“I know it,” she says awful sober, and I see she was grieving some too. And we was all pretty still, going home. So still that we could all hear Jem Meddledipper, that had caught the run o’ that tune from us in the afternoon and was driving us home by it, and the wheels went round to it-- “Lovin’-kindness ... lovin’-kindness ... lovin’-kindness, oh, how great,” --and it was sung considerable better than any of us had sung it. But anyway, the result of leaving early was that we got to the Toll Gate House before dark, and I’ll never forget the thing we saw. Standing in the door of the little house was the woman we’d spoke with in the afternoon, and she was wearing the same ex-blue alpaca. But now she’d been and got out from somewheres and put on a white straw hat, with little pink roses all around it. And like lightning I sensed that she’d watched for us to come back and had gone and got the hat out and put it on, so’s to let us know she had that one decent thing to wear. “Jem,” I says, “stop.” I donno rightly why, but I clambered down out of the rig, and I says to the woman: “Let me come in a minute--can I? I want to talk to you about--about some sewing,” says I, that’s sewed every rag I’ve had on my back most ever since I was clothed in any. But all of a sudden, her getting out that hat made me feel I just had to get up close to her, like you will. But when I stepped inside, I forgot all about the sewing. “My land, my dear,” I says, or it might have been, “My dear, my land,” I was that taken-back and upset, “you’d ought to have this ceiling mended.” For the plaster had fell off full half of it and the roof leaked; and there wasn’t very much of any furniture, to clap the climax. “The City won’t do anything,” says she. “They’re going to tear it down. And the rent ain’t much--so I want to stay.” “Well,” says I, “I’m going to bring you out some napkins to hem next week--can I?”--me having bought new before then so’s to have some work for Missionary Society, so why not now? And her face lit up that same way from inside. When I’d got back in the rig, and we’d drove a little way by, I spoke to the rest about her going and putting on the hat. Some of ’em had sensed it, and some of ’em hadn’t--like some will and some won’t sense every created thing. And when we all did get a-hold of it--well, I can’t hardly tell you what it done. But there was something there in the rig with us that hadn’t been there before, and that come with a rush now, and that done a thing to us all alike. I can’t rightly say what it was, or what it done; but I guess Mis’ Puppy come as near it as anybody: “Oh, ladies,” she says, kind of hushed, “don’t that seem like--well, don’t it make you feel--well, I donno, but ain’t it just....” She kind of petered off, and it was Mis’ Pettibone, her enemy, that answered.