ther,--or
even _one_ poor folk, or hungry,--will you three come over to my house
an' stuff the turkey? The way--I can't help thinkin' the way your mother
would of, if she'd been here. An' then," Calliope went on briskly,
"could you bring some fresh eggs an' make a pan o' custard over to my
house? An' mebbe one o' you'd stir up a sunshine cake. You must know how
to make your mother's sunshine cake?"

There was another silence in the cellar when Calliope had done, and for
a minute I wondered if, after all, she had not failed, and if the
bleeding of the three hearts might be so stanched. It was not
self-reliant Libbie Liberty who spoke first; it was gentle Miss Lucy.

"I guess," she said, "I could, if we all do it. I know mother would of."

"Yes," Miss Viny nodded, "mother would of."

Libbie Liberty stood for a moment with compressed lips.

"It seems like not payin' respect to mother," she began; and then shook
her head. "It ain't that," she said; "it's only missin' her when we
begin to step around the kitchen, bakin' up for a holiday."

"I know--I know," Calliope said again. "That's why I said for you to
come over in my kitchen. You come over there an' stir up the sunshine
cake, too, an' bake it in my oven, so's we can hev it et hot. Will you
do that?"

And after a little time they consented. If Calliope found any sick or
poor, they would do that.

"We ain't gettin' many i-dees for guests," Calliope said, as we reached
the street, "but we're gettin' helpers, anyway. An' some dinner, too."

Then we went to the house of Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss--called
so, of course, to distinguish her from the "Other" Holcombs.

"Don't you be shocked at her," Calliope warned me, as we closed Mis'
Holcomb's gate behind us; "she's dreadful diff'r'nt an' bitter since
Abigail was married last month. She's got hold o' some kind of a Persian
book, in a decorated cover, from the City; an' now she says your soul is
like when you look in a lookin'-glass--that there ain't really nothin'
there. An' that the world's some wind an' the rest water, an' they ain't
no God only your own breath--oh, poor Mis' Holcomb!" said Calliope. "I
guess she ain't rill balanced. But we ought to go to see her. We always
consult Mis' Holcomb about everything."

Poor Mis' Holcomb-that-was-Mame-Bliss! I can see her now in her
comfortable dining room, where she sat cleaning her old silver, her
thin, veined hands as fragile as her grandmother's spoons.