It was Friday evening, and Mr.and Mrs.Robbins had driven over to the Judge's to attend a community meeting, the latter being one of Cousin Roxy's innovations in Gilead.
"Land alive," she had been wont to say.

"Here we are all living on the same hills and valleys and never meeting 'cept on Sundays when we have to, or now and again when there happens to be a funeral.

I declare if I didn't drive about all the time behind Ella Lou, I'd never know how folks were getting on.

So every two weeks the Judge and I are going to hold an old-time social, only we call it a community meeting so as to try to give it the new spirit.

It's just as well for us to remember that we ain't all dead yet by a long shot, 'though I do think there's a whole lot that ain't got any more get up and get to them than Noah's old gray mule that had to be shoved off the Ark." Mr.Robbins had invited the erstwhile prisoner to accompany them, but he had decided instead to keep on his way to the old Inn on the hill above the village, much to Jean and Helen's disappointment.
Helen had discovered that his first name was Stanley, which relieved her mind considerably.
"If it had been Abijah or Silas, I know I could never have forgiven him for getting in the berry patch," she said, "but there is something promising about Stanley.