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When she had collected enough shirts to satisfy any and all uses, she worked out a plan what to do with Tug.

She bore down on Nannie Northcutt, her sister-in-law, and told Nannie she would have to have her best room for a while.

The banker's wife stared in consternation at the terrible chariteer and asked what she wanted with it.

She wanted to put Tug Beavers in it.

"That man that was killed last night!"

"He ain't dead, but he will die if we leave him down there in that hot cinch-y place!"

"That whisky-head who—"

"Nannie Northcutt!" cried Mrs. Roxie. "Don't you know this is the Lord's work to bring Irontown to repentance! If you don't do your duty in helpin' the afflicted, what do you think the Lord'll do to you?"

"But why don't you take him somewheres else?" cried Mrs. Nannie, with tears of outrage in her eyes.

"Because the Lord has called on you!" snapped Mrs. Roxie.

There was no getting around the point. Mrs. Roxie stood on the ancient Northcutt prescriptive right to enunciate the will of God. The Northcutt family always had done it. Undoubtedly, the old Hebrew prophets were some sort of distant relations of the Northcutts! At any rate, the prophets, according to reports, enjoyed the same sort of unpopularity as did Mrs. Roxie.

Mrs. Nannie evaded the requisition as hopelessly as a rabbit flies from a weasel. Finally and fatally, she aroused her large apathetic body to go into her cool dark front room and freshen up the bed to receive Tug Beavers. Mrs. Roxie immediately began to console her sister-in-law out of a genuine kindness of heart.

"Now, Nannie, you won't have a thing else to do. I'll have somebody else do all the tendin' to Mr. Beavers; all the settin' up; all the packin' of the slops an' feedin' him; an' when I git through I'll have somebody clean up yore front room an' leave it jest like I found it, so there." She patted Mrs. Nannie's shoulder.