"'Yes, sir. He was on the way to being somebody that Friendship Village could have had for the right kind of an inmate. And now he'll be nothing but a grave, that's no good to anybody. And Sodality,' I couldn't help adding, 'will likely pitch right in and take care of his grave, tasteful.'
"And when I said that, it come over me how Emerel had dressed him and bathed him and made his clothes, and done washings, tireless, to get the fifty cents—besides bringing him into the world, tedious. And now it was all going for nothing, all for nothing—when we could of helped it. And I plumped out with what I'd said that morning to Silas:—
"'Why don't you fill up Black Hollow with sand-bar sand out of the river, now it's so low? Then, even if it's too late for Otie, mebbe we can keep ourselves from murderin' anybody else.'
"Them half a dozen men of the common council set still a minute, looking down at Mis' Sykes's parlour ingrain. And I looked over at them, and my heart come up in my throat and both of them ached like the toothache. Because all of a sudden it seemed to me it wasn't just Timothy and Eppleby and Silas and some more of the council setting there by the wall—but it was like, in them few men, tired and not so very well dressed, was setting the lawmakers of the whole world; and there in front of them, wasn't only Mis' Holcomb and Libby and Letty and me, but Emerel Daniel, too, and all the women there is—saying to them: 'My land, we've dressed 'em an' bathed 'em an' sewed for 'em an' brought 'em into the world, tedious. Let 'em live—fix things so's they can live an' so's it needn't all go for nothin'.' And I sort of bubbled up and spilled over, as if everything we was all of us for had come up in my throat.
"'Oh, folks,' I says, 'just look what us in this room could have done for Otie—so be we'd begun in time.'
"Right like a dash of cold water into my face, Mis' Sykes spoke up, cold as some kind of death:—
"'Well, ladies,' she says, 'I guess we've got our eyes open now. I say that's what we'd ought to hev been doin' instead o' talkin' women votin',' she says, triumphant.
"Then somebody spoke again, in a soft, new, not-used-to-it little voice, and in her chair over beside Elbert, Letty Ames leaned forward, and her eyes was like the sunny places in water.
"'Don't you see,' she says, 'don't you see, Mis' Sykes, that's what Mis' Lacy meant?'
"'How so?' says Mis' Sykes, short.