis' Sykes ain't in favour of suffrage, but she does love a new thing in town, and Mis' Martin Lacy was so well dressed and so soft-spoken that Mis' Sykes would of left her preach foot-binding in her parlour if she'd wanted to. Mis' Sykes is like that. Letty was about the youngest there, and she was about the prettiest I 'most ever saw; and when he'd got them all seated,young Elbert Sykes, that was the only man there, just naturally gravitated over and set down by her, like the Lord meant. I love to see them little things happen, and I never smile at them, same as some. Because it's like I got a peek in behind the curtain and see the eternal purpose working away, quiet and still.
"Well, Mis' Lacy, she talked, and she put things real sane and plain, barring I didn't believe any of what she said. And pretty soon I stopped trying to listen and I begun thinking about Emerel Daniel. I'd been down to see her just before supper, and I hadn't had her out of my head much of the time since. Emerel's cottage wasn't half a block from Black Hollow, the great low place beyond the river road that the town used as a dump. It was full of things without names, and take it on a day with the wind just right, Emerel had to keep her window shut on that side of her house. Water was standing in the hollow all the whole time. Flies and mosquitoes come from it by the flock and the herd. And when I'd held my nose and scud past it that afternoon to get to Emerel's, I'd almost run into Dr. Heron, just coming out from seeing Otie, and I burst right out with my thoughts all over him, and asked him if Black Hollow wasn't what was the matterwith Otie and if it wasn't all that was the matter with him.
"'Unquestionably,' says Dr. Heron. 'I told Mrs. Daniel six months ago that she must move.'
"'Well,' says I, 'not having any of her other country homes open this year, Emerel had to stay where she was. And Otie with her. But what did you say to the council about filling in the hole?'
"'The council,' says Dr. Heron, 'is paving the county swamp. There's a good crop of wooden blocks this year.'
"'True enough,' says I, grim, 'and Otie is a-paying for it.'
"That was exactly how the matter stood. And all the while Mis' Lacy was a-talking her women suffrage, I set there grieving for Emerel, and wondering how it was that Silas Sykes and Timothy Toplady and Jimmy Sturgis and even Eppleby Holcomb, that belonged to the common council,couldset by and see Otie die, and more or less of the rest of us in the same kind of danger.
"Next I knew, Mis' Lacy, that was all silky movements and a sweet voice, had got through her own talk and was asking us ladies to express ourselves. Everybody felt kind of delicate at first, and then Libby Liberty starts up and spoke her mind:—
"'Ibelieve all you've been a-saying,' she says, 'and I hev for twenty years. I never kill a hen without I realize how good the women can do a human being's work if they're put to it.'
"'I always think of that, too,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, quick, 'about the hotel....' She kind of stopped, but we all knew what she meant. Threat is seldom if ever sober, especially on election day; but he votes, and she only runs the hotel and keeps them both out of the poorhouse.
"'Well, look at me,' says Abagail Arnold, 'doin' work to oven and to counter, an' can't get my nose near nothin' public but my taxes.'
"'Of course,' says Mis' Uppers, rocking, 'I've almostbeenthe mayor of Friendship Village, bein' his wife, so. An' I must say he never done a thing I didn't think I could do. Or less it was the junketin' trips. I'd 'a' been down with one o' my sick headaches on every one o' them.'
"'Menknowmore,' admitted Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'but I donno as they candoany more than us. When the Fire Chief was alive an' holdin' office an' entertaining politicians, I use' often to think o' that, when I had their hot dinner to get.'
"'I s'pose men do know more than we do,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss,reflective. 'I know Eppleby is lightnin' at figures, an' he can tell about time-tables, an' he sees sense to fine print parts o' the newspapers that looks like so many doctors' prescriptions to me. An' yet honestly, when it comes to some questions of sense, I've known Eppleby not to have any.'
