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"Don't say anything in front of Minnie! She's boiling!
Minnie and the kids are going to visit her folks out West this summer;
so I wouldn't so much as dare to say `Good morning!' to the Devine

woman. Anyway, a person wouldn't talk to her, I suppose. But I kind of
thought I'd tell you about her.
"Thanks!" said the Very Young Husband dryly.
In the early spring, before Blanche Devine moved in, there came stone-
masons, who began to build something. It was a great stone fireplace
that rose in massive incongruity at the side of the little white cottage.
Blanche Devine was trying to make a home for herself.
Blanche Devine used to come and watch them now and then as the
work progressed. She had a way of walking round and round the house,
looking up at it and poking at plaster and paint with her umbrella or
finger tip. One day she brought with her a man with a spade. He spaded
up a neat square of ground at the side of the cottage and a long ridge
near the fence that separated her yard from that of the Very Young
Couple next door. The ridge spelled sweet peas and nasturtiums to our
small-town eyes.
On the day that Blanche Devine moved in there was wild agitation
among the white-ruffed bedroom curtains of the neighborhood. Later
on certain odors, as of burning dinners, pervaded the atmosphere.
Blanche Devine, flushed and excited, her hair slightly askew, her
diamond eardrops flashing, directed the moving, wrapped in her great
fur coat; but on the third morning we gasped when she appeared
out-of-doors, carrying a little household ladder, a pail of steaming
water, and sundry voluminous white cloths. She reared the little ladder
against the side of the house, mounted it cautiously, and began to wash
windows with housewifely thoroughness. Her stout figure was swathed
in a gray sweater and on her head was a battered felt hat--the sort of
window--washing costume that has been worn by women from time
immemorial. We noticed that she used plenty of hot water and clean
rags, and that she rubbed the glass until it sparkled, leaning perilously
sideways on the ladder to detect elusive streaks. Our keenest
housekeeping eye could find no fault with the way Blanche Devine
washed windows.
By May, Blanche Devine had left off her diamond eardrops--perhaps it

was their absence that gave her face a new expression. When she went
downtown we noticed that her hats were more like the hats the other
women in our town wore; but she still affected extravagant footgear, as
is right and proper for a stout woman who has cause to be vain of her
feet. We noticed that her trips downtown were rare that spring and
summer. She used to come home laden with little bundles; and before
supper she would change her street clothes for a neat, washable
housedress, as is our thrifty custom. Through her bright windows we
could see her moving briskly about from kitchen to sitting room; and
from the smells that floated out from her kitchen door, she seemed to
be preparing for her solitary supper the same homely viands that were
frying or stewing or baking in our kitchens. Sometimes you could
detect the delectable scent of browning, hot tea biscuit. It takes a
determined woman to make tea biscuit for no one but herself.
Blanche Devine joined the church. On the first Sunday morning she
came to the service there was a little flurry among the ushers at the
vestibule door. They seated her well in the rear. The second Sunday
morning a dreadful thing happened. The woman next to whom they
seated her turned, regarded her stonily for a moment, then rose
agitatedly and moved to a pew across the aisle.
Blanche Devine's face went a dull red beneath her white powder. She
never came again--though we saw the minister visit her once or twice.
She always accompanied him to the door pleasantly, holding it well
open until he was down the little flight of steps and on the sidewalk.
The minister's wife did not call.
She rose early, like the rest of us; and as summer came on we used to
see her moving about in her little garden patch in the dewy, golden
morning. She wore absurd pale-blue negligees that made her stout
figure loom immense against the greenery of garden and apple tree.
The neighborhood women viewed these negligees with Puritan
disapproval as they smoothed down their own prim, starched gingham
skirts. They said it was disgusting --and perhaps it was; but the habit of
years is not easily overcome. Blanche Devine--snipping her sweet peas,
peering anxiously at the Virginia creeper that clung with such fragile

fingers to the trellis, watering the flower baskets