"He laughed again, and, 'You stay just the the way you are,' he says, and he contrived to make them common words sort of flow all over her like petting.
"That evening, when we marched into the Sykes's house to the meeting, he spoke to her like that again. The men was invited to the meeting, too, but Mis' Sykes let it be known that they needn't to come till the coffee and sandwiches, thus escaping the speech. Mis' Sykes ain't in favour of suffrage, but she does love a new thing in town, and Mis' Martin Lacy was so well dressed and so soft-spoken that Mis' Sykes would of left her preach foot-binding in her parlour if she'd wanted to. Mis' Sykes is like that. Letty was about the youngest there, and she was about the prettiest I 'most ever saw; and when he'd got them all seated, young Elbert Sykes, that was the only man there, just naturally gravitated over and set down by her, like the Lord meant. I love to see them little things happen, and I never smile at them, same as some. Because it's like I got a peek in behind the curtain and see the eternal purpose working away, quiet and still.
"Well, Mis' Lacy, she talked, and she put things real sane and plain, barring I didn't believe any of what she said. And pretty soon I stopped trying to listen and I begun thinking about Emerel Daniel. I'd been down to see her just before supper, and I hadn't had her out of my head much of the time since. Emerel's cottage wasn't half a block from Black Hollow, the great low place beyond the river road that the town used as a dump. It was full of things without names, and take it on a day with the wind just right, Emerel had to keep her window shut on that side of her house. Water was standing in the hollow all the whole time. Flies and mosquitoes come from it by the flock and the herd. And when I'd held my nose and scud past it that afternoon to get to Emerel's, I'd almost run into Dr. Heron, just coming out from seeing Otie, and I burst right out with my thoughts all over him, and asked him if Black Hollow wasn't what was the matter with Otie and if it wasn't all that was the matter with him.
"'Unquestionably,' says Dr. Heron. 'I told Mrs. Daniel six months ago that she must move.'
"'Well,' says I, 'not having any of her other country homes open this year, Emerel had to stay where she was. And Otie with her. But what did you say to the council about filling in the hole?'
"'The council,' says Dr. Heron, 'is paving the county swamp. There's a good crop of wooden blocks this year.'
"'True enough,' says I, grim, 'and Otie is a-paying for it.'
"That was exactly how the matter stood. And all the while Mis' Lacy was a-talking her women suffrage, I set there grieving for Emerel, and wondering how it was that Silas Sykes and Timothy Toplady and Jimmy Sturgis and even Eppleby Holcomb, that belonged to the common council, could set by and see Otie die, and more or less of the rest of us in the same kind of danger.
"Next I knew, Mis' Lacy, that was all silky movements and a sweet voice, had got through her own talk and was asking us ladies to express ourselves. Everybody felt kind of delicate at first, and then Libby Liberty starts up and spoke her mind:—