Post-office Hall, where the Peace celebration was to be held, was filled with flags, both bought and borrowed, and some made up by us ladies, part guessed at but most of them real accurate out of the back of the dictionary. Two days before the celebration us ladies were all down working in the hall, and all pretty tired, so that we were liable to take exception, and object, and I don't know but what you might say contradict. "My feet," says Mis' Toplady, "ache like the headache, and my head aches as if I'd stood on it." "Do they?" says Mis' Postmaster Sykes, with her little society pucker. "Why, I feel just as fresh. I've got a wonderful constitution." "Oh, anybody's constitution feels fresh if they don't work it too hard," says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, having been down to the Hall all day long, as Mis' Sykes hadn't. Then Mis' Toplady, that is always the one to pour oil and balm and myrrh and milk onto any troubled situation, she brought out her question more to reduce down the minute than anything else: "Ladies," she says, holding up one foot to rest the aching sole of it, "Ladies, what under the sun are we going to do now that our war work's done?" "What indeed?" says Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss. "What indeed?" says I. "True for you," says Mis' Sykes, that always has to sound different, even though she means the same. Of course we were all going to do what we could to help all Europe, but saving food is a kind of negative activity, and besides us ladies had always done it. Whereabouts was the novelty of that? And we'd took over an orphan each and were going to skin it out of the egg-money and such--that is, not the orphan but its keep--and still these actions weren't quite what we meant, either. "The mornings," says Mis' Toplady dreamy, "when I use' to wake up crazy to get through with my work and get with you ladies to sew--where's all that gone?" "The meetings," says Mame Holcomb, "when Baptists and Catholics and young folks and Elks met promiscuous and sung and heard talking--where's them?" And somebody brought out the thing we'd all thought most about. "The days," she says, "when we worked next to our old enemies--both church and family enemies--and all bad feelings forgot--where's them times?" "What we going to do about it?" I says. "And when?" Mis' Sykes had a suggestion. She always does have a suggestion, being she loves to have folks disciple after her. "Why, ladies," she says, "there's some talking more military preparedness right off, I hear. That means for another war. Why not us start in and knit for it _now_?" And she beamed around triumphant. "Well," says Mame Holcomb, reasonable, "if the men are going to prepare in any way, it does seem like women had ought to be getting ready too. Why _not_ knit? And have a big box all setting ready, all knit up, to match the other preparednesses?"