even know
who to leave it to," and she sighed deeply, pressing her hands, with her
old, characteristic gesture, to her heart. Everybody would approve,
she supposed, if she left it to Rose and Frank--her niece and Martin's
nephew--but she couldn't quite bring herself to welcome that idea--not
yet. And anyway it might be better to divide it among more people, so
that it would bring more happiness.

Her own needs were simple. The modest five-room house which she
purchased was set on a pleasant paved street in Fallon and was obviously
ample for her. She hoped that during part of each year she could rent
the extra bed-room to some one, preferably a boy, like Bill, who was
attending high school. There was a barn for her horse and the one cow
she would keep, a neat little chicken-house for the twenty-five hens
that would more than supply her with eggs and summer fries, and a small
garage for Martin's car. It would seem very strange, she thought, to
have so few things to care for and she wondered how she would fill her
time, she whose one problem always had been how to achieve snatches of
leisure. She saw herself jogging on and on, gradually getting to be less
able on her feet, a little more helpless, until she was one of those
feeble old ladies who seem at the very antipodes of the busy mothers
they have been in their prime. How could it be that she who had always
been in such demand, so needed, so driven by real duties, should have
become suddenly such a supernumerary, so footloose, and unattached?

But when it came to that, wasn't Fallon full of others in the same
circumstances? It was not an uncommon lot. There was Mrs. McMurray. Rose
remembered over what a jolly household she had reigned before she, too,
had lost her husband and three children instead of just one, like Billy.
Two of them had been grown and married. Now she was living in a little
cottage, all alone, doing sewing and nursing, yet always so brave and
cheerful; not only that, but interested, really interested in living.
And Mrs. Nelson. Her children were living and married and happy, but
she had given up her home, sold it--the pretty place with the hospitable
yard that used to seem to be fairly spilling over with wholesome,
boisterous boys and chatty, beribboned little girls. She was rooming
with a family, taking her meals at a restaurant, keeping up her zest
in tomorrow by running a shop. She thought of how her friend, Mrs.
Robinson, gracious, democratic wo