I never see anybody work like Silas worked them next few minutes. If he’d been a horse and a giant made one he couldn’t have got more quick, necessary things out of the way. And we done what we could, and it wasn’t any time at all till we was going down the stairs carrying what few things they’d most need for the next few days. When we stepped out in the street, the water was an inch or more all over where we stood, and when we’d got six steps from the house and Bitty had gone ahead shouting to the wagon, Bessie Marshall looked up at Silas real pitiful. “Oh, Mr. Sykes,” she says, “there’s a coop of little chickens and their mother by the back door. Couldn’t we take ’em?” “Sure,” says Silas, and when the wagon come he made it wait for us, and when the Marshalls and the baby and Mis’ Merriman was seated in it, and me, he come running with the coopful of little yellow scraps, and we was the last wagon to leave the Flats and to get up to Elephant Hill again. “But, oh,” says Mis’ Merriman grieving, “it seems like us women could do such a little bit of the rescuing. Oh, when it’s a flood or a fire or a runaway, I do most question Providence as to why we wasn’t all born men.” You know how it is, when a great big thing comes catastrophing down on you, it just eats up the edges of the thing you think with, and leaves you with nothing but the wish-bone of your brain operating, kind of flabby. But when we got up on top of Elephant Hill, where was everybody--folks from the Flats, and a good deal of what they owned put into a pile, and the folks from Friendship “proper” come to watch--there was Mis’ Timothy Toplady already planning what to do, short off. Mis’ Toplady can always connect up what’s in her head with what’s outside of it and--what’s rarer still--with what’s lacking outside of it. “These folks has got to be fed,” she says, “for the days of the high water. Bed and breakfast of course we can manage among us, but the other two meals is going to be some of a trick. So be Silas would leave us have Post Office hall free, we could order the stuff sent in right there, and all turn in and cook it.” “Oh, my,” says Mis’ Holcomb, soft, to me, “he’ll never do that. He’ll say it’ll set a precedent, and what he does for one he’ll have to do for all. It’s a real handy dodge.” “Well,” says Mis’ Merriman, “leave him set a precedent for himself for floods. We won’t expect it off him other.” “I ain’t never yet seen him,” I says, “carrying a chicken coop without he meant to sell chickens. Mebbe’s he’s got a change of heart. Let’s ask him,” I says, and I adds low to Mis’ Toplady that I’d asked Silas for so many things that he wouldn’t give or do that I could almost do it automatic, and I’d just as lives ask him again as not. It wasn’t but a minute till him and Timothy come by, each estimating how fast the river would raise. And I spoke up right then. “Silas,” I says, “had you thought how we’re going to feed these folks till the water goes down?”