Silas come in late—he’d had to wait and distribute the mail—and when he see the Rickers and the rest of them, he come tearing over to us women in the refreshment corner.
“My dum!” he says, “look at them folks setting down there—Rickerses and Henningses and Bettses and them—how we goin’ to manage with them here? The idear of their coming to the meeting!”
“Ain’t it some their meeting, Silas?” I says. “The whole society was formed on their account. Seems to me they’ve got a right—just like in real United States Congress doings.”
“But, my dum, woman,” says Silas, “how we going to take up their cases and talk ’em over with them setting there, taking it all in? Ain’t you got no delicacy to you?” he ends up, ready to burst.
And of course, when you come to think of it, Congress always does do its real business in committees, private and delicate.
Mis’ Toplady was ready for Silas.
“You’re right about it,” she says. “We can’t do that, can we? Suppose we don’t do so very much business to-night? Let’s set some other talk goin’. We thought mebbe—do you s’pose your niece would sing for us, Silas?”
“Mebbe,” says Silas, some mollified, through being proud to sinning of his visiting niece; “but I don’t like this here—” he was going on.
“Ask her,” says Mis’ Toplady. “She’ll do it for you, Silas.”
And Silas done so, ignorant as the dead that he’d been right down managed. Then he went up stage and rapped to begin.