“Hold up your head,” says she. “You’re going to be mayored over in a minute by a man that ain’t been drunk for six months. I dunno but they used that in the campaign. This town ain’t got a politic to its name.” “Do they know yet,” I ask’ her, “who’s going to run against him?” “I heard ’Lish Warren,” says Mis’ Toplady. “They want Eppleby to run interdependent, but he won’t leave himself down to run against Threat and ’Lish, I don’t believe. I wish’t,” Mis’ Toplady says, “I was men.” But all of a sudden she sort of straightened up there to the foot of the bandstand. “No, I don’t,” she says. “I wish’t I was a human being. A human being like the Lord meant me to be, with a finger in His big pie as well as in Timothy Toplady’s everlasting apple-pie. I wish’t--oh, I wish’t I was a real human being, with my brains in my head instead of baked into pies and stitched into clothes and used to clean up floors with.” I’ve often wished that, too, and every woman had ought to. But Mis’ Toplady had ought to wish it special. She’s big and strong of limb, and she can lift and carry and put through, capable and swift. She’s like a woman left from some time of the world when women was some human-beinger than they are now, and she’s like looking ahead a thousand years. “But just _half_ a human,” she says now, dreamy, “would know that election day ought to be differn’t from the run o’ days. Some men votes,” she says, “like they used the same muscles for votin’ that they use for bettin’ and buyin’ and sellin’. I wonder if they do.” When the band started to play, we moved over towards the sidewalk. And there we come on Timothy Toplady and Silas and Mis’ Sykes and Eppleby Holcomb and Mame, and two-three more. We stood there together, listening to the nice, fast tune. They must have been above six-seven hundred folks around the square, all standing quiet in the rings of the arc lights or in the swinging shadows, listening too. The market square is a wonderful, big open place to have in the middle of a town. It had got set aside years ago to be a park some day, and while it was a-waiting for parkhood, the town used the edge of it for a market and wood-yard. It stretched away ’most to the track and the Pump pasture, and on three sides of it Friendship Village lay--that night with stores shut up and most of the houses shut up while folks took their ease--though it _was_ a back-aching ease--hearing the nice, fast, late tunes. Right while we was keeping still, up slouched Threat Hubbelthwait, the new mayor nominee. “Evenin’,” says he, with no reverence for the tune. “Ain’t this here my dance?” “I heard you was up to lead us one,” says Mis’ Toplady, dry. Threat took it for congratulations. “Thank you kindly,” says he, easy. “It’s a great trust you folks are talkin’ of placin’ in me.” “Oh, ’most everybody in town has been trustin’ you for years, ain’t they, Threat?” says Mis’ Toplady, sweet.