"It's for you to show them what to do," I pressed her. "They'll do what you do." Mis' Sykes kind of stopped winking and breathing. "I could make them do it, I bet you," she says, proud. "Of course you could," I egged her on. "You could just take for granted everybody meant to be decent, and carry it off, matter-of-fact." She stood up and walked around the room, her curl-papers setting strange on her proud ways. "Don't figger on it, Mis' Sykes," I says. "Just think how much easier it is to be leading folks into something they ain't used to than to have them all laughing at you behind your back for getting come up with." It wasn't the highest motive--but then, I only used it for a finishing touch. And for a tassel I says, moving off rapid: "Now I'm going home to stir up my cake for the party." She didn't say anything, and I went off up the street. I remember it was one of the times when it came to me, strong, that there's something big and near working away through us, to get us to grow in spite of us. In spite of us. And when I had my chocolate cake baked, I lay down on the lounge in my dining-room, and planned out how nice it was going to be, that night.... There was a little shower, and then the sun came back again; so by the time we all began to move toward Mis' Sykes's, between seven and eight, everything was fresh and earth-smelling and wet-sweet green. And there was a lovely, flowing light, like in a dream. Whenever I have a hard thing to do, be it housecleaning or be it quenching down my pride, I always think of the way I see Mis' Sykes do hers. Dressed in her best gray poplin with a white lace yoke, and hair crimped front _and_ back, Mis' Sykes received us all, reserved and formal--not with her real society pucker, but with her most leader-like look. Everybody was there--nobody was lacking. There must have been above fifty. I couldn't talk for trying to reckon how each of them would act, as soon as they knew. "Blistering Benson," says Timothy Toplady, that his wife had got him into his frock-tail coat that he keeps to be pall-bearer in, "--kind of nice to welcome in another first family, ain't it?" Mis' Sykes heard him. "Timothy Toplady, you ain't enough democracy to shake a stick at," she says, regal; and left him squenched, but with his lips moving. "I'm just crazy to get upstairs in the Oldmoxon House," says Mis' Hubbelthwait. "How do you s'pose they've got it furnished?" "They're thinking more about the furniture of their heads than of their upstairs chambers," snaps back Mis' Sykes. And I see anew that whatever Mis' Sykes goes into, she goes into up to her eyes, thorough and firm. "Calliope," she says, "you might run over now and see how they're situated. And be there with them when we come."