“She used to run a laundry, and made money; but when Cyril got a place in the bank she sold out the laundry and went into chickens and vegetables; she told somebody that it wasn’t so profitable as the laundry, but it was more genteel, and Cyril being now in a position of trust at the bank, she must consider him.  Cyril swept out the bank.  People laughed about it, but, do you know, I rather liked Mrs. Winslow for it.  She isn’t in the least an assertive woman.  How long have we been up here, Maggie?  Isn’t it four years?  And they have been our next-door neighbors, and she has never been inside the house.  Nor he either, for that matter, except once when it took fire, you know, and he came in with that funny little chemical engine tucked under his arm, and took off his hat in the same prim, polite way that he takes it off when he talks to Sibyl, and said, ’If you’ll excuse me offering advice, Miss Hopkins, it is not necessary to move anything; it mars furniture very much to move it at a fire.  I think, if you will allow me, I can extinguish this.’  And he did, too, didn’t he, as neatly and as coolly as if it were only adding up a column of figures.  And offered me the engine as a souvenir.”

“Lorania, you never told me that!”

“It seemed like making fun of him, when he had been so kind.  I declined as civilly as I could.  I hope I didn’t hurt his feelings.  I meant to pay a visit to his mother and ask them to dinner, but you know I went to England that week, and somehow when I came back it was difficult.  It seems a little odd we never have seen more of the Winslows, but I fancy they don’t want either to intrude or to be intruded on.  But he is certainly very obliging about the garden.  Think of all the slips and flowers he has given us, and the advice—­”

“All passed over the fence.  It is funny our neighborly good offices which we render at arm’s-length.  How long have you known him?”

“Oh, a long time.  He is cashier of my bank, you know.  First he was teller, then assistant cashier, and now for five years he has been cashier.  The president wants to resign and let him be president, but he hardly has enough stock for that.  But Oliver says” (Oliver was Miss Hopkins’s brother) “that there isn’t a shrewder or straighter banker in the state.  Oliver knows him.  He says he is a sandy little fellow.”

“Well, he is,” assented Mrs. Ellis.  “It isn’t many cashiers would let robbers stab them and shoot them and leave them for dead rather than give up the combination of the safe!”

“He wouldn’t take a cent for it, either, and he saved ever so many thousand dollars.  Yes, he is brave.  I went to the same school with him once, and saw him fight a big boy twice his size—­such a nasty boy, who called me ‘Fatty,’ and made a kissing noise with his lips just to scare me—­and poor little Cyril Winslow got awfully beaten, and when I saw him on the ground, with his nose bleeding and that big brute pounding him, I ran to the water-bucket, and poured the whole bucket on that big, bullying boy and stopped the fight, just as the teacher got on the scene.  I cried over little Cyril Winslow.  He was crying himself.  ’I ain’t crying because he hurt me,’ he sobbed; ’I’m crying because I’m so mad I didn’t lick him!’ I wonder if he remembers that episode?”