"Honest," I says, "do you want me to help in a prosperity celebration this Summer?"
"Sure," he says, "women are in on it."
"Luke," I says. "I dunno how you'll feel about that when you come to think it over. But I feel—"
Bennie, fussing round on the side-walk, came over, tugging a chunk of wood. I thought at first he was carrying a brick.
I sat down in a handy chair, just inside Luke's door.
"Luke," I says, "Luke! That ain't the kind of a celebration this town had ought to have. You listen here to me...."
III
Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think about the next two Summer months. I lie awake and think how it all went, that planning, from first to last. I think about the idea, and about how it started, and kindled, and spread, and flamed. And I think about what finally came of it.
For one thing, it was the first living, human thing that Friendship Village ever got up that there wasn't a soul that kicked about. You can't name another thing that any of the town ever went in for, that the rest didn't get up and howl. Pavement—some of us said we couldn't afford it, "not now." New bridge—half of us says we was bonded to the limit as it was. Sewerage—three-fourths of us says for our town it was a engineering impossibility. Buying the electric light plant, that would be pure socialism. Central school building—a vast per cent of us allows it would make it too far for the children to walk, though out of school hours they run all over the town, scot-free and foot loose, skate, sled and hoop. As a town none of us would unite on nothing. Never, not till this time.
But this time it was different. And even if not anything had come of it, I'd be glad to remember the kind of flash I got from different folks, when we came to tell them about it.