"'Calliope,' he says, 'we've about made up our minds--the School Board an' some o' the leadin' citizens has--to appoint a Women's Evenin' Vigilance Committee, secret. An' we want you an' Mis' Toplady an' Mis' Sykes should be it.' "'Vigilance,' I says, thoughtful. 'I recollect missin' on the meanin' of that word in school. I recollect I called it "viligance" an' said it meant a 'bus. I donno if I rightly know what it means now, Silas.' "Silas cleared his throat an' whispered hoarse, in a way he's got: 'Women don't have no call, much for the word,' he says. 'It means when you sic your notice onto some one thing. We want a committee of you women should do it.' "'Notice _what_?' I says, some mystified. 'What the men had ought to be up to an' ain't?' "But customers come streaming into the post-office store then, and some folks for their mail, and Silas set a time a couple o' days later in the afternoon for Mis' Toplady and Mis' Sykes and me to come down to the store and talk it over. "'An' you be here,' says Silas, beatin' it off with his finger. 'It's somethin' we got to do to protect our own public decency.' "'_Public_ decency,' I says over, thoughtful, and went out fingerin' my letter that was in a strange handwriting and that I was dying to read. "It was a couple of days later that I what-you-might-say finished that letter, and between times I had it on the clock-shelf and give every spare minute to making it out. Minerva Beach the letter was from--my cousin Minnie Beach's girl. Minnie had died awhile before, and Minerva, her daughter, was on her way West to look for a position, and should she spend a few days with me? That was what I made out, though I donno how I done it, for her writing was so big and so up-and-down that every letter looked like it had on corsets and high heels. I never see such a mess! It was like picking out a crochet pattern to try to read it. "I recollect that I was just finishing composing my letter telling her to come along, and hurrying so's to take it to mail as I went down to the Vigilance Committee meeting, when the new photographer in town come to my door, with his horse and buggy tied to the gate. J. Horace Myers was his name, and he said he was a friend of the Topladys, and he was staying with them while he made choice art photographs of the whole section; and he wanted to take a picture of my house. He was a dapper little man, but awful tired-seeming, so I told him to take the picture and welcome, and I put the stone dog on the front porch and looped the parlour curtains over again and started off for the meeting. "'I'll be up to show you the proofs in a few days,' he says as I was leaving. He was fixing the black cloth over his head, kind of listless and patient. "'Land!' I says, before I knew it, 'don't you get awful sick of takin' pictures of humbly houses you don't care nothin' about?'