One woman had not spoken. She was a thin, dark-eyed creature, with a gypsy face and a quantity of gray hair wound about on the top of her head. This was Isabel Martin, who was allowed her erratic way because she took it, and because, it had always been said, "You never could tell what Isabel would do next, only she never meant the least o' harm." She had come softly in while the others were talking, and drawn Ellen's work out of her hand, with a swift, pretty smile at her. "Rest your eyes," she had whispered her, and sat by, taking quick, deft stitches, while Ellen, unconscious until then of being tired, had dropped her lids and leaned her head against the casing, with a faint smile of pleasant restfulness. Now Isabel put the work back into Ellen's hand with an accurate haste, and looked up at the group about her. "I'll tell you what to do," she said. Her voice thrilled with urging and suggestive mischief. It was a compelling voice, and they turned at once. "If there ain't Isabel," said Martha Waterman. "I didn't see you come in." "Le' 's give a fancy dress party of our own," said Isabel. "Dress ourselves up to the nines, an' put on paint an' powder, an' send off to the stores to hire clo'es an' wigs?" inquired Caddie. "No, sir, none o' that for me. I've seen what it comes to, money an' labor, too. I've just been through it, lookin' on, an' I wouldn't do it not if the church never see a brush o' paint nor a shingle, an' we had to play on a jew's-harp 'stead of a melodeon. No!" Ann Bartlett gave a little murmur here. "I never heard of anybody's bringin' a jew's-harp into the meetin'-house," she said, as a kind of official protest. "I guess we could get us some kind of a melodeon, 'fore we done such a thing as that." Isabel was going on in that persuasive voice; it seemed to call the town to her to do her bidding. "No, we ain't goin' to do it their way. We're goin' to do it our way. They've set out to see how young they can be. Le' 's see 'f we can't beat 'em seein' how old we can be. Le' 's dress up like the oldest that ever was, an' act as if we liked it." The electrifying meaning ran over them like a wave. They caught the splendid significance of it. They were to offer, in the guise of jesting, their big protest against the folly of sickening over youth by showing how fearlessly they were dancing on toward age. It was more than bravado, more than repudiation of the cowards who hesitated at the onward step. It was loyal and passionate upholding of the state of those who were already old, and of those who had continued their beneficent lives into the time when there is no pleasure in the years, and yet had given honor and blessing through them all. They fell to laughing together, and two or three cried a little on the heels of merriment.