The Topladys and others of us who united to uphold Emerel, and especially to uphold Emerel's mother, could not but realize that the majority of Friendship society had regretted to decline the début party, and had been pleased to accept the hospitality of the Postmaster Sykeses. I dare say that this may have been partly why, in the usual self-indulgence of challenge, I put on my prettiest frock for the party and prepared to set out somewhat early, hoping for the amusement of sharing in the finishing touches. But as I was leaving my house Calliope Marsh arrived, buttoned tightly in her best gray henrietta, her cheeks hot with some intense excitement. "Well," she said without preface, "they've done it. Emerel Kitton's married. She's just married Abe at the parsonage to get out o' bein' debooed. They've gone to take the train now." No one could fail to see what this would mean to Mrs. Ricker and Kitton, and, rather than the newly married Emerel, it was she who absorbed our speculation. "Mis' Ricker just slimpsed," Calliope told me. "I says to her: 'Look here, Mis' Ricker, don't you go givin' in. Your kitchen's a sight with the good things o' your hand--think o' that,' I told her; 'think how you mortgaged your very funeral for to-night, an' brace yourself up,' An' she says, awful pitiful: 'I _can't_, Calliope,' she says. ''T seems like this slips the pins right out. They ain't nothin' to deboo with now, anyway,' she told me. 'How can I?'" "Oh, poor Mrs. Ricker!" I exclaimed. Calliope looked at me intently. "Well," she said, "that's what I run in about. You're a stranger just fresh come here. You ain't met folks much yet. An' Mis' Sykes, she's just crazy to get a-hold o' you an' your house for the Sodality. An' the only thing I could think of for Mis' Ricker--well, would you stand up with Mis' Ricker to-night an' shake all their hands? An' sort o' leave her deboo for _you_, you might say?" I think that I loved Calliope for this even before she understood my assent. But she added something which puzzled me. "If I was you," she observed, "I'd do somethin' else to-night, too. You could do it--or I could do it for you. You don't expect to let Mis' Sykes hev the Sodality here, do you?" "I might have had it here," I said impulsively, "if she had not done this to poor little Mrs. Ricker." "Would--would you give me the lief to say that?" Calliope asked demurely. I had no objection in the world to any one knowing my opinion of Mis' Postmaster Sykes's proceeding,--"one of her preposterousnesses," Calliope called it,--and I said so, and set off for Mrs. Ricker's, while Calliope herself flew somewhere else on some last mission. And, "Mis' Sykes'd ought to be showed," she called to me over-shoulder. "That woman's got a sinful pride. She'd wear fur in August to prove she could afford to hev moths!"