Neighborhood Stories

I was just feeling thankful from my bones out that they hadn’t met to my house, with Donnie staying home, when Mis’ Elkhorn come in from the kitchen to tell us supper was ready. And when she opened the door the smell of hot waffles come a dilly-nipping in, and it made me feel so kind of cozy and busy and alive and glad that I burst right out:

“Shucks, ladies!” I says. “So be we peck around for ’em I bet we could find things to fuss over right till the hearse backs up to the door.”

They all laughed a little then, but that was part from feeling embarrassed at going out to supper, like you always are. And when we did get out there, everybody scrabbled around to get away from whoever had just been her enemy. We didn’t say much while we et – like you don’t in company; and I set there thinking:

“The Go-lightly club. The Go-lightly club. To make life nice.” And I thought how we’d sung that song of ours all the way out. And I made up my mind that, after supper, when they was feeling limber from food, I’d try to say something about it.

But I didn’t. I just got started on it – introduced by telling ’em some nice little things about Donnie’s sayings and doings to my house, when Mis’ Lockmeyer broke in, sympathetic.

“Ain’t he a great care?” says she.

“Yes,” says I, “he is. And so is everything on top of this earth that’s worth having. Life thrown in.”

And then I see they was all rustling to go home – giving reasons of clothes to sprinkle or bread to set or grandchild to put to bed or plants to cover up. So I kep’ still, and mogged along home with ’em. But I did say to Mis’ Pettibone on the back seat:

“We better quit off club. If we can’t meet folks without laying awake nights over the things that’s been said to us, we better never meet. ‘To make life nice,’ ” says I. “Ain’t club a travnasty, or whatever that word is?”

“I know it,” she says awful sober, and I see she was grieving some too. And we was all pretty still, going home. So still that we could all hear Jem Meddledipper, that had caught the run o’ that tune from us in the afternoon and was driving us home by it, and the wheels went round to it —

“Lovin’-kindness … lovin’-kindness … lovin’-kindness, oh, how great,”

– and it was sung considerable better than any of us had sung it.

But anyway, the result of leaving early was that we got to the Toll Gate House before dark, and I’ll never forget the thing we saw. Standing in the door of the little house was the woman we’d spoke with in the afternoon, and she was wearing the same ex-blue alpaca. But now she’d been and got out from somewheres and put on a white straw hat, with little pink roses all around it. And like lightning I sensed that she’d watched for us to come back and had gone and got the hat out and put it on, so’s to let us know she had that one decent thing to wear.

“Jem,” I says, “stop.”

I donno rightly why, but I clambered down out of the rig, and I says to the woman: “Let me come in a minute – can I? I want to talk to you about – about some sewing,” says I, that’s sewed every rag I’ve had on my back most ever since I was clothed in any. But all of a sudden, her getting out that hat made me feel I just had to get up close to her, like you will.

But when I stepped inside, I forgot all about the sewing.

“My land, my dear,” I says, or it might have been, “My dear, my land,” I was that taken-back and upset, “you’d ought to have this ceiling mended.”

For the plaster had fell off full half of it and the roof leaked; and there wasn’t very much of any furniture, to clap the climax.

“The City won’t do anything,” says she. “They’re going to tear it down. And the rent ain’t much – so I want to stay.”

“Well,” says I, “I’m going to bring you out some napkins to hem next week – can I?” – me having bought new before then so’s to have some work for Missionary Society, so why not now? And her face lit up that same way from inside.

When I’d got back in the rig, and we’d drove a little way by, I spoke to the rest about her going and putting on the hat. Some of ’em had sensed it, and some of ’em hadn’t – like some will and some won’t sense every created thing. And when we all did get a-hold of it – well, I can’t hardly tell you what it done. But there was something there in the rig with us that hadn’t been there before, and that come with a rush now, and that done a thing to us all alike. I can’t rightly say what it was, or what it done; but I guess Mis’ Puppy come as near it as anybody:

“Oh, ladies,” she says, kind of hushed, “don’t that seem like – well, don’t it make you feel – well, I donno, but ain’t it just…”

She kind of petered off, and it was Mis’ Pettibone, her enemy, that answered.

