be my friends, and their husbands, and their sons. Besides, the children will have advantages there. I’m going back to Chicago.”

She went. Horace and Bertha Winter had died five years before, within less than a year of each other. The old Rush Street house had been sold. The neighbourhood was falling into decay. The widow and her two children took a little flat on the south side. Widowed, one might with equanimity admit stress of circumstance. It was only when one had a husband that it was disgraceful to show him to the world as a bad provider.

“I suppose we lived too well,” Hannah said when her old friends expressed concern at her plight. “Hermie was too generous. But I don’t mind working. It keeps me young.