So she took off her apron and run in and put on a breastpin and come down the walk, rolling down her sleeves, and dabbing at her hair to make sure, and we went down the street together. And the first thing I done was to burst out with my thoughts all over her, and I told her about Silas and about Bitty Marshall, and about how his little store on the Flats was going to shut down. “Well,” she says, “if that ain’t Silas all over. If it ain’t Silas. I could understand his dried fruit sales, ’long toward Spring so--it’s easy to be reasonable about dried peaches when its most strawberry time. I could even understand his sales on canned stuff he’s had in the store till the labels is all fly-specked. But when he begun to cut on new potatoes and bananas and Bermuda onions and them necessities, I says to myself that he was goin’ to get it back from somewheres. So it’s out o’ Bitty Marshall’s pocket, is it?” “And it’s so legal, Mis’ Holcomb,” I says, “it’s so bitterly legal. Silas ain’t corporationed himself in with nobody. It ain’t as if the courts could get after him and some more and make them be fair to their little competitors, same as courts is fallin’ over themselves to get the chance to do. This is nothin’ but Silas--our leadin’ citizen.” Mis’ Holcomb, she made her lips both thin and tight. “Let’s us go see Silas,” says she, and I see my Determination was crooking its finger to her, same as to me. Silas had gone down to the store, we found, but Mis’ Sykes was just coming out their gate with a plate of hot Johnny cake to take up to Miss Merriman. “Oh, Mis’ Sykes,” I says, “is your night bloomin’ cereus goin’ to be out to-night, do you know? I heard it was.” The whole town always watches for Mis’ Sykes’s night-blooming cereus to bloom, and the night it comes out we always drop in and set till quite late. Mis’ Sykes never looked at Mis’ Holcomb. “Good morning, Calliope,” says she. “Yes, I think it will, Calliope. Won’t you come in to-night, Calliope, and see it?” says she. I says I would; and when we went on, “What struck her,” I says, puzzled, “to spread my name on to what she said like that, I wonder? I feel like I’d been planted in that sentence of hers in three hills.” Then I see Mis’ Holcomb’s eyes was full of tears. “Mis’ Sykes was trying to slight me,” she says. “She done that so’s to kind of try to seem to leave me out.” “Well,” I says, “I must say, she sort of succeeded. But what for?” “I give her potato bread receipt away,” she says miserable, “and it seems she didn’t expect it of me.” “Is _that_ it?” I says. “Well, of course we both know Mis’ Sykes ain’t the one to ever forgive a thing like that. I s’pose she’ll socially ostrich-egg you--or whatever it is they say?” “I s’pose she will,” says Mis’ Holcomb forlorn. “You know how Mis’ Sykes is. From now on, if I say the sky is blue, Mis’ Sykes’ll say no, pink.”