"When we finally got outside it was suppertime and summer seeming, and the hour was all sweet and frank, and the whole village was buried in its evening fried mush and potatoes, or else sprinkling their front yards. I donno how it was with the others, but I know I went along the streets seeing through them little houses like they was glass, and seeing the young folks eating their suppers and growing up and getting ready to live and to _be_. And in us ladies' arms, in them heavy papers, it seemed to me we was carrying new life to them, in little ways--in little ways, but ways that was going to be big with meaning. And I felt as if something in me kind of snuggled up closer to the way things was meant to be. "Us that went west got clear the whole length of Daphne Street without anybody seeing what we was doing, or else believing that we was doing it orderly and legitimate. And away out by the Pump pasture, we started in distributing, and we come working down town, handing out papers to the residence part like mad and taking in dimes like wild. They was so many of us, and the _Evening Daily_ office was so located, that by the time Mis' Sykes and Mis' Toplady and I come around the corner where the men and Rob Henney and the rejoiners and the carriers was loafing, waiting, smoking, and secure, we didn't have many papers left. And we three was the first ones back. "'Evenin' paper?' says Mis' Toplady, casual. '_Friendship Village Evenin' Daily, Extra?_ All the news for a dime?' "Never have I see a man so truly flabbergasted as Rob Henney, and he did look like death. "'You're rejoined!' he yelled, or whatever it is they say--'you're rejoined by law from printin' your papers or from deestributin' the same.' "'Why, Rob Henney,' says Mis' Toplady, 'no call to show fight like that. Half the town is readin' its papers by now. They've been out for three-quarters of an hour,' she says. "Then soft and faint and acrost the street, we heard somebody laugh, and then kind of spat hands; and we all looked up. And there in the open upstairs window of the building opposite, we see leaning out Eppleby Holcomb and Timothy Toplady and Silas Sykes. And when we crossed eyes, they all made a little cheer like a theatre; and then they come clumping down stairs and acrost to where we was. "'Won out, didn't you, by heck!' says Silas, that can only see that far. "'Blisterin' Benson,' says Timothy, gleeful. '_I_ say we ain't got no cause to regret our wifes' brains.' "But Eppleby, he never said a word. He just smiled slow and a-looking past us. And we knew that from the beginning he had seen our whole plan, face to face.