And we went to the Haskitts’ and found her head tied up with the toothache. Folks looks sick enough with their heads tied up around; but when it comes to up and down, with the ends sticking up, they always look like they was going to die. And we went to the Doles’ and the Hennings’ and carried in the stuff; and one and all them places, leaving things there was like laying a ten-cent piece down on a leper, and bowing to him to help on his recovery. And every single place, as soon as ever we’d laid down the old clothes we’d brought, we invited ’em to join the organization and to come to the meeting next night.
“What’s the name of this here club?” Joe Betts asks us.
By that time neither Mis’ Toplady nor me would have tied the word “Charity” to that club for anything on earth. We told him we was going to pick the name next night, and told him he must come and help.
“Do come,” Mis’ Toplady says, and when Mis’ Betts hung off: “We’re goin’ to have a little visiting time—and coffee and sandwiches afterwards,” Mis’ Toplady adds, calm as her hat. And when we got outside: “I dunno what made me stick on the coffee and the sandwiches,” she says, sort of dazed, “but it was so kind of bleak and dead in there, I felt like I just had to say something cheerful and human—like coffee.”
“Well,” I says, “us ladies can do the refreshments ourselves, so be the rest of the Board stands on its head at the idee of doing ’em itself. As I presume likely it will stand.”
And this we both of us presumed alike. So on the way home we stopped in to the post-office store and told Silas that we’d been giving out a good many invitations to folks to come to the meeting next night, and mebbe join.
“That’s good,” says Silas, genial; “that’s good. We need the dues.”
“We kind of thought coffee and sandwiches to-morrow night, Silas,” says Mis’ Toplady, experimental, “and a little social time.”
“Don’t you go to makin’ no white-kid-glove doin’s out o’ this thing,” says Silas. “You can’t mix up charity and society too free. Charity’s religion and society’s earthy. And that’s two different things.”
“Earthy,” I says over. “Earthy! So’m I. Ain’t it a wonderful word, Silas? Well, us two is going to do the coffee and sandwiches for to-morrow night,” I added on, deliberate, determined and serene.