Friendship Village Love Stories

nd in mind; a great company of whom straightway I became one. I felt that swift, good gladness that now was now,—that delicate, fleeting Now, that very coquette of time, given and withdrawn. I rememb

that now is being now.... And I long for the time when we shall all know it together, all the time, an

home for the Java entertainment which was set for to-night, and driving to my gate the Sykes's white horse in the post-office store delivery w

. I am afraid that I am not going to tell what we said. But it was full of being once more in the presence of those who

e, Calliope sat down on t

nch cloths an' rugs an' willow chairs an' a statue of almost anybody an' a meat-cho

t I thought I might hav

. Who do I mean by She? Mis' Oliver Wheel

g

ttle arms, and she looked up at me from

hen that little Mis' Johnson comes dilly-nippin' around where I am, noddin' her blue ostrich tip, seems my

eldom seen Mrs. Johnson without an urgency to be gone from her little fluttering presence. But Ca

n't ugly at all—she's just a real sweet little slip of a thing, doin' her hard-workin' best. But when I first see her in church that day, I says to myself: 'I'll give that little piece two months to carry the sail she's carryin' here to-day; four months[Pg 119] to hev folks tired of her, an' six months to get herself the cold shoulder all 'roun

carry out an effect of foreign parts. And since, at the missionary meeting which had projected the affair, Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson had told about their Java entertai

ook with[Pg 120] the tomato-coloured signs on the walls. But, finally, she lit on the engine-house; an' when she see the big, bare engine-room, with the big, shinin' engine in it, an' harnesses hangin' from them rough board beams in a kind of avenoo, an' the board walls all streaked down, she spatted her hands an' 'lowed we'd hev our Java there. 'What a dear, quaint place,' s's she,—'

ncredulously. "You cannot mean t

dy ever gets in to give the alarm till the house is burned down an' no need to bother goin'. Even if they do get in in some sort of season, the department has to go to the[Pg 121] mayor to get a permit to go outside the city limits. It was so when the Topladys' barn burned. Timothy told 'em, when they come gallopi

iope was a valiant helper to Mrs. Johnson, and so I told her. She was sta

Yourself you can boss round, you know," she threw back, smiling; "any

he had moved before she came to us, and in the two worlds she perceived no difference. Or, where she saw a difference, she sought to modify it by a touc

ay. "Movin' so, you want your Sabbath to take some rest in, an' you ain't expected to dress yourself up an' get out to Sunday service an'

g, and they were ex

an after church, "an' he's got a real soft-spe

nineteen-inch baby-blue ostrich feather d

an' I must say she knows it. No pullin' down the jacket or

d said, "That Sunday morning, Mis' Oliver Whee

o be addressed, Mrs. Oliver Wheeler[Pg 123] Johnson had spoken to t

to Friendship to live, and we shall be coming here to church. And I shall want to join your Ladies' Aid Society

people, but we want quiet Christians. An' did you notice how she was when I give her an introduction around? Why, she up an' out with somethin' to say to everybody. Jus

table[Pg 124] nineteen-inch blue ostrich plume on the little woman's hat bobbed and won attention and was everywhere at once. Or, perhaps—such creatures of wax we are to our impressions—it may have been little Mrs. Johnson's mere way of lifting her small, pointed chin when she talked, and of frowning and over-emphasizing. Or it may

band were at supper alone. She thought nothing of ordering Jimmy Sturgis and the bus to take her down town to her marketing on a rainy day. She had inclined to blame the village that Daphne Street was not paved, instead of joining[Pg 125] with the village to blame somebody else. Above all, she tried to buy our old furniture. I do not know that another might not have done all these quite without giving offence, and, indeed, rather have left us impressed with her superior fami

d a like diversion. Already on the great room, receiving its final preparation, had descended something of the excited spirit of the evening: the heat, the insufficient light, the committee members' shrill, rollicking children sliding on the floor, the[Pg 126] booths which in all bazaars contain with a precision fairly bewildering the same class of objects; and the inevitable sense of hurry and silk waists and achin

