“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 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 grey 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.