“Jem,” I says, “stop.”
I donno rightly why, but I clambered down out of the rig, and I says to the woman: “Let me come in a minute—can I? I want to talk to you about—about some sewing,” says I, that’s sewed every rag I’ve had on my back most ever since I was clothed in any. But all of a sudden, her getting out that hat made me feel I just had to get up close to her, like you will.
But when I stepped inside, I forgot all about the sewing.
“My land, my dear,” I says, or it might have been, “My dear, my land,” I was that taken-back and upset, “you’d ought to have this ceiling mended.”
For the plaster had fell off full half of it and the roof leaked; and there wasn’t very much of any furniture, to clap the climax.
“The City won’t do anything,” says she. “They’re going to tear it down. And the rent ain’t much—so I want to stay.”
“Well,” says I, “I’m going to bring you out some napkins to hem next week—can I?”—me having bought new before then so’s to have some work for Missionary Society, so why not now? And her face lit up that same way from inside.
When I’d got back in the rig, and we’d drove a little way by, I spoke to the rest about her going and putting on the hat. Some of ’em had sensed it, and some of ’em hadn’t—like some will and some won’t sense every created thing. And when we all did get a-hold of it—well, I can’t hardly tell you what it done. But there was something there in the rig with us that hadn’t been there before, and that come with a rush now, and that done a thing to us all alike. I can’t rightly say what it was, or what it done; but I guess Mis’ Puppy come as near it as anybody:
“Oh, ladies,” she says, kind of hushed, “don’t that seem like—well, don’t it make you feel—well, I donno, but ain’t it just....”
She kind of petered off, and it was Mis’ Pettibone, her enemy, that answered.