"But I guess it was in all our minds what Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss says, wistful:—
"'Don't you think,' she says, 'or do you think, it'd be wrongin' Mr. Pitlaw if we read over the postmarks out loud first?'
"We divided up the bunches an' we set down around an' untied the strings, an', turn in an' turn out, we read the postmarks off. 'Most every one of 'em was foreign—oh, I can't begin to tell you where. It was all mixed up an' shinin' of names we'd never heard of before, an' names we had heard in sermons an' in the Bible—Egypt an' Greece an' Rome an' isles o' the sea. Mis' Toplady stopped right in the middle o' hers.
"'Oh, I can't be sure I'm pronouncin' 'em right,' she says, huntin' for her handkerchief, 'but I guess you ladies get the feel o' the places, don't you?'
"An' that was just it: we did. We got the feel of them far places that night like we never could hev hed it any other way. An' when we got all through, Mis' Toplady spoke up again—but this time it was like she flew up a little way an' lit on somethin'.
"'It ain't likely,' she says, 'that we'll ever, any of us, hev a letter of our own from places like these. We don't get many letters, an' what we do get come from the same old towns, over an' over again, an' quite near by. Do you know,' she says, 'I believe this Writin' here'—she held out the tiny fine writing that was like a woman with soft ways—'would understand if we each took one of her letters an' glued it together here an' now an' carried it home an' pasted it in our Bibles. She went travellin' off to them places, an' she must have wanted to; an' she would know what it is to want to go an' yet never get there.'
"I think Mis' Amanda was right—we all thought so. An' we done what she mentioned, an' made our choice o' postmarks. I know Mis' Amanda took Cairo.
"''Count of the name sort o' picturin' out a palm tree a-growin' an' a-wavin' against a red sky,' she says, when she was pinnin' her shawl clear up over her hat to go out in the cold. 'Think of it,' she says; 'she might 'a' passed a palm the day she wrote it. Ain't it like seein' 'em grow yourself?'
... "Mebbe it all wasn't quite regular," Calliope added, "though we made over five dollars at the Ten Cent Fête. But the minister, when we told him, he seemed to think it was all right, an' he kep' smilin', sweet an' deep, like we'd done more'n we had done. An' I think he knew what we meant when we said we was all feelin' nearer, lion an' lamb, to them strange missionary countries. Because—oh, well, sometimes, you know," Calliope said, "they's things that makes you feel nearer to faraway places that couldn't hev any postmark at all."