as the inside of the trunks of your trees. When I stepped in the engine-house, it seemed insistently a place in which I had never been before. And this may have been partly because the whole idea of a village fire-department is to me singular: the waiting horses and ladders and hose, whose sole reason for bein

ue cambric with a silver crown, drooped meditatively from the smoke-stack; a scarlet fez and a peacock-feather fan hung on the supply hose; and on the tongue-bracer was fixed a pink sofa cushion from Mis' Amanda Toplady's parlour, with an olive Indian gentleman in a tinsel zouave jacket stamped on the cover. On the two big sliding do

t marred the Eastern effect. And within, I[Pg 128] found myself in a circle of the Friendship women whom I know best—all of them tired with that

And she said to me as if, I thought, in explanation of what I was to hear,—"I guess we'

Sykes spoke unsmili

ev stood since my own birth. But it's the bein' commanded 'round—me,

hev to run a fair, without you've got to be run yourself, too. Ain't it enough for Mis' Johnson to be made chairman without her wantin' to boss

g

that great, tolerant Mi

ted; "she seems fair bent on lordin' it. My land, if she wasn't b

little ruefully, and

icular way she does it. It's so with some folks. They just seem to sort of set you all over, when you

t you could wrostle all your days with vi

tous, we all want to dodge. I felt sorry for her, first, because I thought she was in for nervous prostration.

s, "but it's part the way she says her a's. Tha

g

guess that's the whole thing,"

e must be somethin' we could like her

r Johnson positively; "he's got too soft-speakin' a voice. I like a man's v

liver Wheeler Johnson—who, in the hat with the blue plume, was everywhere, directing, altering, objecting, arranging, commanding and, especially, doing over—I most unwillingly felt much as

ied up to us with a tray

hments, "Mis' Johnson jus' put up her little chin

g

lips and lifted their

cessarily found in Java. I've a

ke an overconfident child whom you long to shut in a closet. Yes, I understand that I sound like a barbarian in these days of splendid corrective treatment of children who are studied and not stormed at. And in this treatment I believe to the uttermost. And yet, overconfidence in a child is of all things the most—I will amend what I said: Mrs. Oliver Wheeler Johnson was like an overconfident child whom y

cking children, and all the others about stood still, at the sharp, peculiar terrifying alarm and summons which seemed to imprint something on the very air, stabbing us with Halt that we might cou

icturesque harnesses fell to the horses' necks, their hoofs trampled terrifyingly on the loose boards of the floor, and forth from the yawning doors the horses pounded, dragging the[Pg 133] pièce de résistance, with garlands on its sides, the pink zouave cushion crushed beneath it, and the flag of the Netherlands streaming from the stack. Horses rushed thither in competition, came thundering at the doors, and galloped to place before the two carts. I think not a full minute can have been consumed. But the r

her—tired with the deadly tiredness of a day such as theirs—a little blue linen figure sprang upon

es from my house. Mrs. Toplady, this booth, please. You can make it right in no time. Mrs. Holcomb, you[Pg 134] will have to do your b

nothing to smile at. And with that Calliope's indignation, as she afterward said, "kind of crystalli

n't near quaint enough for a Java entertainment. Nor I don't think it's what you might s

s Calliope turned, and silently they took the way that the pièce de résistance had taken bef

ked straight

h 'em," she said, "an' my head feels like

long an' ain't got a thing out of it. I often think it's that way with my housework, but I did t

-was Mame-Bliss, "how my poor neck ach

d the rest, took three great steps and cau

ms to me it'd smell sort of cosy an' homelike an' soothin' down. It'

aughed a l

hev a nice one to put on anyway. I was wishin' I had, and now my wish has com

and faced us, and hugge

hs to get herself the cold shoulder all around. Well, the time ai