It didn’t take me one secunt to pull Silas aside.
“Silas,” I says, “oh, Silas—is what you just said true? Because if it’s true—won’t you let it last after the water goes down? Won’t you let Bitty keep his store?”
He looked down at me, frowning a little. One of the little yellow chicks in the coop got out between the bars just then, and was just falling on its nose when he caught it—I s’pose bill is more biologic, but it don’t sound so dangerous—and he was tucking it back in, gentle, with its mother, while he answered me, testy:
“Lord, Calliope,” he says, “a flood’s a flood. Can’t you keep things separate?”
“No, sir,” I says, “I can’t. Nor I don’t believe the Lord can either.”
Ain’t it like things was arranged to happen in patterns, same as crystals? For it was just in them next two minutes that two things happened: The first was that a boy came riding over on his wheel from the telegraph office and give a telegram to Timothy. And Timothy opened it and waved it over his head, and come with it over to us:
“First contribution for the flood-suffers!” says he. “They telephoned the news over to Red Barns and listen at this: ‘Put me down for Twenty-five dollars towards the flood folks food. Zachariah Roper.’ ”
I looked over to Timothy straight.
“Zachariah Roper,” I says, “that owns the cement plant that some of the Flat folks got in the way of?”
Timothy jerked his shoulder distasteful. “The idear,” says he, “of bringin’ up business at a time like this.”