IX
"I never speak much about my relations, because I haven't got many. If I did have, I suppose I should be telling about how peculiar they take their tea and coffee, and what they died of, and showing samples of their clothes and acting like my own immediate family made up life, just like most folks does. But I haven't got much of any relatives, nor no ancestors to brag about. 'Nothing for kin but the world,' I always say.
"But back in the middle of June I had got a letter from a cousin, like a bow from the blue. And the morning I got it, and with it yet unopened in my hand, Silas Sykes come out from behind the post-office window and tapped me on the arm.
"'Calliope,' he says, 'we've about made up our minds—the School Board an' some o' the leadin' citizens has—to appoint a Women's Evenin' Vigilance Committee, secret. An' we want you an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Sykes should be it.'
"'Vigilance,' I says, thoughtful. 'I recollect missin' on the meanin' of that word in school. I recollect I called it "viligance" an' said it meant a 'bus. I donno if I rightly know what it means now, Silas.'
"Silas cleared his throat an' whispered hoarse, in a way he's got: 'Women don't have no call, much for the word,' he says. 'It means when you sic your notice onto some one thing. We want a committee of you women should do it.'
"'Notice what?' I says, some mystified. 'What the men had ought to be up to an' ain't?'
"But customers come streaming into the post-office store then, and some folks for their mail, and Silas set a time a couple o' days later in the afternoon for Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and me to come down to the store and talk it over.
"'An' you be here,' says Silas, beatin' it off with his finger. 'It's somethin' we got to do to protect our own public decency.'