“She stayed late. They’re rehearsing for the Pageant of Progress down at the Library.”

Sam Pardee looked thoughtful — a little regretful, one might almost have said. Then he clapped on the brown derby, paused on the top step of the porch to light his cigar, returned the greeting of young Arnold Hatch who was sprinkling the lawn next door, walked down the street with the quick, nervous step that characterized him, boarded the outgoing train for God knows where, and was never heard from again.

“Well,” said the worse-than-widowed (it was her own term), “we’ve got the home.”

She set about keeping it. We know that she had a gift for cooking that amounted almost to culinary inspiration.