The captain and the widow agreed upon thirty-five dollars a month.  It developed that she owned their former house in Middleford and that the latter had been rented for a very much higher rent.  “My furniture,” she added, “that which I did not sell when we gave up housekeeping, is stored with a friend there.  I know it is extravagant, my hiring a furnished house, but I’m sure Mr. Winslow wouldn’t let this one unfurnished and, besides, it would be a crime to disturb furniture and rooms which fit each other as these do.  And, after all, at the end of a year I may wish to leave Orham.  Of course I hope I shall not, but I may.”

Captain Sam would have asked questions concerning her life in Middleford, in fact he did ask a few, but the answers he received were unsatisfactory.  Mrs. Armstrong evidently did not care to talk on the subject.  The captain thought her attitude a little odd, but decided that the tragedy of her husband’s death must be the cause of her reticence.  Her parting remarks on this occasion furnished an explanation.

“If you please, Captain Hunniwell,” she said, “I would rather you did not tell any one about my having lived in Middleford and my affairs there.  I have told very few people in Orham and I think on the whole it is better not to.  What is the use of having one’s personal history discussed by strangers?”

She was evidently a trifle embarrassed and confused as she said this, for she blushed just a little.  Captain Sam decided that the blush was becoming.  Also, as he walked back to the bank, he reflected that Jed Winslow’s tenant was likely to have her personal history and affairs discussed whether she wished it or not.  Young women as attractive as she were bound to be discussed, especially in a community the size of Orham.  And, besides, whoever else she may have told, she certainly had told him that Middleford had formerly been her home and he had told Maud and Jed.  Of course they would say nothing if he asked them, but perhaps they had told it already.  And why should Mrs. Armstrong care, anyway?

“Let folks talk,” he said that evening, in conversation with his daughter.  “Let ’em talk, that’s my motto.  When they’re lyin’ about me I know they ain’t lyin’ about anybody else, that’s some comfort.  But women folks, I cal’late, feel different.”

Maud was interested and a little suspicious.

“You don’t suppose, Pa,” she said, “that this Mrs. Armstrong has a past, do you?”

“A past?  What kind of a thing is a past, for thunder sakes?”

“Why, I mean a—­a—­well, has she done something she doesn’t want other people to know; is she trying to hide something, like—­well, as people do in stories?”

“Eh?  Oh, in the books!  I see.  Well, young woman, I cal’late the first thing for your dad to do is to find out what sort of books you read.  A past!  Ho, ho!  I guess likely Mrs. Armstrong is a plaguey sight more worried about the future than she is about the past.  She has lived the past already, but she’s got to live the future and pay the bills belongin’ to it, and that’s no triflin’ job in futures like these days.”