"'Jimmy, either,' says Mis' Sturgis, confidential. 'I donno. I've thought about that a good deal. It seems as if, if we got the chance, us women might not vote brilliant at first, but we would vote with our sense. The sense that can pick out a pattern and split a receipt, an' dress the children out o' the house money. I bet there's a lot o' that kind o' sense among women that don't get used up, by a long shot.'
"Mis' Timothy Toplady drew her shawl up her back, like she does.
"'Well-a,' she says, 'Timothy's an awful good husband, but when I see some of the things he buys for the house, an' the way he gets took in on real estate, I often wonder if he's such a good citizen as he lets on.'
"I kep' a-wondering why Letty didn't say something, and by and by I nudged her.
"'Go on, speak up,' I intimated.
"And, same time, I heard Elbert Sykes, on the other side, say something to her, low. 'Icould tell them,' he says to her, 'that to look like you do is better than being elected!'
"And Letty—what do you s'spose?—she just glanced up at him, and made a little kind of a commenting wrinkle with her nose, and looked down and kept her silence. Just like he'd set there with a little fine chain to her wrist.
"We talked some more and asked some questions and heard Mis' Lacy read some, and then it was time for the men. They come in together—six or eight of them, and most of them, as it happened, members of the common council. And when Mis' Sykes had set them down on the edge of the room, and before anybody had thought of any remark to pass, Mis' Lacy she spoke up and ask' the men to join in the discussion, and called on Mis' Sykes, that hadn't said nothing yet, to start the ball a-rolling.
"'Well,' says Mis' Sykes, with her little society pucker, 'I must say the home and bring-up my children seems far, far more womanly to me than the tobacco smoke and whiskey of public life.'
"She glanced over to the men, kind of with a way of arching her neck and they all gave her a sort of a little ripple, approving. And with this Mis' Toplady kind of tossed her head up.
"'Oh, well, I don't want the responsibility,' she says. 'Land, if I was a votin' woman, I should feel as if I'd got bread in the pan and cake in the oven and clothes in the bluin' water all the whole time.'
"'He, he, he!' says Timothy, her lawful lord. And Silas and Jimmy Sturgis and the rest joined in, tuneful.
"Then Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, she vied in, and done a small, careless laugh.
"'Oh, well, me, too,' she says, 'I declare, as I get older an' wake up some mornin's I feel like life was one big breakfast to get an' me the hired girl. If I had to vote besides, I donno what Iwoulddo.'
"'An',' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'I always feel as if a politician was a disgrace to be, same as an actor,unlessyou got to be a big one. An' can us women ever be big ones even if we want? Which I'm sure I don't want,' she says, sidling a look towards the men's row.
"'Oh, not only that,' says Abagail Arnold, 'but you'd feel so kind of sheepish votin' for the President, away off there in Washington. I always feel terrible sheepish even prayin' for him, let alone votin'—an' like itcouldn'tmake no real difference.'
"'Oh, an'ladies!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers,'really it's bad enough to have been the wife of a mayor. If I had to vote an' was in danger of coming down with a nomination for somethin' myself, I couldn't get to sleep nights.'
"'Mercy,' said Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'a mayor is nothin' but a baby in public life compared to a fire chief. A mayor gets his night's rest. Could a woman ever chase to fires at three o'clock in the mornin'? An' if she votes, what's to prevent her bein' elected to some such job by main strength?'
"'Or like enough get put on a jury settin' on a murderer, an' hev to look at dug-up bones an' orgins,' says Mis' Sturgis—her that's an invalid and gloomy by complexion.
"And one and all, as they spoke, they looked sidewise to the men for their approval. And they got it.
"'That's the ticket!' says Timothy Toplady, slapping his knee. 'I tell you, gentlemen, we've got a nice set of women folks here in this town. They don't prostitute their brains to no fool notions.'
"There was a little hush, owing to that word that Timothy had used kind of uncalled for, and then a little quick buzz of talk to try to cover it. And in the buzz I heard Elbert saying to Letty:
"'Youknowyou think of yourself in a homeafterward—and not around at polls and things, Letty.'
