Someone to watch over me

vision is going.“ She sat down with a stack of cut-up table linens and got out spectacles and a small box of embroidery thread.
    “Roxanne’s our artist,“ Susan Gasset said to Lily. “She embroiders flowers on the patches. Hers are the prettiest quilts.”
    Roxanne’s face got even redder. “Go along,“ she said. “You just say that to get me to work. Let me tell you about those girls—”
    Edith squelched her firmly again. “You may talk about it later, Roxanne. I called you together today to tell you good news.”
    It seemed that Edith had visited a second cousin in a town outside Philadelphia the week before, and the cousin took her to the “town truck.“ It was an old bus that had been converted to a shop, with the seats removed and shelves installed instead. It was a trading truck, which traveled around town and the surrounding countryside. The community had purchased the bus and paid the meager wages of the driver.
    “A trading truck?“ several women asked as Edith drew a quick breath.
    “The people of the town trade goods in the truck,“ Edith said. “There was a man with fresh milk. You know, these days farmers are having to pour their milk out on the ground many places because they can’t afford to ship it to cities.“
    “I saw that in the paper,“ Roxanne said, angry again. “So wasteful when many children are starved for milk. It’s immoral.”
    Edith didn’t want any more interruptions and stared fiercely at Roxanne. “If I may continue? The farmer doesn’t get money at the town truck. He gets credit tokens called scrip for his milk. So much scrip for so many bottles of milk. And in turn he can buy things he needs from the truck with the scrip. No money ever changes hands.“
    “Scrip?“ Susan Gasset asked.
    “Think of scrip as written tokens,“ Edith said. “Scrip?“ Roxanne asked. “What’s the value of the scrip?“
    “That’s what we need to decide,“ Edith White said. “Meat and milk would be more valuable than vegetables. Do you agree?“ she asked, casting her eye around the group.
    Phoebe spoke up. “I think it depends on how much meat or how many vegetables.“
    “Good point, my dear,“ Edith said cheerfully, apparently assuming she had everyone’s agreement to the general plan.
    “I like this!“ Susan said. “My sister Bernadette’s rabbits could be traded for beef—if anyone had beef.”
    Nina Pratt spoke up. “I don’t grow any food. What good would it do me?”
    Edith jumped on this. She seemed to be well prepared. “You have a skill, Nina. You could give a chit for a small amount of scrip, maybe one credit, for a good haircut and a bigger chit, three or four credits, for a permanent wave, and you wouldn’t have to spend the money you make on those without scrip to buy food at the trading truck.“
    “I’m not sure I understand,“ Nina said.
    “You’d write on pieces of stiff paper, ONE UNIT OF SCRIP TO NINA’S HAIR PARLOR. GOOD FOR A CUT. That’s what you’d give as your benefit. Someone else would ‘buy’ the scrip for—oh, let’s say,“ Edith said, as naughty as a sixteen-year-old girl, “six rolls of good lavatory paper, which you could buy with the returned scrip. It would be like trading a haircut for the lavatory paper, but you wouldn’t have to bargain with the customer.“
    “Would everyone set their own scrip price?“ Roxanne asked suspiciously.
    Edith hadn’t considered this. “I guess we’ll have to talk about that.”
    Roxanne was determined to have an answer. “A dozen of my carrots is worth more than a dozen of anyone else’s. They’re straighter and fatter and never woody. I went to a lot of trouble getting river sand to grow them in. Who would decide?”
    Ruby hadn’t said anything yet. Now she spoke up. “Wait. What if Roxanne priced her carrots too high and they sat around drying out in the truck for two weeks and nobody wanted or could afford them? She’s gotten her scrip and nobody got the carrots.”
    This stymied everyone: not only the question but the fact that Ruby had asked it.
    Niggling conversations, a few of them slightly heated, broke out. This was the sort of disorganized discussion Edith White couldn’t tolerate.
    “That’s what we’re here to decide,“ she said, in almost a shout. “I propose that we set prices in scrip for everything we can think of, no matter the quality. Just specify the number of items.“
    “First we’d need a truck,“ Phoebe put in, trying to throw a