"While they was appointing committees I set up there in the Glee Club feeling blacker and blacker. Coming down to the meeting that night, I recollect I'd been extra gentle in my mind over the whole celebration idea. Walking along in the seven-o'clock light, with the sun shining east on Daphne Street and folks all streaming to the town-meeting, and me sensing what it was going to be for, I'd got all worked up to 'most a Declaration of Independence lump in my throat. When I went in the door to the meeting, little Spudge Cadoza and some other children was hanging around the steps and Silas Sykes was driving them away; and it come to me how deathly ridiculous that was, to be driving _children_ away from a meeting like that, when children is what such meetings is for; and I'd got to thinking of all the things Insley was hoping for us, and I'd been real lifted up on to places for glory. And here down had come the men with their talk about a _paying_ Fourth, and here was Miss Beryl Sessions showing us how to celebrate in a way that seemed to me real sweet but not so very patriotic. It was then that all of a sudden it seemed to me I'd die, because I wanted so much to feel the way I'd use to feel when it was going to be the Fourth o' July. And when they sung 'Star Spangled Banner' to go home on and all stood up to the sentiment, I couldn't open my mouth. I can't go folks that stands up and carols national tunes and then talks about having a Fourth that'll be a real business bringer. "'What'd you think of the meeting?' says Mis' Toplady, low, to me on the way out. "'I think,' says I, frank, 'it was darn.' "'There's just exactly what we all think,' says Mis' Toplady, in a whisper. "But all the same, preparations was gone into head first. Most of us was put on to from one to five committees--I mean most of them that works. The rest of the town was setting by, watching it be done for them, serene or snarling, according to their lights. Of course us ladies worked, not being them that goes to a meeting an' sets with their mouths shut and then comes out and kicks at what the meetin' done. Yet, though we wan't made out of that kind of meal, we spoke our minds to each other, private. "'What under the canopy _is_ a marquee?' asks Mis' Amanda Toplady, when we met at her house to plan about refreshments. "Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss spoke right up. "'Why, it's a finger ring,' she says. 'One of them with stones running the long way. The minister's wife's got a blue stone one....' "'Finger ring!' says Mis' Mayor Uppers, scornful. 'It's a title. That's what it is. From England.' "We looked at them both, perplexish. Mis' Holcomb is always up on things--it was her that went into short sleeves when the rest of us was still crocheting cuff turnovers, unconscious as the dead. But Mis' Uppers had been the Mayor's wife, and though he'd run away, 'count o' some money matter, still a title is a title, an' we thought Mis' Uppers had ought to know.