"As a matter of fact, Sodality didn't have no real work on hand, Cemetery lookin' real neat and tasty for Cemetery, and no immediate dead coming on as far as we could know; but we didn't have much of anything in the treasury, either. And when we didn't have any work on hand, we was in the habit of raising money, and when we'd got some money earnt, we was in the habit of devising some nice way to spend it. And so we kept Sodality real alive.
"'Well, there may not be any active dead just now,' Mis' Sykes explains it, 'but they are sure to die and need us. We had two country funerals to pay for last year. Or I might say, one an' a half, one corpse contributing half enough for his own support in Cemetery.'
"With that Insley spoke up, kind of firm and nice, with muscles in his tone, like he does:
"'What's the matter with doing something with these folks before they die?' he asks.
"I guess we all looked kind of blank—like when you get asked why Columbus discovered America and all you know how to answer is just the date he done so on.
"'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'do what?'
"'Mustn't there be something to do with them, living, if there's everything to be done for them, dead?' Insley asks.
"'Well-a' says Mis' Sykes, 'I don't know that I understand just how you mean that. Perhaps the Mission Band—'
"'No,' says Insley. 'You. Us.'
"I never knew a man to say so little and yet to get so much said.