I laid the letter up on the clock-shelf where I could see it while I did my dishes. I needed it there to steady me. I didn't have to write my answer till after dinner, because it wouldn't go out until the four o'clock mail anyway. I kind of left the situation lie around me all the morning so I could sense it and taste it and, you might say, be steeped in it, and get so I could believe.
Me—a kind of guest housekeeper for six months in a beautiful flat in the city—with two young married folks and a little baby to amuse myself with, and the whole world sitting around me, expansive, and waiting for me to enjoy it. It seemed as if the Golden Plan folks always think is going to open up for them had really opened now for me.
How I kept from baking my doughnuts and frying my sponge-cakes in lard, I dunno, but I did—sheer through instinct, I guess. And then I wrote my letter and took it down to the post-office. Go? Wouldn't I go? My letter just said:
"Ellen dear, you ridiculous child, did you think I could wobble for a single second? I'd made up my mind before I got down the first page. I'll be there Monday night. Do you care if I wear your table-spread for dress-up, when I get there? All I've got is everyday—or not so much so. And for your wanting me, I'll say thank you when I get there.
Calliope."
On my way to mail my letter I came on Mis' Toplady and Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, downtown to get something for supper. And I told them all about it.
Mis' Toplady hunched her shawl farther up her back and sighed abundant.
"Ain't that just grand, Calliope?" says she. "To think you're going to do something you ain't been doing all your days."
That was the point, and she knew it.
"I says to Timothy the other night," she went on, "I says, 'Don't you wish I had something to tell you about, or you had something to tell me about, that we both of us didn't know by heart, forward and back?'"
"Eppleby and me, too," says Mis' Holcomb, "I wish to the land we could do something—or be something—that would give a body something to kind of—relate to each other."