"Mis' Toplady told me last night that Calliope Marsh is coming home for the Java entertainment, next week," my neighbour imparted first. And this was the best news that she could have given me.
It has been a great regret to me that this summer Calliope is not in the village. She has gone to the city to nurse some distant kinswoman more lonely than she, and until ill-health came, long forgetful of Calliope. But she is to come back now and again, to this and to that, for the village interests are all her own. I have never known any one in whom the tribal sense is so persistently alive as in Calliope.
I asked my neighbour what this Java entertainment would be, which was to give back Calliope, and she looked her amazement that I did not know. It would be, it appeared, one of those great fairs which the missionary society is always projecting and carrying magnificently forward.
"It's awful feet-aching work," said my neighbour, reflectively; "but honestly, Calliope seems to like it. I donno but I do, too. The Sodality meant to have one when they set out to pave Daphne Street, but it turned out it wasn't needed. Well, big affairs like that makes it seem as if we'd been born into the whole world and not just into Friendship Village."
My neighbour told me that a new public library had been opened in a corner of the post-office store, and that "a great crowd" was drawing books, though for this she herself cannot vouch, since the library is only open Saturday evenings, and "Saturday," she says with decision, "is a bad night." It is, in fact, I note, very difficult to find a free night in the village, save only Tuesday. Monday, because of its obvious duties and incident fatigue, is as impossible as Sunday; Wednesday is club day; Thursday "is prayer-meeting"; Friday is sacred to church suppers and entertainments and the Ladies' Aid Society; and Saturday is invariably denominated a bad night and omitted without question. We are remote from society, but Tuesday is literally our only free evening.
"Of course it won't be the same with you about books," my neighbour admits. "You can send your girl down to get a book for you. But I have to be home to get out the clean clothes. How's your girl going to like the country?" she asked.
I am to have here in the village, I find, many a rebuke for habits of mine which lag behind my theories. For though I try to solve my share of a tragic question by giving to my Swedish maid, Elfa, the self-respect and the privilege suited to a human being dependent on me, together with ways of comfort and some leisure, yet I find the homely customs of the place to have accomplished more than my careful system. And though, when I took her from town I scrupulously added to the earnings of my little maid, I confess that it had not occurred to me to wonder whether or not she would like Friendship Village. We seem so weary-far from the conditions which we so facilely conceive. Especially, I seem far. I am afraid that I engaged Elfa in the first place with less attention to her economic fitness than that she is so trim and still and wistful, with such a peculiarly winning upward look; and that her name is Elfa. I told my neighbour that I did not know yet, whether Elfa would like it here or not; and for refuge I found fault with the worms on the rose bushes. Also I made a note in my head to ask Elfa how she likes the country. But the spirit of a thing is flown when you make a note of it in your head. How does Elfa like the town, for that matter? I never have asked her this, either.
"She'll be getting married on your hands, anyway," my neighbour observed; "the ladies here say that's one trouble with trying to keep a hired girl. They will get married. But I say, let 'em."
At least here is a matter in which my theory, like that of my neighbour's, outruns those of certain folk of both town and village. For I myself have heard women complain of their servants marrying and establishing families, and deplore this shortsightedness in not staying where there is "a good home, a nice room, plenty to eat, and all the flat pieces sent to the laundry."
"Speaking of books," said my neighbour, "have you seen Nicholas Moor?"