ng Husband, in
spite of his youth! He always fussed when Jen wore even a V-necked
summer gown on the street.

"Oh, she wasn't playing for sympathy," west on Alderman Mooney in
answer to the sneer. "She said she'd always paid her way and always
expected to. Seems her husband left her without a cent when she was
eighteen--with a baby. She worked for four dollars a week in a cheap
eating house. The two of 'em couldn't live on that. Then the baby--"

"Good night!" said the Very Young Husband. "I suppose Mrs. Mooney's
going to call?"

"Minnie! It was her scolding all through supper that drove me down to
monkey with the furnace. She's wild--Minnie is." He peeled off his
overalls and hung them on a nail. The Young Husband started to ascend
the cellar stairs. Alderman Mooney laid a detaining finger on his
sleeve. "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
stonemasons, 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. We
no longer build fireplaces for physical warmth--we build them for the
warmth of the soul; we build them to dream by, to hope by, to home by.

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 pridefully and poking at plaster and paint with her umbrella or
fingertip. 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-ruffled bedroom curtains of the neighbourhood. Later on
certain odours, 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