in company, my land, there was a hush like you'd swore. So gradually I'd
got to keepin' still about such things. But in that dream we talked an'
talked--said things about old noted folks right out an' told about 'em
without beginnin' it 'I happened to read the other day.' An' I know I
mentioned the sun on the leaves an' the way the clouds looked, right
out, too, without bein' afraid the girl that was me would think I was
affected. An' I said little things about--oh, like about goblins in the
wood an' figgers in the smoke, without bein' scared that mothers would
hear of it an' not let their children come to see me. An' then I made up
things an' said--things I was always wantin' to say--like about
expectin' to meet Summer walkin' down the road, an' so on: things that
if I'd said so's they'd got out around Friendship, folks would 'a'
thought I was queer an' not to be trusted to bring up their mail from
town. I said all those kind o' things, like I was really born to talk
what I thought about. An' the girl that was me understood what I meant.
An' we laughed a good deal--oh, how we laughed together. That was 'most
the best of all.

"Well, the dream dwindled off, like they will. An' when I woke up, I was
nothin' but Calliope Marsh, livin' in Friendship where folks cut a loaf
o' bread on a baker's headstone just because he _was_ a baker. Rill life
didn't get any better, an' I was more an' more lonesome in Friendship.
Somehow, nobody here in town rilly matched me. They all knew what I said
well enough, but when I spoke to 'em about what was rill interestin' to
me, seemed like their minds didn't _click_, with that good little
feelin' o' rilly takin' it in. My _i_-dees didn't seem to fit, quite
ball an' socket, into nobody's mind, but just to slide along over. And
as to _their_ i-dees--I rec'lect thinkin' that the three R's meant to
'em Relations, Recipes, an' the Remains. Yes, all I did have, you might
say, was my walks out in the Depot Woods. An' times like when Elder
Jacob Sykes--that was Silas's father--said in church that God come down
to be Moses's undertaker, I run off there to the woods feelin' all sick
an' skinned in soul, an' it sort o' seemed like the gully understood.
An' still, you can't be friends when they's only one of you. It's like
tryin' to hold a dust-pan an' sweep the dirt in at the same time. It
can't be done--not thorough. An' so settin' out there I used to take a
book an' hunt up nice little things an' lea