"'Unquestionably,' says Dr. Heron. 'I told Mrs. Daniel six months ago that she must move.' "'Well,' says I, 'not having any of her other country homes open this year, Emerel had to stay where she was. And Otie with her. But what did you say to the council about filling in the hole?' "'The council,' says Dr. Heron, 'is paving the county swamp. There's a good crop of wooden blocks this year.' "'True enough,' says I, grim, 'and Otie is a-paying for it.' "That was exactly how the matter stood. And all the while Mis' Lacy was a-talking her women suffrage, I set there grieving for Emerel, and wondering how it was that Silas Sykes and Timothy Toplady and Jimmy Sturgis and even Eppleby Holcomb, that belonged to the common council, _could_ set by and see Otie die, and more or less of the rest of us in the same kind of danger. "Next I knew, Mis' Lacy, that was all silky movements and a sweet voice, had got through her own talk and was asking us ladies to express ourselves. Everybody felt kind of delicate at first, and then Libby Liberty starts up and spoke her mind:-- "'_I_ believe all you've been a-saying,' she says, 'and I hev for twenty years. I never kill a hen without I realize how good the women can do a human being's work if they're put to it.' "'I always think of that, too,' says Mis' Hubbelthwait, quick, 'about the hotel....' She kind of stopped, but we all knew what she meant. Threat is seldom if ever sober, especially on election day; but he votes, and she only runs the hotel and keeps them both out of the poorhouse. "'Well, look at me,' says Abagail Arnold, 'doin' work to oven and to counter, an' can't get my nose near nothin' public but my taxes.' "'Of course,' says Mis' Uppers, rocking, 'I've almost _been_ the mayor of Friendship Village, bein' his wife, so. An' I must say he never done a thing I didn't think I could do. Or less it was the junketin' trips. I'd 'a' been down with one o' my sick headaches on every one o' them.' "'Men _know_ more,' admitted Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, 'but I donno as they can _do_ any more than us. When the Fire Chief was alive an' holdin' office an' entertaining politicians, I use' often to think o' that, when I had their hot dinner to get.' "'I s'pose men do know more than we do,' says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, reflective. 'I know Eppleby is lightnin' at figures, an' he can tell about time-tables, an' he sees sense to fine print parts o' the newspapers that looks like so many doctors' prescriptions to me. An' yet honestly, when it comes to some questions of sense, I've known Eppleby not to have any.'