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 knock you down, just laughed, and went walking at night in the graveyard with other boys. But now that affair seemed all blown over.

"Thank you ever so much, Mrs. Driggs. Just let me hop out at your gate."

"All right, if you'd just as soon; it's kind of hard for Noble to turn round. Good night!"

"Good night!"

The house was dark, not glowing to meet her, as it used to be in Lizzie's time. Lizzie had married. Kate had hardly been able to persuade her that she must, with Dan Healey waiting for her ten years and getting a good new job in Syracuse. Now Kate sometimes had Effa Ashburn in to help, and sometimes no one. Effa wasn't worth much—too young and so fat and lazy. But you couldn't get a good girl for what Kate could pay, any more.

She switched on the hall ceiling light in its strawberries-and-cream glass globe. She could smell potatoes baking. She called up the stairs:

"Joe-ho!"

"Hello!"

"Are you home?"

"Yeh!"

Her Joe! Heart of her heart! So beautiful to her in spite of the steel-rimmed spectacles that covered his clear blue eyes, his stick-out ears that shone like rosy shells when he stood in front of a strong light, his cowlick, his large dusty shoes, his unpressed suit—why