"We spread out the proofs of the pictures of my house and spent some time deciding. And while we was deciding, he showed us some more pictures that he'd made of the town, and talked a little about them. He was a real pleasant, soft-spoken man, and he knew how to laugh and when to do it. He see the funny in things—he see that the post-office looked like a rabbit with its ears up; he see that the engine-house looked like it was lifting its eyebrows; and he see the pretty in things, too—he showed us a view or two he'd took around Friendship Village just for the fun of it. One was Daphne Street, by the turn, and he says: 'It looks like a deep tunnel, don't it? An' like you wanted to go down it?' He was a wonderful nice, neutral little man, and I enjoyed looking at his pictures.
"But Minerva—I couldn't help watching her. She wasn't so interested in the pictures, and she wasn't so quick at seeing the funny in things, nor the pretty, either; but even the candy making hadn't livened her up the way that little talking done. She acted real easy and told some little jokes; and when the candy was cool, she passed him some; and I thought it was all right to do. And he sort of spruced up and took notice and quit being so down-in-the-mouth. And I thought, 'Land! ain't it funny how just being together makes human beings, be they agent or be they cousin, more themselves than they was before!'
"Her liking company made me all the more sorry to leave Minerva alone that next evening, that was the night Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I was due to a tableau of our own in the post-office store. It was the night when the Vigilance Committee was to have its first real meeting with the School Board. But I lit the lamp for Minerva in the parlour, and give her the day's paper, and she had her sewing, and when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes come for me, I went off and left her setting by the table. My parlour had been swept that day, and it was real tidy and quiet and lamp-lit; and yet when Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and I stepped out into the night, all smelling of pinks and a new moon happening, and us going on that mission we wasn't none of us sure what it was, the dark and the excitement sort of picked me up and I felt like I never felt in my parlour in my life—all kind of young and free and springy.
"'Let's us walk right down through town first,' says Mis' Toplady. 'That's where the young folks gets to, seems though.'
"'Well-a, I don't see the necessity of that,' says Mis' Sykes. 'We've all three done that again and again. We know how it is down there evenings.'
"'But,' says Mis' Toplady, in her nice, stubborn way, 'let's us, anyway. I know, when I walk through town nights, I'm 'most always hurrying to get my yeast before the store shuts, an' I never half look around. To-night let's look.'
"Well, we looked. Along by the library windows in some low stone ledges. In front of a store or two they was some more. Around the corner was a place where they was some new tombstones piled up, waiting for their folks. And half a block down was the canal bridge. And ledges and bridge and tombstones and streets was alive with girls and boys—little young things, the girls with their heads tied in bright veils and pretty ribbons on them, and their laughs just shrilling and thrilling with the sheer fun of hanging around on a spring night.
"'Land!' says Mis' Sykes, 'what is their mothers thinkin' of?'
"But something else was coming home to me.
"'I dunno,' I says, kind of scairt at the way I felt, 'if I had the invite, this spring night, all pinks and new moons, I donno but I'd go and hang over a tombstone with 'em!'