It kind of come over me: Washing all day and her half sick; Absalom by the stove tending fire and turning wringer; his old mother humming on one note; the children yelling when they wasn’t shouting. I thought of their cupboard and I could see what it must hold—cold boiled potatoes and beans, I bet. I thought of their supper-table ... of early mornings before the fire was built. And I see the kind of a life they had.
And then I looked over to the two loaves of bread and the can of fruit and the dozen eggs and the old coat of Timothy’s that we’d brought, and it seemed to me these touched the spot of what was the trouble in that house about as much as the smoke that oozed into the room from the chimney. And I glanced over to Mis’ Toplady and there she set, with ideas filterin’ back of her eyes.
“We’ve brought you a few things, being you’re sick—” she begun, sort of embarrassed; but Absalom, he cut in short, shorter than I ever knew him to speak.
“Who’s we?” he says.
“Why-a,” says Mis’ Toplady, stumbling some over her words, “the new society.”
Absalom flushed up to the roots of his hair. “What society?” says he, sharp.
Mis’ Toplady showed scairt for just a minute, and then she met his eyes brave. “Why,” she says, “us—and you. You belong to it. We had it in the paper, and met to the Post-Office Hall the other night. It’s for everybody to come to.”
“To do what?” says Absalom.
“Why-a,” says Mis’ Toplady, some put to it, “to—to do nice things for—for each other.”
“The town?” says Absalom.