"'You know Friendship,' he says, hoppin' along. 'Not half a dozen houses could take in more'n two extry, even if we hed the time to canvass. An' we ain't the time. They want their s-u-p-p-e-r right now,' he spells it out, an' lit out nimble when Mitsy dropped the handkerchief back o' the little blond girl. Then he let the little blond girl catch them, and he took her on his shoulders too, an' they was both shoutin' so 't he hed to make little circles out to get where I could hear him.
"'I've seen Zittelhof,' he told me. 'He was down there with his wagon. He'll bring up enough little canvas cots from the store. An' I thought mebbe you'd go down to the village an' pick up some stuff they'll need—bedding an' things. An' get the women here with some supper. Come on now,' he calls out to 'em; 'everybody in a procession an' sing!'
"He led 'em off with
"'King William was King James's son,'
an' he sings back to me, for the secunt line,
"'Go now, go quick, I bet they're starved!'
"So I got into my coat, tryin' to think where I should go to be sure o' not wastin' time talkin'. Lots o' folks in this world is willin', but mighty few can be quick.
"I knew right off, though, where I'd find somebody to help. The Friendship Married Ladies' Cemetery Improvement Sodality was meetin' that afternoon with Mis' Toplady, an' I could cut acrost their pasture—" Calliope nodded toward the little Toplady house and the big Toplady barn—"an' that's what I done. An' when I got near enough to the house to tell, I see by the light in the parlour that they was still there. An' I know when I got into the room, full as I was o' news o' them little children an' the wreck an' the two killed an' all them that was hurt—there was the Sodality settlin' whether the lamb's wool comforter for the bazaar should be tied with pink for daintiness or brown for durability.
"'Dainty!' says I, when I got my breath. 'They's sides to life makes me want to pinch that word right out o' the dictionary same as I would a bug,' I says.
"That was funny, too,"—Calliope added thoughtfully, "because I like that word, speakin' o' food an' ways to do things. But some folks get to livin' the word same's if it was the law.