"I guess they thought I was crazy," she went on, "but I wasn't long makin' 'em understand. An' I tell you, the way they took it made me love 'em all. If you want to love folks, just you get in some kind o' respectable trouble in Friendship, an' you'll see so much lovableness that the trouble'll kind o' spindle out an' leave nothin' but the love doin' business. My land, the Sodality went at the situation head first, like it was somethin' to get acrost before dark. An' so it was.
"I remember Mis' Photographer Sturgis: 'There!' she says, 'most cryin'. 'If ever I take only a pint o' milk, I'm sure as sure to want more before the day's out. None of us is on good terms with each other's milkman. Where we goin' to get the milk,' she says, 'for them poor little things?'
"'Where?' says Mis' Toplady—you know how big an' comfortable an' settled she is—'Where? Well, you needn't to think o' where. I expect the Jersey won't be milked till I go an' milk her,' she says, 'but she gives six quarts, nights, right along now, an' sometimes seven. Now about the bread.'
"Mis' Postmaster Sykes use' to set sponge twice a week, an' she offered five loaves out o' her six baked that day. Mis' Holcomb had two loaves o' brown bread an' a crock o' sour cream cookies. An' Libbie Liberty bursts out that they'd got up their courage an' killed an' boiled two o' their chickens the day before an' none o' the girls'd been able to touch a mouthful, bein' they'd raised the hens from egg to axe. Libbie said she'd bring the whole kettle along, an' it could be het on the church stove an' made soup of. So it went on, down to even Liddy Ember, that was my partner an' silly poor, an' in about four minutes everything was provided for, beddin' an' all.
"Mis' Toplady had flew upstairs, gettin' out the linen, an' she was comin' down the front stairs with her arms full o' sheets an' pillow slips when through the front door walks Timothy Toplady, come in all excited an' lookin' every which way. Seems he'd barked his elbow in the rescue work an' laid off for liniment.
"'Oh, Timothy,' says his wife, 'them poor little children. We've been plannin' it all out.'
"'Who's goin' to take 'em in?' says Timothy, tryin' to roll up his overcoat sleeve for fear the Sodality'd be put to the blush if he got to his elbow any other way.
"'They're all warm in the church,' Mis' Toplady says; 'we're goin' to leave 'em there. Zittelhof's goin' to take up canvas cots. We're gettin' the bedding together,' she told him.
"Timothy looked up, sort o' wild an' glazed.
"'Canvas cots,' s'e, 'in the house o' the Lord?'