“I was just goin’ to see you, Miss Marsh,” she says. “I got kind o’ lonesome and I thought I’d bring you over a begonia slip and set a while.” “I’m sorry, Bess,” I says. “I’m going to a meeting.” “What kind of meetin’?” she says. “P’litical?” “Yes,” I says, “something like that.” And that was true, of course, being politics is so often carried on by private charity from the candidates. “I’d kind of like to go to a meeting again,” she says, wistful. “I sung to revival meetings for a month once, when I was a girl.” “I guess you wouldn’t like this one,” I says. “Come to see me to-morrow and I’ll tell you about it.” And then I went up-stairs and left her standing there on the sidewalk, and I felt kind of ashamed and sneaking. I didn’t know why. But I says to myself, comforting, that she’d probably of broke out and sung in the middle of the meeting, if she had come. Her head ain’t right, like the most of ours; but hers takes noisy forms, so you notice more. Eleven of us turned out to the meeting, which was a pretty good proportion, there being only fifteen hundred living in Friendship Village all together. Silas was in the chair, formal as a funeral. “The idear, as I understand it,” says Silas, when the meeting was open, “is to get some Charity going. We’d ought to organize.” “And then what?” asks Mis’ Toplady. “Why, commence distributin’ duds and victuals,” says Silas. “Well-a,” says Mis’ Toplady, “and keep on distributing them all our lives?” “Sure,” says Silas, “unless you’re goin’ to be weary in well-doing. Them folks’ll keep right on being hungry and nekked as long as they live.” “Why will they?” says Mis’ Toplady, puzzled. “Well, they’re poor folks, ain’t they?” says Silas, scowling. “Why, yes,” says Mis’ Toplady; “but that ain’t all they is to ’em, is it?” “What do you _mean_?” says Silas. “Why, I mean,” says Mis’ Toplady, “can’t they be got goin’ so’s they sha’n’t _be_ poor folks?” Silas used his face like he smelled something. “Don’t you know no more about folks than that?” says he. “Facts is facts. You’ve got to take folks as they are.” “But you ain’t taking folks nowheres. You’re leavin’ ’em as they are, Silas,” says Mis’ Toplady, troubled. Mis’ Silas Sykes spoke up with her way of measuring off just enough for everybody. “It’s this way Silas means,” she says. “Folks are rich, or medium, or poor. We’ve got to face that. It’s always been so.” Mis’ Toplady kind of bit at her lower lip a few times in a way she has, that wrinkles up her nose meditative. “It don’t follow out,” she says, firm. “My back yard used to be all chickweed. Now it’s pure potatoes.” “Folks,” says Mis’ Sykes, real witherin’, “folks ain’t dirt.” “That’s what I thought,” says Mis’ Toplady, dry. Silas went right over their heads, like he does.