"'You don't have to board at the polls because you vote there, you know,' Letty said; but she says it with a way, with a way. She said it like a pretty woman talking to a man that's looking in her eyes and thinking how pretty she is, and she knows he's thinking so. And you can't never get much real arguing done that way.
"It always kind of scares me to see myself showed up—and now it was like I had ripped a veil off the whole sex, and off me, too. I see us face to face. Why was it that before them men had come in, the women had all talked kind of doubtful and suffrage-leaning, and then had veered like the wind the minute the men had come on the scene? Mis' Toplady had defied Timothy time after time, both public and private; Mis' Hubbelthwait bosses her husband not only drunk but sober; Mis' Sturgis don't do a thing Jimmy wants without she happens to want it too—and so on. Yet at the mention of this one thing, these women that had been talking intelligent and wondering open-minded had all stopped being the way they was and had begun to say things sole to please the men. Even Libby Liberty had kept still—her that has a regular tongue in her head. And Letty, thatbelieved in it all, and had talked to me so womanly that morning, she was listening and blushing for Elbert and holding her peace. And then I remembered, like a piece of guilt, sensing that nice, wild feeling I myself had felt that morning a-denying woman suffrage in the presence of Postmaster Silas Sykes. What in creation ailed us all?
"What in creation....Them words sort of steadied me. It looked to me like it was creation itself that ailed us yet. Creation is a thing that it takes most folks a good while to recover from....
" ... I remembered seeing Silas's delivery boy go whistling along the street one night, and pass a cat. The cat wasn't doing nothing active. It was merely idle. But the boy brought up a big shingle he was carrying and swished it through the air and says 'Z-t-t-t-t,' to the cat's heels, to see the cat take to them—which it done—like the cat immemorial has done for immemorial boys, delivery and other. And once, at dusk, a big, strange man with a gun on his shoulder passed me on Daphne Street, and when he done so, he says to me 'Z-t-t-t,' under his breath, just like the boy to the cat, and just like the untamed man immemorial has said when he got the chance. It seemed to me like men wascreated with, so to say, a shingle and a gun, for the hunting, and just as there is joy in their hunting, so there is a palpitatin' delight in being hunted and flattered by being caught and bound, hand and foot and mind.
"'We like it—why, I tell you, we like it,' I says to myself, 'and us here in Mis' Sykes's parlour are burning with the old original, left-over fire, breathed at creation into women's breasts!'
"And it seemed like I kind of touched hands with all the women that used to be. And I looked over to that row of grinning, tired men, not so very much dressed up, and I thought:—
"'Why, you're the men of this world and we're the women, and there ain't no more thrilling fact in this universe. And why don't we all reco'nize it and shut up?'
"That was what I was thinking over in my mind while Mis' Martin Lacy said good night to us and rushed off to catch her train for the City, hoping she had made us see some light. That was what I was still going over when Mis' Sykes called me to help with the refreshments. And then, just as I started out to the kitchen, the outside door that was part open was pushed in and somebody come in the room. It was Emerel Daniel, in calico and no hat. And assoon as we see her face, everybody stopped talking and stared. She was white as the table-cloth and shaking.
"'Oh, ladies,' she says, 'won't one of you come down to the house? Otie's worse—I donno what it is. I donno what to do to take care of him.'
"She broke down, poor, nervous little thing, and sort of swallowed her whole throat. And Mis' Toplady and we all rushed right over to her.
"'Why, Emerel,' Mis' Toplady says, 'I thought Otie was getting ever so much better. Is it the real typhoid, do you s'pose?' she ask' her.
"Emerel looked over to me. 'Isn't it?' she says. And then I spoke right up with all there is to me.
