"And all of a sudden I stopped, like an idee had took me from all four sides of my head at once.
"'Why, ladies,' I says, 'look at the schoolhouse, doing nothing every night out of the year and built for the young folks!'
"'Oh, well,' says Mis' Sykes, superior, 'you know the Board'd never allow 'em to use the schoolhouse that way. The Board wouldn't think of it!'
"'Whose Board?' says I, stern. 'Ain't they our Board? Yours and mine and Friendship Village's? Come on—come on and put it to 'em,' I says, kind o' wild.
"I was climbing down the steps while I spoke. And we all went down, me talking on, and Mis' Toplady catching fire on the minute, an' Mis' Sykes holding out like she does unless so be she's thought of an idea herself. But oh, Mis' Toplady, she's differ'nt.
"'Goodness alive!' she said, 'why ain't some of us thought o' that before? Ain't it the funniest thing, the way folks can have a way out right under their noses, an' not sense it?'
"I had never had a new-born notion come into my head so ready-made. I could hardly talk it fast enough, and Mis' Toplady same way, and we hurried back to the post-office store, Mis' Sykes not convinced but keeping still because us two talked it so hard.
"Silas and Timothy and Eppleby Holcomb was setting in the back part of the post-office store waiting for us, and Mis' Toplady and I hurried right up to them.
"'You tell, Calliope,' says Mis' Toplady. 'It's your idee.'
"But first we both told, even Mis' Sykes joining in, shocked, about the doorway carryin' ons and all the rest. 'Land, land!' Mis' Toplady says, 'I never had a little girl. I lost my little girl baby when she was eleven months. But I ain't never felt so like shieldin' her from somethin' as I feel to-night.'