"We all knew this is so—every one of us.
"'It's just like that when you write 'em, only felt differ'nt,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'I do mine to my sister a little at a time—I keep it back o' the clock in the kitchen an' hide the pencil inside the clock door, so's it won't walk off, the way pencils do at our house. An' then, right in the midst of things, be it flour or be it suds, I can scratch down what comes in my head, till I declare sometimes I can hardly mail it for readin' it over an' thinkin' how she'll like to get it.'
"'My, my!' says Mis' Sykes, reminiscent, ''specially since Silas has been postmaster an' we've had so much to do with other people's letters, I've been so hungry for letters of my own that I've wrote for samples. I can do that with a level conscience because, after all, you do get a new dress now an' then. But I couldn't answer advertisements, same as some, when I didn't mean true—just to get the letters back. That don't seem to me rill honest.'
"An' then I owned up.
"'Last week, when I paid my taxes,' I says, 'I whipped out o' the clerk's office quick, sole so's he'd hev to mail me my tax receipt. But he didn't do it. He sent it over by their hired girl that noon. I love letters like I do my telephone bell an' my friends,' I know I says.
"An' there was all that hundred letters or so—letters that somebody had put love in for Jem Pitlaw, an' that he'd read love out of an' saved 'em—there they was goin' to be sold for all Friendship Village to read, includin' some that hadn't even known him, mebbe more than to speak to.
"We wasn't quite through decoratin' when supper time come, so we stayed on to Mis' Sykes's for a pick-up lunch, et in the kitchen, an' finished up afterwards. Most of 'em could do that better than they could leave their work an' come down again next mornin'—men-folks can always get along for supper, bein' it's not a hot meal.
"'Ain't it wonderful,' says Mis' Toplady, thoughtful, 'here we are, settin' 'round the kitchen table at Mis' Postmaster Sykes's in Friendship Village. An' away off in Arabia or Asia or somewhere that I ain't sure they is any such place, is somebody settin' that never heard of us nor we of him, an' he's goin' to hev our five dollars from the Tropical Fête to-morrow night, an' put it to work doin' good.'
"'It makes sort of a connection, don't it?' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. 'There they are an' here we are. Ain't it strange? 'Seems like our doin' this makes us feel nearer to them places. I donno but that,' says she, noddin', 'is the start of what it means about the lion and the lamb layin' down together.'