"'Yes, sir,' I says, 'it is the real typhoid. And if you want to know what's giving it to him, ladies and gentlemen, ask the common council that's setting over there by the wall. Dr. Heron says that Black Hollow, that's a sink for the whole town, give it to him, and that nothing else did—piled full of diseases right in back of Emerel's house. And if you want to know who's responsible for his dying if he dies,' I says right out, 'look over in the same direction to the men that wouldn't vote to fill in theBlack Hollow with sand because they needed the money so bad for paving up half the county swamp.'
"It was most as still in the room as when Timothy had said 'prostitute.' All but me. I went right on—nothing could of kept me still then.
"'Us ladies,' I says, 'has tried for two years to get the Council to fill in that hole. We've said and said what would happen to some of us, what with our pumps so near the place, and what with flies from it visiting our dinner-table dishes, sociable and continual. What did you say to us? You said women hadn't no idee of town finances. Mebbe we ain't—mebbe we ain't. But we have got some idea of town humanity, if I do say it, that share in it. And this poor little boy has gone to work and proved it.'
"With that, Emerel, who had been holding in—her that's afraid even to ask for starch if you forget to give it to her—she broke right down and leaned her head on her arm on the clock shelf:—
"'Oh,' she says, 'all the years I been giving him his victuals and his bath and sewing his clothes up, I never meant it to come to this—for no reason. If Otie dies, I guess he needn't of—that's the worst. He needn't of.'
"Mis' Toplady put her arm right around Emerel and kind of poored her shoulder in that big, mother way she's got—and it was her that went with her, like it's always Mis' Toplady that does everything. And us ladies turned around and all begun to talk at once.
"'Let's plan out right here about taking things in to Emerel,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I've got some fresh bread out of the oven. I'll carry her a couple of loaves, and another couple next baking or two.'
"'I'll take her in a hen,' says Libby Liberty, 'so be she'll kill it herself.'
"Somebody else said a ham, and somebody some butter, and Libby threw in some fresh eggs, if she got any. Mis' Hubbelthwait didn't have much to do with, but she said she would take turns setting up with Otie. Mis' Sykes give a quarter—she don't like to bake for folks, but she's real generous with money. And Silas pipes in:—
"'Emerel can have credit to the store till Otie begins to get better,' he said. 'I ain't been lettin' her have it. She's looked so peaked I been afraid she wan't a-goin' to be able to work, an' I didn't want she should be all stacked up with debts.'
"But me, I set there a-thinking. And all of a sudden I says out what I thought: 'Ladies,' Isays, 'and all of you: What to Emerel is hens and hams and credit? They ain't,' I says, 'nothing but patches and poultices on what's the trouble up to her house.'
"Eppleby Holcomb, that hadn't been saying much, spoke up:—
"'I know,' he says, 'I know. You mean what good do they do to the boy.'
"'I mean just that,' I says. 'What good is all that to Otie that's lying over by Black Hollow? And how does it keep the rest of the town safe?'
"'Well,' says Silas, eager, 'let's us get out the zinc wagon you ladies bought, and let's us go to collectin' the garbage again so that won't all be dumped in Black Hollow. And leave the ladies keep on payin' for it. It's real ladies' work, I think, bein' as it's no more'n a general scrapin' up of ladies' kitchens.'
"Then Letty Ames, that hadn't been saying anything, spoke up, to nobody in particular:—
"'Otie's a dear little soul,' she said, 'a dear little soul!'
"'Ain't he?' says Marne Holcomb. 'Eppleby 'most always has a nut or somethin' in his pocket to give him as he goes by. He takes it like a little squirrel an' like a little gentleman.'
"'He's awful nice when he comes in the shop,' said Abagail. 'He looks at the penny-apiece kindand then buys the two-for-a-cent, so's to give his mother one.'
"'He knows how to behave in a store,' Silas admitted. 'I 'most always give him a coffee-berry, just to see him thank me.'
"'He come into the hotel one day,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, 'an' stood by me when I was bakin'. I give him a little wad of dough to roll.'
