“I dunno ...” says Mis’ Toplady, dreamy, “I dunno the name of it. But ladies, it’s something. And I can feel it, just as plain as plain.”
It was three-four weeks before the new Charity Association got really to running, and had collected in enough clothes and groceries so’s we could start distributing. On the day before the next monthly meeting, that was to be in Post-Office Hall again, we started out with the things, so’s to make our report to the meeting. Mis’ Toplady and I was together, and the first place we went to was Absalom Ricker’s. Gertie, Absalom’s wife, was washing, and he was turning the wringer with his well hand, and his mother was finishing vests by the stove, and singing a tune that was all on a straight line and quite loud. And the children, one and all, was crying, in their leisure from fighting each other.
“Well,” says Mis’ Toplady, “how you getting on now? Got many washings to do?”
Gertie Ricker, she set down on the wood-box all of a sudden and begun to cry. She was a pretty little woman, but sickly, and with one of them folding spines that don’t hold their folks up very good.
“I’ve got three a week,” she says. “I can earn the rent all right.”
“I tell her,” says Absalom, “if she didn’t have no washings, then there’d be something to cry for.”
But he said it sort of lack-luster, and like it come a word at a time.
“Do you get out any?” says Mis’ Toplady, to improve the topic.
“Out where?” says Gertie. “We ain’t no place to go. I went down for the yeast last night.”