"And he did resemble one, standing there so shy and manly in his new little brown clothes. "Mis' Emmons's eyes was bright, and I thought I see a kind of challenge in her way of drawing the child towards her. "'Chris,' she says, 'tell them what you had in your paper bag when you came to the church the other night.' "Chris remembered: Sugar rolls and cream-puffs and fruit-cake, he recites it grand. 'My supper,' he adds, no less grand. 'But that was 'cause I didn't have my dinner nor my breakfast,' he explains, so's we wouldn't think he'd had too much at once. "'What was the matter with your foot?' Mis' Emmons goes on. "Christopher had a little smile that just about won you--a sort of abashed little smile, that begun over by one side of his mouth, and when he was going to smile that way he always started in by turning away his head. He done this now; but we could all hear what he said. It was:-- "'My biggest toe went right through a hole, an' it choked me awful.' "About a child's foot hurting, or a little sore heel, there is something that makes mothers out of everybody, for a minute or two. The women all twittered into a little ripple of understanding. Probably to every woman there come the picture of the little cold, wet foot and the choked toe. I know I could see it, and I can see it yet. "'Lambin',' says Mis' Toplady, in more than two syllables, 'come here for a peppermint.' "Chris went right over to her. 'I been thirsty for a drink of water since all day,' he says confidential. 'Have you got one?' "Mis' Toplady went with the child, and then Mis' Emmons took something from her bag and held it up. It was Christopher's father's letter that he'd brought with him that night. "She read the letter out loud, in everybody's perfectly breathless silence that was broken only by Christopher laughing out in the kitchen. 'My friends,' Mis' Emmons says when she'd got through, 'doesn't it seem to you as if our work had come to us? And that if it isn't Chris himself, at least it ought to be people, live people--and not an iron fence or even a monument that will show from the railroad track?' "And with that, standing in the doorway with my arms full of bedspread, I piped right up, just like I'd been longing to pipe up ever since that night at Mis' Emmons's when I'd talked with Insley:-- "'Yes, sir,' I says emphatic, 'it does. Without meaning to be sacrilegious in the least,' I says toward Mis' Sykes, 'I believe that the Dead is a lot better prepared to take care of themselves than a good many of the Living is.' "There was a kind of a little pause at this, all but Mis' Sykes. Mis' Sykes don't pause easy. She spoke right back, sort of elevating one temple:-- "'The object of this meeting as the chair understands it,' says she, 'is to discuss money spending, _not_ idees.'