"'I let him drive the 'bus one day, settin' on my knee,' says Jimmy Sturgis. 'He was a nice, careful, complete little cuss.'
"Eppleby Holcomb nodded with his eyes shut.
"'We don't like folks to swing on our front gate,' he says. 'He done it, but he marched right in and told us he'd done it. I give him a doughnut—an' he's kep' right on swingin' an' ownin' up an' eatin' doughnuts.'
"'Even when he chased my chickens,' says Libby Liberty, 'he chased 'em like a little gentleman—towardsthe coop an' not down the road. I always noticed that about him.'
"'Yes,' says Letty, again, 'he's a dear little soul.What makes us let him die?'
"She said it so calm that it caught even my breath—and my breath, in these things, ain't easy caught. But I got it right back again, and I says:—
"'Yes, sir. He was on the way to beingsomebody that Friendship Village could have had for the right kind of an inmate. And now he'll be nothing but a grave, that's no good to anybody. And Sodality,' I couldn't help adding, 'will likely pitch right in and take care of his grave, tasteful.'
"And when I said that, it come over me how Emerel had dressed him and bathed him and made his clothes, and done washings, tireless, to get the fifty cents—besides bringing him into the world, tedious. And now it was all going for nothing, all for nothing—when we could of helped it. And I plumped out with what I'd said that morning to Silas:—
"'Why don't you fill up Black Hollow with sand-bar sand out of the river, now it's so low? Then, even if it's too late for Otie, mebbe we can keep ourselves from murderin' anybody else.'
"Them half a dozen men of the common council set still a minute, looking down at Mis' Sykes's parlour ingrain. And I looked over at them, and my heart come up in my throat and both of them ached like the toothache. Because all of a sudden it seemed to me it wasn't just Timothy and Eppleby and Silas and some more of the council setting there by the wall—but it was like, in them few men, tired and not so very well dressed, was setting the lawmakersof the whole world; and there in front of them, wasn't only Mis' Holcomb and Libby and Letty and me, but Emerel Daniel, too, and all the women there is—saying to them: 'My land, we've dressed 'em an' bathed 'em an' sewed for 'em an' brought 'em into the world, tedious. Let 'em live—fix things so's they can live an' so's it needn't all go for nothin'.' And I sort of bubbled up and spilled over, as if everything we was all of usforhad come up in my throat.
"'Oh, folks,' I says, 'just look what us in this room could have done for Otie—so be we'd begun in time.'
"Right like a dash of cold water into my face, Mis' Sykes spoke up, cold as some kind of death:—
"'Well, ladies,' she says, 'I guess we've got our eyes open now.Isay that's what we'd ought to hev been doin' instead o' talkin' women votin',' she says, triumphant.
"Then somebody spoke again, in a soft, new, not-used-to-it little voice, and in her chair over beside Elbert, Letty Ames leaned forward, and her eyes was like the sunny places in water.
"'Don't you see,' she says, 'don't you see, Mis' Sykes, that's what Mis' Lacy meant?'
"'How so?' says Mis' Sykes, short.
"I'll never forget how sweet and shy andunexpected and young Letty looked, but she answered, as brave as brave:—
"'Otie Daniel is sick,' she said, 'and all us women can do is to carry him broth and bread and nurse him. It's only the men that can bring about the things to make him well. And they haven't done it. It's been the women who have been urging it—and not getting it done. Wasn't it our work to do, too?'
"I see Elbert looking at her—like he just couldn't bear to have her speak so, like some men can't. And I guess he spoke out in answer before he meant to:—
"'But let them do it womanly, Letty,' he said, 'like your mother did and my mother did.'
"Letty turned and looked Elbert Sykes straight in the face:—
"'Womanly!' she says. 'What is there womanly about my bathing and feeding a child inside four clean walls, if dirt and bad food and neglect are outside for him? Will you tell me if there is anything more womanly than my right to help make the world as decent for my children as I would make my own home?'
