"'Near as I can make out,' says Marne Holcomb, 'a good deal more than amending is going on here to-night. It looks to me as if Sodality was just going to get into its own Cemetery and be forgot, and as if something else was coming to meet us--something big!' "Mis' Toplady spoke up, comfortable, down on her knees putting green paper on the pots. "'Well, my land!' she says, 'I've noticed two-three things in my lifetime. And one is, that do what whoever will, things do change. And so whenever a new change pops up, I always think: "Oh, I guess you're comin' along anyway. I donno's I need to help." An' yet somethin' in me always prances to pitch in, too.' "Timothy was there, occupying himself with the high places us ladies couldn't get up to. "'Well,' says he, 'if folks stop dying, like Sodality evidently intends they shall if it goes out of business, maybe you'll stay home some, Amandy, and not always be off laying folks out.' "'I know it,' Mis' Toplady returns, 'I've laid out most everybody I know, and of course I'm real glad to do it. But the last dead's hair I done up, I caught myself thinking how much more interesting it'd be if they was alive an' could find fault. Doin' for the dead gets kind of monotonous, _I_ think.' "'_I_ don't,' says Timothy, decided. 'The minute you work for the living, you get all upset with being criticised. I s'pose the dead would find fault, if they could, over the way you cut the grass for 'em. But they can't an' so there's an end to it, an' we get along, peaceful. If they was living folks layin' there, you can bet they'd do some back talk.' "'Well,' says I, 'I've been sick of Sodality for years. But it was about the most what-you-might-call society I had, and I hated to give it up.' "'Me, either,' says Mame Holcomb. "'Me, either,' says Mis' Uppers. 'I declare I've often said I wouldn't know what _to_ do if folks stopped dyin' so's Sodality would have to close out.' "Mis' Sykes was setting watching the rest of us. "'Well,' she observes, cold, 'if I was usin' the dead to keep in society, I donno's I'd own it up.' "Silas Sykes had just come over from the store to see if there was anything he could meddle in. "'Heh!' says he, showing his teeth. 'Not many of Sodality, as I can see, _deserves_ to die and be done for, civilized.' "'Don't you worry yourself, Silas Sykes,' says I, 'we're going to be done things for before we die hereafter, and more civilized than ever you dreamed of, all up and down your ledger. That's where you do dream, ain't it, Silas?' I says. And though I said it gay, I meant it frank.