"We made up that we three should come down town one night that week and look around and see what we see. We all knew--every woman in Friendship Village knew--how evenings, the streets was full of young folks, loud talking and loud laughing and carrying on. We'd all said to each other, helpless, that we _wisht_ something could be done, but that was as far as anybody'd got. So we made it up that we three should be down town in a night or two, so's to get our ideas started, and Silas was to have Timothy Toplady and Eppleby Holcomb, that's on the School Board, down to the store so we could all talk it over together afterwards. But still I guess we all felt sort of vague as to what we was to drive _at_. "'It seems like Silas wanted us to unwind a ball o' string from the middle out,' says Mis' Toplady, uneasy, when we'd left the store. "A few days after that Minerva come. I went down to the depot to meet her, and I would of reco'nized her anywheres, she looked so much like her handwriting. She was dressed sort of tawdry swell. She had on a good deal. But out from under her big hat with its cheap plume that was goin' to shed itself all over the house, I see her face was little and young and some pretty and excited. Excited about life and new things and moving around. I liked her right off. 'Land!' thinks I, 'you'll try me to death. But, you poor, nice little thing, you can if you want to.' "I took her home to supper. She talked along natural enough, and seemed to like everything she et, and then she wiped the dishes for me, and looked at herself in the clock looking-glass all the while she was doing it. Then, when I'd put out the milk bottles, we locked up the back part of the house and went and set in the parlour. "I'd always thought pretty well of my parlour. It hasn't anything but a plush four-piece set and an ingrain and Nottinghams, but it's the _parlour_, and I'd liked it. But when we'd been setting there a little while, and I'd asked her about everybody, and showed her their pictures in the album, all of a sudden it seemed as if they wasn't anything to _do_ in the parlour. Setting there and talking was nice, but I missed something. And I thought of this first when Minerva got up and walked kind of aimless to the window. "'How big is Friendship Village?' she ask'. "I told her, real proud. "'They can't be a great deal goin' on here, is they?' she says. "'Land, yes!' I says. 'We're so busy we're nearly dead. Ladies' Aid, Ladies' Missionary, Cemetery Improvement Sodality, the rummage sale coming on, the bazaar, and I donno what all.' "'Oh,' she says, vague. 'Well--is they many young people?'