"'Oh!'says Mis' Toplady, 'I tell you the Foreign Missionary Circle has been next best to goin'. 'Seems sometimes as if I've 'most been somewheres an' seen palms a-growin' an' a-wavin' an' a red sky back. Don't it to you? I've dreamed o' them places all my life, an' I ain't never had anything but Friendship Village, an' I don't know now that Arabia an' Asia an' India is rilly fitted in, the way they look on the map. An' so with some more. But if so be they are, then,' she says, 'we owe it to the Foreign Missionary Circle that we've got that far towards seein' 'em.'
"An' we all agreed, warm, excep' Mis' Sykes, who was the hostess an' too busy to talk much; but we knew how she felt. An' we said some more about how wonderful things are, there in Mis' Sykes's kitchen while we et.
"Well, when we got done decoratin' after supper, we all walked over to the post-office store to the sale—the whole Circle of us. Because, of course, if the letters was to be sold there wasn't any harm in seein' who got 'em, an' in knowin' just how mean who was. Then, too, we was interested in what was in the two trunks. We was quite early—early enough to set along on the front rows of breakfast-food boxes that was fixed ready. An' in the very frontmost one was Mis' Sykes an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, an' me.
"But we see, first thing when we got into the store, that they was strangers present. The three travellin' men that Mis' Sykes an' I had noticed that afternoon was still in town, of course, an' there they was to the sale, loungin' along on the counter each side o' the cheese. We couldn't bear their bein' there. It was our sale, an' they wasn't rill sure to understand. To us Mr. Pitlaw hed been Mr. Pitlaw. To them he was just somebody that hed been somebody. I didn't like it, nor they didn't none o' the Ladies' Missionary like it. We all looked at each other an' nodded without it showin', like we do, an' we could see we all felt the same.
"Silas was goin' to officiate himself—that man has got the idee it's the whistle that runs the boat. They had persuaded him to open the trunks an' sell the things off piecemeal, an' he see that was rilly the only way to do it. So when the time come he broke open the two trunks an' he wouldn't let anybody touch hasp or strap or hammer but himself. It made me sort of sick to see even the trunk things of Mr. Pitlaw's come out—a pepper an' salt suit, a pair of new suspenders, a collar an' cuff case—the kind that you'd recognize was a Christmas present; a nice brush an' comb he'd kept for best an' never used, a cake of pretty-paper soap he'd never opened, a bunch o' keys, an' like that. You know how it makes you feel to unpack even your own things that have been put away a good while; it's like thinkin' over forgot thoughts. Well, an' this was worse. Jem Pitlaw, that none of us had known well enough to mention familiar things to, was dead—he was dead; an' here we were, lookin' on an' seein' the things that was never out of his room before, an' that he'd put in there, neat an' nice, five years back, to be took out, he thought, in a few weeks. Quite a lot of us felt delicate, but some got behind the delicate idee an' made it an excuse for not buyin' much. They's all kinds to a sale—did you ever notice? Timothy Toplady, for instance—I donno but he's all kinds in his single self. 'Seems he couldn't bring himself to bid on a thing but Jem Pitlaw's keys.
"'Of course nobody knows what they'll fit,' says he, disparagin', 'so to buy 'em don't seem like bein' too familiar with Mr. Pitlaw,' s'he, rill pleased with himself.
"But Mis' Sykes whispers to me:—
"'Them keys'll go dirt cheap, an' Timothy knows it, an' a strange key may come in handy any minute. Timothy's reasons never whip to a froth,' s'she, cold.
"But I guess she was over-critical because of gettin' more fidgety, like we all did, the nearer Silas got to the letters. He hed left the letters till the last. An' what with folks peekin' in the box since he'd brought it down, an' what with handlin' what was ready to spill out, most of 'em by then was in plain sight. An' there I see more o' them same ones—little thin writin', like a woman's. We 'most all noticed it. An' I couldn't keep my eyes off of 'em. 'Seemed like she might be somebody with soft ways that ought to be there, savin' the letters, wardin' off the heartache for Mr. Pitlaw an' mebbe one for herself.
"An' right while I was lookin' Silas turned to the box and cleared his throat, important as if he was the whistle for New York City, an' he lifted up the bunch of the letters that had the little fine writin' on top, just the way Mr. Pitlaw had tied 'em up with common string.