“Don’t it, Mis’ Puppy?” she says, “Don’t it?” And we all felt the same way. Or similar. And we never said a word, but we told each other good night, I noticed, about three times apiece, all around. And out of the fulness of the lump in my throat, I says:

“Ladies! I invite the Go-lightly club to meet with me to-morrow afternoon. Don’t bring anything but sandwiches and your plates and spoons. I’ll open the sauce and make the tea and whip up some drop sponge cakes. And meantime, let’s us get together everything we can for her.”

And though hardly anybody in the village ever goes to anything two days in succession, they all said they’d come.

By the time they got there next day we had carpet to sew out of some of our attics, and some new sheets to make, and some white muslin curtains out of Mis’ Puppy’s back room. And I explained to them that we couldn’t rightly put it to vote whether we should furnish up the Toll Gate House, because we didn’t have any president to put the motion, so the only way was to go ahead anyhow and do it; which we done; and which, if not parli-mental, was more than any mental, because it was out of our hearts.

Right while we was in the midst of things, in come my roomer, Mr. Dombledon. He’d come in the back door, as usual, and plumped into the sitting-room before he saw we were there. He’d had Donnie with him that day, because I had to be out most of the forenoon, and I called to them to stop, because I wanted the ladies should see the little fellow.

Donnie shook hands with us, all around, like a little general, and then: “What’s these?” says he, with his hands on the curtains in my lap. “A nighty for me?”

“No, lambin’,” says I. “It’s curtains for a lady.”

“Are you that lady?” he says.

“No, lambin’,” says I. “A lady that ain’t got any curtains.”

But this he seemed to think was awful funny, and he laughed out – a little boy’s laugh, and kep’ it up.

“Ladies always has curtains,” says he, superior.

“I donno,” says I. “I saw one yesterday that didn’t even have a carpet.”

“Where?” asks Mr. Dombledon.

It kind of surprised me to hear him speak up – of course I’d introduced him all around, same as you do roomers and even agents in a little town, where you behave in general more as if folks were folks than you do in the City where they ain’t so much folks as lawyers, ladies, milkmen, ministers, and so on. But yet I hadn’t really expected Mr. Dombledon to volunteer.

“Down on the Tote road,” I says, “the old Toll Gate House. You ain’t familiar with it, I guess.”

“Is this hers curtains?” asks Donnie. “And can I have some pink peaches sauce like in the kitchen?”

“They’s hers curtains,” says I, “and if you’d just as soon make it plums, you shall have all of them in the kitchen that’s good for you.” And off he went outdoors making up a song about pink plums.

All of a sudden his father spoke up again.

“Do – do you need any more help?” he says.

“Sure we do,” says I.

“Well,” he says, gentling with the words careful, “I’m kind of sure-moved with a needle.”

“Then,” says I, “mebbe you’ll needle this carpet seam that’s pulling my fingers off in pairs. We’d be grateful,” says I, ready.

So down he sat and begun to sew, and I never see handier. He whipped up the seam as nice and flat as a roller machine. And things was going along as fine as salt and as smooth as soap when Mis’ Puppy picked up from the pile of things a red cotton table-cover.

“Well,” she says, “I donno where we solicited this from, but whoever give it shows their bringing up. Holes. And not only holes, but ink. And not only so, but look there where their lamp set. Would you think anybody of a donatin’ mind would donate such a thing as this?”

And Mis’ Pettibone spoke up sour and acid and bitter in one:

“I give that table-spread, Mis’ Puppy,” says she. “And it come off our dining-room table. We don’t throw things away to our house before the new is wore off. Anything more to say?”

“A grea’ deal,” says Mis’ Puppy, unflabbergasted, “but I’m too much of a lady to say it.”