week ago Saturday, an' Mis' Denny come along
with that lady friend o' hers that's down here over Sunday. I offered
'em each a warm doughnut, an' they was possessed to take it. They'd been
walkin' quite a spell, an' they'd called for a drink o' water. They said
'twas the time in the forenoon when they drinked. But they looked at the
doughnuts good an' hard, an' they says: 'No. It's fattenin',' says they.
'It's fattenin'.'"

"Yes," said Caddie, with a scornful cadence, "I'll warrant they did.
That's what they said about two things out o' three, soon 's the hands
moved round to meal-time. 'It's fattenin'!' Oh, I'm sick an' tired to
death of it! I ain't goin' to be dead till I be dead, thinkin' about it
all the time, not if I can keep my thoughts inside o' me an' my tongue
in my head. So there!"

"Well, now," said Martha Waterman, with the mildness calculated to
smooth a troubled situation, "hadn't we better be gettin' round to
thinkin' what we'll do to earn us a mite more money for the fund? Seems
if, now they've done so well by us, we'd ought to up an' show what we
can do--a harvest festival, mebbe, or a sociable for all, an' charge for
tickets."

One woman had not spoken. She was a thin, dark-eyed creature, with a
gypsy face and a quantity of gray hair wound about on the top of her
head. This was Isabel Martin, who was allowed her erratic way because
she took it, and because, it had always been said, "You never could tell
what Isabel would do next, only she never meant the least o' harm." She
had come softly in while the others were talking, and drawn Ellen's work
out of her hand, with a swift, pretty smile at her. "Rest your eyes,"
she had whispered her, and sat by, taking quick, deft stitches, while
Ellen, unconscious until then of being tired, had dropped her lids and
leaned her head against the casing, with a faint smile of pleasant
restfulness. Now Isabel put the work back into Ellen's hand with an
accurate haste, and looked up at the group about her.

"I'll tell you what to do," she said. Her voice thrilled with urging and
suggestive mischief. It was a compelling voice, and they turned at once.

"If there ain't Isabel," said Martha Waterman. "I didn't see you come
in."

"Le' 's give a fancy dress party of our own," said Isabel.

"Dress ourselves up to the nines, an' put on paint an' powder, an' send
off to the stores to hire clo'es an' wigs?" inquired Caddie. "No, sir,
none o' that for me. I've seen what it