t ain't real easy
for women to earn. I think mebbe the Lord meant the men to be the
Moseses."

Mis' Amanda Toplady's voice rolled out, deep and comfortable, like a
complaisant giant's.

"Well said!" she remarked. "I'm drove to death all day. If anybody's to
ask me what I got in my hand, I declare I guess I'd say, rill reverent:
Dear Lord, I've got my hands full, an' that's about all I have got."

So we went on, saying much or little as was our nature, but we were all
agreed that we were virtually helpless--for Calliope was out of town
that week, and not present to shame us.

"What's in my hands?" said grim Miss Liddy Ember, finally, in her thin
falsetto. "Well, I ain't got any rill, what-you-might-call hands. I just
got kind o' cat's paws for my three meals a day an' my rent."

Then, by her sister's side, Ellen Ember stood up. We had hardly noticed
her, sitting there quietly playing with some of the doctor's flowers.
But now we saw that she had hurriedly twisted her splendid hair about
her head, and by this we understood that she was herself again. We had
seen her come to herself like this on the street, and then she would go
hurrying home, the tears running down her face in shame for her unbound
hair and her singing and dancing. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes
were shining as she rose now, and she looked appealingly pretty, one
hand, palm outward, half hiding her trembling mouth. By her soft eyes,
too, we knew that she was herself again.

"You all know," she began, and dare not trust herself. "You all
know ..." she said once more, and we understood what she would say.
"What can I do?" she cried to us. "What is there I can do? I ain't got
anything but my craziness! Oh, it seems like I _ain't_ much, an' so
I'd ought to _do_ all the more."

To soothe her, we took our woman's way of all talking at once. And then
Doctor June called out cheerily that he felt the way Ellen did, that he
wasn't a real Moses, for what had he--Doctor June--in his hand, and
didn't we all know there was no money in pills? And then he told us how
the Reverend Arthur Bliss was to be in town again on Wednesday of the
next week, and would we not all think the matter over quietly, and meet
with them on that evening, for cakes and tea?

"As many of you as can," he said, "come with a plan to earn a dollar,
and tell how you mean to do it. Ellen, you and I'll preside at the
meeting, and hear what the rest say, and keep real still ourselves, li