Which wasn’t just exactly how she meant to say it. But it seemed to come in so pat that everybody rustled, spontaneous, in spite of themselves. And us ladies begun passing the plates.
After they’d all gone, we was picking up the dishes when Silas come in to see to the stoves.
“Oh, Silas,” I says, “wasn’t it a splendid meeting? Wasn’t it?”
Silas was pinching, gingerish, at the hot stove-door handle, rather than take his coat-tail for a holder.
“I s’pose you’re satisfied,” he says. “You fed ’em, even if we didn’t get much done.”
“Not get much done!” I says—“not get much done! Oh, Silas, what more did you want to do than we see done here to-night?”
“Well, what kind of a charity meeting was that?” says he, sour and bitter rolled into one.
I went up to him with all of Mis’ Toplady’s fringed tea-napkins in my hands that it was going to take her most of the next day to do up.
“Why, Silas,” I says, “I dunno if it was any kind of a charity meeting. But it was a town meeting. It was a folks’ meeting. It was a human meeting. Can’t you sense it? Can’t you sense it, Silas?” I put it to him: “We got something else besides charity going here to-night—as sure as the living sun.”