"We ask' each other around, and none of us was no more then started, let be it was Mis' Toplady, that had got in first.
"'Le's us leave our lunch,' says Mis' Sykes, then. 'Le's us leave it un-et. Abagail, you put it back in the basket an' pour the coffee into the pot. An' le's us write. Wouldn't we all rather hev one of our sick headaches,' she says, firm, 'than mebbe make ourselves the Laughing Stock? Ladies, I ask you.'
"An' we woulded, one and all. Sick headaches don't last long, but laughed-at has regular right down eternal life.
"Ain't it strange how slow the writing muscles and such is, that you don't use often? Pitting cherries, splitting squash, peeling potatoes, slicing apples, making change at church suppers,—us ladies is lightning at 'em all. But getting idees down on paper—I declare if it ain't more like waiting around for your bread to raise on a cold morning. Still when you're worried, you can press forward more than normal, and among us we had quite some material ready for Riddy and the men when they came back. But not Mis' Sykes. She wan't getting on at all.
"'If I could only talk it,' she says, grieving, 'or I donno if I could even do that. What I want to say is in me, rarin' around my head like life, an' yet I can't get it out no more'n money out of a tin bank. I shall disgrace Sodality,' she says, wild.
"'Cheer up,' says Libby Liberty, soothing. 'Nobody ever reads the editorials, anyway. I ain't read one in years.'
"'You tend to your article,' snaps Mis' Sykes.
"I had got my write-up of Silas all turned in to Riddy, and I was looking longing at Abagail's basket, when, banging the door, in come somebody breathing like raging, and it was Rob Henney, that I guess we'd all forgot about except it was Mis' Toplady that was waiting for him.
"Rob Henney always talks like he was long distance.
"'I come in,' he says, blustering, 'I come in to quit off my subscription to this fool paper, that a lot o' fool women—'