"With that Insley spoke up, kind of firm and nice, with muscles in his tone, like he does: "'What's the matter with doing something with these folks before they die?' he asks. "I guess we all looked kind of blank--like when you get asked _why_ Columbus discovered America and all you know how to answer is just the date he done so on. "'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'do what?' "'Mustn't there be something to do with them, living, if there's everything to be done for them, dead?' Insley asks. "'Well-a' says Mis' Sykes, 'I don't know that I understand just how you mean that. Perhaps the Mission Band--' "'No,' says Insley. 'You. Us.' "I never knew a man to say so little and yet to get so much said. "'Well-a,' says Mis' Sykes, 'of course Sodality was formed with the idee of caring for Cemetery. You see that lets in the Dead only.' "'Gosh,' says Eppleby Holcomb, 'how exclusive.' But I don't know as anybody heard him but me. "'I know,' says Insley, slow. 'Well, at any rate, perhaps there are things that all of us Living might do together--for the sake, say, of earning some money for the Dead. There'd be no objection to that, would there?' "'Oh, no,' says Mis' Sykes. 'I'm sure nobody could take exception to _that_. Of course you always have to earn money out of the living.' "Insley looked at us all kind of shy--at one and another and another of us, like he thought he might find some different answer in somebody's eyes. I smiled at him, and so did Mis' Toplady, and so did Eppleby; and Mis' Eleanor Emmons, the widow-lady, lately moved in, she nodded. But the rest set there like their faces was on wrong side out and didn't show no true pattern. "'I mean,' he says, not quite knowing how to make us understand what he was driving at, 'I mean, let's get to know these folks while they are alive. Aren't we all more interested in folks, than we are in their graves?' "'_Folks_,' Timothy Toplady says over, meditative, like he'd heard of members, customers, clients, murderers and the like, but never of folks. "'I mean,' Insley says again, 'oh, any one of a dozen things. For instance, do something jolly that'll give your young people something to do evenings--get them to help earn the money for Cemetery, if you want to,' he adds, laughing a little. "'There's goin' to be a Vigilance Committee to see after the young folks of Friendship Village, nights,' says Silas Sykes, grim. "'You might have town parties, have the parties in schools and in the town hall,' Insley goes on, 'and talk over the Cemetery that belongs to you all, and talk over the other things besides the Cemetery that belong to you all. Maybe I could help,' he adds, 'though I own up to you now I'm really more fond of folks--speaking by and large--than I am of tombstones.'