“Go down and be a neighbor to them that have fallen among thieves.”

Luclarion came to a resolution in this time of May, when everybody was making plans and the spring-cleaning was all done.

She came to Mrs. Ripwinkley one morning, when she was folding away winter clothes, and pinning them up in newspapers, with camphor-gum; and she said to her, without a bit of preface,—­Luclarion hated prefaces,—­

“Mrs. Ripwinkley, I’m going to swarm!”

Mrs. Ripwinkley looked up in utter surprise; what else could she do?

“Of course ’m, when you set up a Beehive, you must have expected it; it’s the natural way of things; they ain’t good for much unless they do.  I’ve thought it all over; I’ll stay and see you all off, first, if you want me to, and then—­I’ll swarm.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley, assenting in full faith, beforehand; for Mrs. Ripwinkley, if I need now to tell you of it, was not an ordinary woman, and did not take things in an ordinary selfish way, but grasped right hold of the inward right and truth of them, and believed in it; sometimes before she could quite see it; and she never had any doubt of Luclarion Grapp.  “Well!  And now tell me all about it.”

“You see,” said Luclarion, sitting down in a chair by the window, as Mrs. Ripwinkley suspended her occupation and took one by the bedside, “there’s places in this town that folks leave and give up.  As the Lord might have left and give up the world, because there was dirt and wickedness in it; only He didn’t.  There’s places where it ain’t genteel, nor yet respectable, to live; and so those places grow more disrespectable and miserable every day.  They’re left to themselves.  What I think is, they hadn’t ought to be.  There’s one clean spot down there now, in the very middle of the worst dirt.  And it ain’t bad to live in. That’s started.  Now, what I think is, that somebody ought to start another, even if its only a little one.  Somebody ought to just go there and live, and show ’em how, just as I took and showed Mrs. Scarup, and she’s been living ever since, instead of scratching along.  If some of them folks had a clean, decent neighbor to go to see,—­to drink tea with, say,—­and was to catch an idea of her fixings and doings, why, I believe there’d be more of ’em,—­cleaned up, you know.  They’d get some kind of an ambition and a hope.  Tain’t enough for ladies—­though I bless ’em in my soul for what I’ve seen ’em do—­to come down there of a Fridays, and teach and talk awhile, and then go home to Summit Street and Republic Avenue, and take up their life again where they left it off, that is just as different as heaven is from ’tother place; somebody’s got to come right down out of heaven, and bring the life in, and live it amongst them miserable folks, as the Lord Jesus Christ came and did!  And it’s borne in upon me, strong and clear, that that’s what’s got to be before all’s righted.  And so—­for a little piece of it, and a little individual stump—­I’m going to swarm, and settle, and see what’ll come.”