When she got to the gate, Mis' Sykes turned round in her grand-lady way, and she says, "Mis' Swenson, why don't you and your husband come up to the peace meetin' to-morrow night and help us?"
Mis' Swenson was a peaked little thing, with too much throat in length and not enough in thickness. "I never heard of it," she says.
Mis' Sykes explained in her commanding way. "Peace, you know," she says, "is to be celebrated between the different countries. And, of course, this is your country, too," Mis' Sykes assured her, "and we'd like to hev you come up and help with the dishes, or like that."
"Is it dress-up?" says Mis' Swenson, not very loud.
"My, no!" we told her, and decided to stick to the usual hooks in our closets.
"I'd like to," says Mis' Swenson, "if I can get Pete to change his clothes."
"So do," says Mis' Sykes gracious and clucked her horse along. "My goodness," she says, "what awful stuff these folks must feed their children! And how they must bungle 'em when they're sick. And they won't hardly any of 'em come to-morrow night," she says. "You can not," she says, "get these folks to take part in nothing."
We went to twenty or thirty houses, and every one of them Mis' Sykes invited to come and help. But not one of the twenty or thirty houses had heard of any foreigner whatever having just arrived in Friendship Village, nor had ever seen or heard of that little boy before. He was awful good, the little soul, waving his hands so nice that I begun to be afraid everybody we met would claim foreign and ask for him.
By noon we begun to get pretty excited. And the sheriff, he was excited too, and he was hunting just as wild as any of us, being arrests was light. He was hanging on the canal bridge when we crossed it, going home along toward noon.
"They never had a case of lost child in Friendship Village in twenty years," he said. "I looked it up."