"I looked at Letty, and looked; and I see with a thrill I can't tell you about how Letty seemed. For she seemed the way she had that morning on my kitchen stoop, when she spokeof her children and when I felt like I'd ought to turn away—the way I'd used to when my mother showed me my baby dress and told me who it would be for. Only now—only now, somehow, I didn't want to turn away. Somehow I wanted to keep right on looking at Letty, like Elbert was looking. And I see what he see. How Letty was what she'd said that morning that she was—and that I was—and that we all was: A mother, then and there, whether she ever had any children or not. And she was next door to owning up to it right there before them all and before Elbert. We didn't speak so when I was a girl. We didn't own up, out loud, that we ever thought anything about what we was for. But now, when I heard Letty do it....
" ... Now, when I heard Letty do it, all to once, I looked into a window of the world. And instead of touching hands like I had with the women that use' to be, I looked off and off down all the time there's going to be, and for a minute I touched, tip-fingers, the hands of the other women that's coming towards me; and out of places inside of me that I didn't know before had eyes, I see them, mothers to the whole world,inside their four walls and out. And they wasn't coming with poultices and bread and broth in their hands, to patch up what had been leftundone; nor with the keys to schoolhouses that they'd got open by scheming; nor with newspapers full of health that they'd had to run down back alleys to sell; nor national holidays that they'd got a-hold of through sheer accident; nor yet with nice new headstones for cemetery improvements on the dead and gone—no, sir, their hands wasn't occupied with any of these ways of serving that they'd schemed for and stole. But their hands—was in men's hands, closer and nearer than they'd ever been before. And their eyes was lit up with a look that was a new look, and that give new life to the old original left-over blaze. And I looked across to that row of tired men, not so very much dressed up, and I thought:—
"'You're the men of this world and we're the women. And there ain't no more thrilling fact in this universe, save one,save one: And that's that we're all human beings. That your job and ours is to make the world ready for the folks that are to come, and to make the folks that come fit to live in that new world. And yet over there by Black Hollow one of our children is dying from something that was your jobandours to do, and we didn't take hold of hands and do it!'
"'Oh, Letty!' I says out. 'And Silas andall of you! Let's pretend, just for a minute, that we was all citizens and equal. And let's figure out things for Otie, just like we had the right!'
"I'd asked Letty to spend the night with me, and Elbert walked home with us. And just as we got there, he says to her again:—
"'Oh, Letty—you ain'tstrongenough to help carry things along!'
"'You've got more strength,' she says to him, 'and more brains. But it isn't so much the strength or the brains in women that is going to help when the time comes. It's the—mother in them.'
"And I says to myself:—
"'And it's the—human beingnessof them.' But Letty didn't know that yet.
"Elbert answered, after a minute:—
"'You may be right and you may be wrong, but, Letty, Letty, what a woman you are!'
"And at that Letty looked up at him, just as she had looked at him that morning—just for a minute, and then she dipped down the brim of her big hat. I donno what she answered him. I didn't care. I didn't care. For what I see was the old wild joy of a woman in being glorified by a male creature. And I knew then,and I know now, that that won't never die, no matter what.
"Elbert put out his hand.
"'Good night, Letty,' he said.
"She gave him hers, and he closed over it light with his other hand.
"'May I see you to-morrow?' he asked her.
"'Oh, I don't know,' said Letty. 'Come and see if I'll see you—will you?'
"He laughed a little, looking in her eyes.
"'At about eight,' he promised. 'Good night....'
"I got the key out from under the mat to a tune inside me. Because I'd heard, and I knew that Letty had heard, that tone in Elbert's voice that is the human tone—I can't rightly name it, but every woman in the world knows it when she hears it—a tone that says:If I have my way, you and I are going to live out our lives together.
"And I knew then, and I know now, that that tone won't ever die, either. And some day, away off in a new world right here on this earth, I believe there's going to be a wilder joy in being men and women than all the men and women up to now have ever lived or dared or dreamed.