er evenings in our little town are filled with intimate, human,
neighborly sounds. After the heat of the day it is pleasant to relax
in the cool comfort of the front porch, with the life of the town
eddying about us. We sew and read out there until it grows dusk. We
call across lots to our next-door neighbor. The men water the lawns
and the flower boxes and get together in little, quiet groups to
discuss the new street paving. I have even known Mrs. Hines to bring
her cherries out there when she had canning to do, and pit them there
on the front porch partially shielded by her porch vine, but not so
effectually that she was deprived of the sights and sounds about her.
The kettle in her lap and the dishpan full of great ripe cherries on
the porch floor by her chair, she would pit and chat and peer out
through the vines, the red juice staining her plump bare arms.

I have wondered since what Blanche Devine thought of us those lonesome
evenings--those evenings filled with friendly sights and sounds. It
must have been difficult for her, who had dwelt behind closed shutters
so long, to seat herself on the new front porch for all the world to
stare at; but she did sit there--resolutely--watching us in silence.

She seized hungrily upon the stray crumbs of conversation that fell to
her. The milkman and the iceman and the butcher boy used to hold daily
conversation with her. They--sociable gentlemen--would stand on her
door-step, one grimy hand resting against the white of her doorpost,
exchanging the time of day with Blanche in the doorway--a tea towel in
one hand, perhaps, and a plate in the other. Her little house was a
miracle of cleanliness. It was no uncommon sight to see her down on
her knees on the kitchen floor, wielding her brush and rag like the
rest of us. In canning and preserving time there floated out from her
kitchen the pungent scent of pickled crab apples; the mouth-watering
smell that meant sweet pickles; or the cloying, divinely sticky odor
that meant raspberry jam. Snooky, from her side of the fence, often
used to peer through the pickets, gazing in the direction of the
enticing smells next door.

Early one September morning there floated out from Blanche Devine's
kitchen that fragrant, sweet scent of fresh-baked cookies--cookies with
butter in them, and spice, and with nuts on top. Just by the smell of
them your mind's eye pictured them coming from the oven-crisp brown
circlets, crumbly, del