from crimpers, three or four inches of sensible
shirt-sleeve showing below the flowing lines of their cheesecloth
Grecian robes. Maxine was often one of these. Yes, Milly Pardee was
happy.

Sam Pardee was not. He began, suddenly, to talk of Mexico. Frankly, he
was bored. For the first time in his life he owned a house--or nearly.
There was eleven hundred dollars in the bank. Roast on Sunday. Bathroom
shelf to be nailed Sunday morning. Y.M.C.A., Rotary Club, Knights of
Columbus, Kiwanis, Boy Scouts.

"Hell," said Sam Pardee, "this town's no good."

Milly Pardee took a last stand. "Sam Pardee, I'll never leave here. I'm
through traipsing up and down the world with you, like a gypsy. I want a
home. I want to be settled. I want to stay here. And I'm going to."

"You're sure you want to stay?"

"I've moved for the last time. I--I'm going to plant a Burbank clamberer
at the side of the porch, and they don't begin to flower till after the
first ten years. That's how sure I am."

There came a look into Sam Pardee's eyes. He rubbed his neat brown derby
round and round with his coat sleeve. He was just going out.

"Well, that's all right. I just wanted to know. Where's Max?"

"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. Pardee's dinners became an
institution in Okoochee. Mrs. Pardee cooked. Maxine served. And not even
the great new stucco palaces on the Edgecombe Road boasted finer silver,
more exquisite napery. As for the food--old Clem Barstow himself, who
had a chef and a butler and sent east for lobster and squabs weekly,
came to Pardee's when he wanted a real meal. From the first they charged
one dollar and fifty cents for their dinners. Okoochee, made mellow by
the steaming soup, the savoury meats, the bland sauces and rich dessert,
paid it ungrudgingly. They served only eight