"But our buying that stone for Jeb's widow's husband's grave let us in for perpetual applications for monuments; and so when we had any money we always went right to work and voted it for general Cemetery improvement, so there wasn't ever any money in the treasury for the applications. Anyway, we felt we'd ought to encourage self-made graves and not pauperize our corpses.
"So the very next afternoon after we got our paper out, we met at Mis' Sykes's; and the day being mild and gold, almost all of Sodality turned out, and Mis' Sykes used both her parlours. It was funny; but such times there fell on them that sat Front Parlour a sort of what-you-might-call-distinction over them that sat Back Parlour. It's the same to our parties. Them that are set down to the dining-room table always seem a little more company than them that are served to the little sewing tables around in the open rooms, and we all feel it, though we all pretend not, as well-bred as we know how. I donno but there's something to it, too. Mis' Sykes, for instance, she always gets put to a dining table. Nobody would ever think of setting her down to a small one, no more than they would a Proudfit. But me, I generally get tucked down to a sewing table and in a rocking-chair, if there ain't enough cane seats to go around. Things often divide themselves true to themselves in this life, after all.
"This was the last regular meeting before our Annual. The Annual, at Insley's suggestion, was going to be in the schoolhouse, and it was going to be an open evening meeting, with the whole town invited in and ice-cream served after. Regular meetings Sodality gives just tea; special meetings we give hot chocolate or ice-lemonade, or both if the weather is unsettled; for entertainments we have cut-up fruit and little bakery cakes; but to our Annual we mount up to ice-cream and some of our best cake makers' layer cake. And us ladies always dress according: afternoon home dresses to regular meetings; second best to specials; Sunday silks to entertainments; and straight going-out clothes for the Annual. It makes it real nice. Nobody need to come dressed wrong, and nobody can go away disappointed at what they've been fed.
"The meeting that day all ought to have gone smooth enough, it being so nice that our paper had sold well and all, but I guess the most of us was too tired out to have tried to have a meeting so soon. Anyhow, we didn't seem to come together slippery and light-running, like we do some days; but instead I see the minute we begun to collect that we was all inclined to be heavy and, though not cross, yet frictionish.
"For instance: Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss had come in a new red waist with black raspberry buttons. And it was too much for Mis' Fire Chief Merriman that's been turning her black poplin ever since the Fire Chief died.
"'Dear me, Mis' Holcomb,' she says, 'I never see anybody have more dressy clothes. Did you put that on just for us?'
"Mis' Holcomb shut her lips tight.
"'This is for home wear,' she says short, when she opened them.
"'Mean to say you get a cooked supper in that rig?' says Mis' Merriman. 'Fry meat in it, do you?'