"And there, beside of me, sitting on the rail fence under the evergreens, was Minerva Beach, my own cousin, and the little, tired photograph-taking man. I had just bare time to catch my breath and to sense where the minute really belonged—that's always a good thing to do, ain't it?—and then I says, cool as you please:
"'Hello, Minerva! My! ain't the night grand? I don't wonder you couldn't stay in the house. How do, Mr. Myers? I was just remembering my lemon-pie that won't be good if it sets till to-morrow. Come on in and let's have it, and make a little lemonade.'
"Ordinarily, I think it's next door to immoral to eat lemon-pie in the evening; but I had to think quick, and it was the only thing like a party that I had in the butt'ry. Anyhow, I was planning bigger morals than ordinary, too.
"Well, sir, I'd been sure before, but that made me certain sure. There had been my parlour and my porch, and them two young people was welcome to them both; but they wanted to go somewheres, natural as a bird wanting to fly or a lamb to caper. And there I'd been living in Friendship Village for sixty years or so, and I'd reco'nized the laws of housekeeping and debt paying and grave digging and digestion, and I'd never once thought of this, that's as big as them all.
"Ain't it nice the way God has balanced towns! He never puts in a Silas Sykes that he don't drop in an Eppleby Holcomb somewheres to undo what the Silases does. It wasn't much after six o'clock the next morning, and I was out after kindling, when they come a shadow in the shed door, and there was Eppleby. He had a big key in his hand.
"'I'm a-goin' to the City, Calliope,' says he. 'Silas an' Timothy an' I are a-goin' up to the City on the Dick Dasher' (that's our daily accommodation train, named for the engineer). 'Silas and Timothy is set on buying the iron gates for the schoolhouse entry, an' I'm goin' along. He put the key in my hand, meditative. 'We won't be back till the ten o'clock Through,' he says, 'an' I didn't know but you might want to get in the schoolhouse for somethin' to-night—you an' Mis' Toplady.'
"I must of stood staring at him, but he never changed expression.
"'The key had ought to be left with some one, you know,' he says. 'I'm leavin' it with you. You go ahead. I'll go snooks on the blame. Looks like it was goin' to be another nice day, don't it?' he says, casual, and went off down the path.
"For a minute I just stood there, staring down at the key in my hand. And then, 'Eppleby,' I sings after him, 'oh, Eppleby,' I says, 'I feel just like I was going to crow!'
"I don't s'pose I hesitated above a minute. That is, my head may have hesitated some, like your head will, but my heart went right on ahead. I left my breakfast dishes standing—a thing I do for the very few—and I went straight for Mis' Toplady. And she whips off her big apron and left her dishes standing, an' off we went to the half a dozen that we knew we could depend on—Abagail Arnold, that keeps the home bakery, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that's going to be married again and has got real human towards other folks, like she wasn't in her mourning grief—we told 'em the whole thing. And we one and all got together and we see that here was something that could be done, right there and then, so be we was willing to make the effort, big enough and unafraid.