So she called some of us together to her house one afternoon--Mis' Timothy Toplady, Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss, Abigail Arnold, that keeps the Home Bakery, Mis' Photographer Sturgis, that's the village invalid, Mis' Fire Chief Merriman, that her husband's dead, but she keeps his title because we got started calling her that and can't bear to stop--and me. I told her I couldn't do much, being I was training two hundred school children for a Sunday night service that week, and I was pretty busy myself. But I went. And when we all got there, Mis' Sykes took out a piece of paper tore from an account book, and she says, pointing to a list on it with her front finger that wore her cameo ring: "Ladies! I've got this far, and it's for you to finish. Jeffro will come in on the Through, either Friday or Saturday night. Now we'll have the band"--that's the Friendship Village Stonehenge Band of nine pieces--"and back of that Bud Babcock, a-carrying the flag. We'll take the one off'n the engine house, because that stands so far back no one will miss it. And then we'll have the Boy Scouts, and the Red Barns's ambulance; and we'll put Jeffro in that; and the boys can march beside of him to his home." "Well-a," says Mis' Timothy Toplady, "what'll you have the ambulance for?" "Because we've got no other public ve-hicle," says Mis' Sykes, commanding, "without it's the hearse. If so, name what it is." And nobody naming nothing, she went on: "Then I thought we'd have the G. A. R., and the W. R. C. from Red Barns--they'll be glad to come over because they ain't so very much happening for them to be patriotic about, without it's Memorial Day. And then the D. A. R. of Friendship Village and Red Barns will come last, each a-carrying a flag in our hands. Friday is April 18th, and we did mean to have a Pink Tea to celebrate Paul Revere's ride. But I'm quite sure the ladies'll all be willing to give that up and transfer their patriotic observation over to Jeffro. And we'll all march down in a body, and be there when the train pulls in. What say, Ladies?" She leaned back, with a little triumphant pucker, like she'd scraped the world for ideas, and got them all and defied anybody to add to them. "Well-a," says Mis' Timothy Toplady, "and then what?" "Then what?" says Mis' Sykes, irritable. "Why, be there. And wave and cheer and flop our flags. And walk along behind him to his house. And hurrah--and sing, mebbe--oh, we _must_ sing, of course!" Mis' Sykes cries, thinking of it for the first time, with her hands clasped. Mis' Toplady looked troubled. "Well-a," she says, "what would we sing for?" "Sing for!" cried Mis' Sykes, exasperated. "Because he's got home, of course." "With his arm shot off. And his eyes blinded with powder. And him half-starved. And mebbe worse. I dunno, Ladies," says Mis' Toplady, dreamy, "but I'm terrible lacking. But I don't feel like singing over Jeffro." Mis' Sykes looked at her perfectly withering.